- Add about a third to the salary. A $57,500 bookkeeper costs about $76,800 a year: $6,400 a month, or about $37 for every hour they are paid for.
- The empty seat costs you too. Median time to fill an accounting role is about 90 days, and the work does not wait.
- The biggest lever is not the salary. It is how many of the posted hours really need a person.
What bookkeepers are paid
We read 125 US bookkeeper postings in full in September 2026; 101 of them stated pay. The median was $57,500. Half of them paid between $48,880 and $67,600 a year. Other finance seats, from the same read:
Your posting's number is the starting point, not the cost. Everything below sits on top of it.
The line-by-line math
Take the bookkeeper median, $57,500. Here is what the seat costs the business in a year.
A $57,500 bookkeeper, loaded
Each line rounded to the nearest $100. The same rule as our seat cost calculator.
Where each line comes from
- Payroll taxes, 10.7%. The costs the law requires: your share of Social Security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%), plus unemployment insurance and workers' comp. See employer payroll tax.
- Benefits and insurance, 23.0%. Paid leave, bonuses, health, retirement and insurance. The average for companies with 1 to 49 workers; yours may be higher or lower.
Both shares come from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of employer costs (June 2025, private companies with 1 to 49 workers).
The same math for other finance seats
| Seat | Median posted pay | Loaded, a year | A month | An hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bookkeeper | $57,500 | $76,800 | $6,400 | $37 |
| Staff accountant | $67,500 | $90,300 | $7,525 | $43 |
| AP, AR or payroll | $57,494 | $76,800 | $6,400 | $37 |
| Controller | $125,000 | $167,100 | $13,925 | $80 |
What you pay for each hour of real work
$76,800 over a 2,080-hour year is about $37 an hour. That rate applies to every hour in the seat, including the hours spent on work software can do.
Same seat, sorted by the work
Say 20 of the 40 posted hours a week are routine: matching bank lines, entering bills, sending invoices. The other 20 need a person: the close, the odd items, your questions.
An illustration, not a quote. Your split comes from the duties in your own posting.
A posting prices every hour at the rate of its hardest one. Sorting the duties is how you stop doing that. Which tasks software can do today walks through the sort.
The cost nobody budgets: the empty seat
Median time to fill an accounting role is about 90 days. For that quarter, close, payroll and collections land on someone who already has a job. The work does not stop because the seat is empty. It gets done late, or by the most expensive person in the room, often the owner.
That is why time matters as much as salary. A seat filled within the month saves you most of a quarter of catch-up. See time to fill.
How to bring the number down without paying anyone less
Four rules. Sort your posting duty by duty and apply them in order.
- What an agent can do, the agent does.The routine work gets done at software cost, not at a wage, and the same day.
- What needs a person, a person does.Your person spends their hours on the parts that need a person, so you can afford a better one.
- If that leaves fewer hours, the seat is part time.Freed hours are yours: point the person at work that was not getting done, or pay for fewer hours.
- If nothing needs the building, the seat is remote.You hire from everywhere, not from your commute radius. Does your job need to be on-site?
Questions owners ask
Is 23% right for my benefits?
It is the average for companies with 1 to 49 workers, not yours. With no health plan it is lower; a rich plan pushes it higher. The calculator lets you put in your own percentage.
Do I pay payroll tax on a contractor?
No. You pay a contractor's invoice and they pay their own taxes. The catch: the IRS decides who counts as a contractor by how the work is controlled, not by what the contract says. A bookkeeper who works your hours, in your systems, under your direction may count as an employee. See W-2 employee or 1099 contractor.
What about a part-time bookkeeper?
Scale the pay and the payroll tax to the hours. Benefits often shrink for part-time staff. The time to fill does not shrink with the hours. 22 of the 125 bookkeeper postings we read were part time.
Does the loaded cost include software, recruiting or my tax preparer?
No. Software licences, a recruiter's fee, payroll service fees and your tax preparer's bill sit outside this number on both sides of any comparison. If you pay a recruiter 20% of salary up front, your real number is higher.
Put your own posting through the same math.
Type the salary from your posting. See the loaded cost a year, a month and an hour, and what each hour of real work costs once routine hours come out.
Sources: pay from our full read of 125 bookkeeper postings (Sept 2026; median of each posting's stated band, hourly bands at 2,080 hours). Loaded-cost shares from the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey (June 2025, private companies with 1 to 49 workers), as on our calculator. Payroll tax rates from IRS Publication 15. Key terms: