Keep the jobs that depend on knowing the business, such as saving receipts, separating business and personal money, and glancing over monthly numbers, and hand off the jobs that depend on technical skill or sheer volume, such as reconciliation, payroll records and tax prep. An owner who is still forming an entity or has not yet separated business and personal money should start with the separation step, and ZenBusiness Money Pro at $30 per month as of 2026-10-06 covers bookkeeping handled for the owner alongside the entity work. An owner whose books are already clean and simple may be better off staying in Wave and doing it all personally.

Should I do my own bookkeeping or hire a service?

It is rarely all or nothing. Bookkeeping is a bundle of separate jobs, and the sensible split is by job rather than by yes or no. Some jobs are cheap to keep in-house because they are small, frequent and depend on knowing what each purchase was for. Others are worth paying for because mistakes are costly, the rules are technical, or the volume is high.

An owner with a handful of transactions a week can often keep everything in-house with a free tool. An owner with employees, sales tax or a large transaction count usually benefits from handing off at least the technical parts. The rest of this page sorts the jobs.

Which jobs are easy to keep in-house?

Keeping business and personal money apart is the first. IRS Publication 583 says to open a business checking account, keep it separate from the personal account, and use it for business purposes only. It also says to indicate the source of deposits and the type of expense in the checkbook, which it calls the basic source of information for recording business expenses.

Saving supporting documents is the second. Publication 583 names the documents behind each kind of entry. For gross receipts, it lists cash register tapes, bank deposit slips, receipt books, invoices and credit card charge slips. For purchases and inventory, it lists canceled checks, cash register tape receipts, credit card sales slips and invoices.

For expenses, the publication adds account statements, and for assets it names purchase and sales invoices, real estate closing statements and canceled checks. Only the owner knows what a given receipt was for, so this job stays in-house even when everything else is outsourced.

A monthly look at the numbers is the third. Even with a bookkeeper, someone inside the business should read the results, because a service cannot tell whether a number looks wrong without context.

Which jobs are worth handing off?

Reconciliation is the clearest candidate. Matching every transaction to a statement is repetitive, error-prone and easy to fall behind on, and it is the task a bookkeeper does fastest.

Payroll records are the next. Employment tax records must be kept at least 4 years after the date the tax becomes due or is paid, whichever is later, according to the IRS page on how long to keep records. The US Department of Labor, in Fact Sheet 21 on Fair Labor Standards Act recordkeeping, says employers must preserve payroll records, collective bargaining agreements, and sales and purchase records for at least three years. Time cards, piece work tickets, wage rate tables, work and time schedules, and records of additions to or deductions from wages must be kept 2 years.

Those two clocks run side by side, and a missed record is hard to recreate. This article does not cover payroll tax filing rules, so that question belongs with a payroll provider or tax professional.

Sales tax records are a third. In California, the Department of Tax and Fee Administration says in Publication 116 that sales and use tax records should be kept at least 4 years, and longer during an audit, when all records covering the audit period must be retained until it is complete. Other states set their own periods and are not covered here.

Tax preparation is the last. It is the most technical job and the one with the sharpest consequences, which makes it the most common thing owners pay for even when they do everything else.

How long do all these records need to be kept?

The IRS default is 3 years. That default applies unless one of three exceptions does: income under-reported by more than 25% of the gross income shown on the return, a return that was never filed, or a fraudulent return.

The IRS says to keep records 6 years when the unreported income exceeds that 25% threshold. It says to keep them indefinitely if no return is filed or a fraudulent return is filed. For a claim for a loss from worthless securities or a bad debt deduction, the period is 7 years.

The practical point is that whoever holds the records must keep them retrievable for years. Before handing a job off, it is worth asking how long the provider stores records and how they can be exported on leaving.

What does each option cost, and which jobs does it take?

The order below is alphabetical, not a ranking. Prices are as of 2026-10-06 and come from each provider's own pricing page. Promotional rates are labelled as promotional and are not ongoing prices.

Bench takes the whole bookkeeping job. Its Bookkeeping Light plan is $199 per month, Bookkeeping is $399 per month, and Bookkeeping + Tax is $649 per month. A fractional bookkeeper is $55 per hour plus $1,200 onboarding. The hourly option suits an owner who wants to hand off only reconciliation or a one-time cleanup.

Bookkeeper360 offers monthly bookkeeping from $399 per month and weekly bookkeeping from $599 per month. Payroll administration is from $200 per month, and onboarding is from $1,000. It fits a business that wants bookkeeping and payroll administration handled together.

QuickBooks Experts is Intuit's assisted bookkeeping offering, formerly called QuickBooks Live. Intuit does not publish a price for it on its pricing page, so the cost is not known without requesting a quote. It suits an owner who keeps the software in-house but wants a professional doing the reconciling inside it.

QuickBooks Online is the software for owners keeping the work in-house. Its plans are Free at $0, Simple Start at $38 per month, Essentials at $85 per month, Plus at $140 per month and Advanced at $340 per month. Intuit also advertises a promotional rate of 50% off for 3 months, which is not the ongoing price. It is the strongest option here for compatibility with accountants, and it makes a later handoff easier.

Wave has a free Starter plan and a Pro plan at $19 per month or $190 per year. A promotional rate of $9.50 per month for 3 months applies to Pro, and that is not the ongoing price. Card processing is 2.9% plus $0.60, a receipts add-on is $8 per month, and payroll starts at $25 per month. It is the lowest-cost way to keep everything in-house when transactions are simple.

Xero has Early at $27 per month, Growing at $59 per month and Established at $97 per month. A promotional rate of 80% off for 3 months is advertised, and it is not the ongoing price. It suits owners who want software with a clear plan ladder as the business grows.

ZenBusiness Money Pro is $30 per month as of 2026-10-06, sold as an add-on alongside formation. ZenBusiness describes it as covering custom invoicing, revenue and expense tracking, and tax preparation tools. It is a bookkeeping service bundled with the entity work, not accounting software, so it is not compared feature by feature against QuickBooks Online or Xero. It does not offer business banking, payroll or a business credit product.

Where does ZenBusiness fit in the split?

ZenBusiness belongs upstream of the whole question. The entity, the EIN, the registered agent and a separate business account come before any bookkeeping job exists, and Publication 583 treats the separate account as one of the first steps. For an owner who is still forming a business and wants one provider for the entity work and the books, ZenBusiness accounting is an honest place to start. ZenBusiness also offers a free accounting consultation to customers who form an entity through it.

The limit is that Money Pro is a $30 per month service, not a full-service firm. An owner with payroll, inventory or multi-state sales tax will likely need one of the dedicated options above.

So what is a sensible split?

For a very small business with simple transactions, keep everything in-house and use Wave or QuickBooks Online's free tier, then revisit when the hours or errors grow. For an owner who wants the entity work and ongoing bookkeeping from one company, ZenBusiness Money Pro is the fit.

For a growing business, keep receipts, separation and the monthly review, and hand off reconciliation first, through Bench's hourly option or Bookkeeper360. For a business with employees, hand off payroll records next, since the 4-year and 3-year clocks both apply. For tax prep, most owners hand it off regardless of what else they keep.

Sources

This is general information rather than legal, tax or accounting advice, and requirements vary and change.