How much does bookkeeping cost for a single-member LLC making $200k?

Bookkeeping cost scales with transaction volume, complexity, and whether your books feed directly into tax prep or require a handoff. A single-member LLC netting $200K typically processes 80 to 150 transactions per month: client payments, software subscriptions, contractor payments, home office, travel, equipment. That volume requires monthly reconciliation, proper categorization, and clean financials that support a Schedule C or 1120-S at year-end.

A standalone bookkeeper handling that load charges $300 to $600 per month ($3,600 to $7,200 per year). That price does not include tax prep. Add a CPA for the annual return and quarterly estimates and you're looking at another $1,500 to $3,000 per year, bringing the total to $5,100 to $10,200. The coordination cost between your bookkeeper and your CPA adds a hidden layer: documents get requested twice, categories get recoded, and questions take days to resolve across two separate firms.

The DIY route has lower hard costs ($600 to $1,200 per year for QuickBooks Online or Xero) but significant time costs. At $200K net profit on a 2,000-hour year, your effective billing rate is roughly $100 per hour. Monthly bookkeeping, quarterly estimates, year-end cleanup, and CPA coordination run 70 to 90 hours annually. That's $7,000 to $9,000 in opportunity cost before you count the software.

Alex is a UX consultant running a single-member LLC, netting $200,000 in 2026. He handles his own books in QuickBooks Online ($780/year), pays a local CPA $2,200 for the annual return, and spends about 7 hours a month on bookkeeping and estimates. That's $2,980 in hard costs and roughly $8,400 in time (84 hours at $100/hr), for a total true cost of $11,380 per year. His CPA flagged the S-corp election but didn't model a salary recommendation. Alex set a $90,000 W-2 salary without benchmarking it, which is defensible but not optimized. A better-documented $80,000 reasonable salary would save an additional $1,200 in payroll taxes. His quarterly estimates also run high because his CPA uses prior-year safe harbor without adjusting for the current year, leaving $3,000 to $5,000 sitting with the IRS interest-free each quarter.

Three situations push the cost above or below the typical range. First, if you have S-corp payroll, add $600 to $1,200 per year for a payroll service on top of bookkeeping. Payroll is a separate system that most standalone bookkeepers hand off. Second, if you have multiple revenue streams (W-2 income plus 1099 plus rental), complexity increases and most firms charge more. Third, if you're in a state with a franchise tax or gross receipts tax (California, Texas, Delaware), state compliance adds $500 to $1,500 per year to the total.

The common mistakes: hiring a bookkeeper who doesn't understand self-employed tax, so books have to be reworked before filing. Treating monthly bookkeeping as optional and doing it quarterly, which means no real data for quarterly estimates. Keeping books on a cash basis when accrual would produce better QBI deduction eligibility. Using a personal bank account for LLC transactions, which forces the bookkeeper to reconstruct everything from bank statements.