Outsourced bookkeeping services, and when they beat hiring
The median bookkeeper in Canada earned $28.02 an hour over 2023-24, before your share of CPP and EI. This service starts at $99 CAD a month. Those are the two numbers the decision turns on, and both are published.
Outsourcing bookkeeping means buying a finished outcome instead of buying hours. You send receipts and invoices, and the records come back kept, with no employee to recruit, manage or make payroll contributions for. It suits owner-operated businesses with steady document volume. Plans start at $99 CAD a month with a 15-day free trial.
Same service, a different decision
Answer first: this page is about whether to outsource at all. If you have already decided, the other two pages are more use.
What the service does to your books is on bookkeeping services. How the work reaches us with no office visit is on online bookkeeping services. This page is the one before those: employ somebody, engage a firm by the hour, or buy the outcome at a fixed monthly price.
What outsourced bookkeeping actually includes
Answer first: you are buying an outcome rather than capacity. Nobody hands you a timesheet, and nobody hands you a list of transactions to categorize either.
The distinction matters because it decides who absorbs the variability. When you buy hours, a messy month costs more hours. When you employ somebody, a messy month is overtime or it slips. When you buy an outcome at a plan price, the plan is the ceiling, and the work of getting there is not your problem. What is included here is the full cycle: documents in, validated double-entry records out, sales tax separated, reconciliation against connected bank transactions, reports and tax figures your accountant can work from, and a human reviewer settling anything the software is not confident about.
| What you are deciding | Employing somebody | Outsourcing it |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | Capacity, measured in hours | An outcome, measured in finished records |
| What drives the cost | The salary band and the hours | The provider's fee basis. Here, document volume |
| On top of the wage | Your share of CPP and EI, up to $5,802.75 a year per employee (2026) | Nothing. The plan price is the price |
| A busy month | Overtime, or the work slips | Absorbed within the plan, or you move plan |
| When they leave | The context leaves with them | Not a person, so not an event |
| Recruiting and managing | Yours, including the cost of getting it wrong | Not yours |
What outsourcing costs against what hiring costs
Answer first: at the 2023-24 median Canadian bookkeeper wage, the $99 plan costs about three and a half hours of a bookkeeper's time a month, and the $399 plan about fourteen. Whether that is a good trade depends on your volume, and the figures below are all public so you can check the sum yourself.
The published wage
Over 2023-24, bookkeepers in Canada earned a median of $28.02 an hour, with the range running from $19.55 to $45.07. Job Bank's figure for NOC 12200, from the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey. It is a national median, so your province and the experience you need will move it.
What the wage leaves out
On 2026 CRA figures an employer also pays its own CPP at 5.95%, up to $4,230.45 a year per employee, and EI at 1.4 times the employee rate, up to $1,572.30. For 2026 that is up to $5,802.75 in employer contributions alone, before any salary, and the maxima change every year.
What this costs
$99 CAD a month on Starter, $199 on Growth, $399 on Pro, covering up to 150, 250 and 500 documents. No employer contributions, no contracts, cancel anytime.
| Plan | Price a month | Documents covered | Hours of a bookkeeper at the median wage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $99 CAD | Up to 150 documents | About 3.5 hours |
| Growth | $199 CAD | Up to 250 documents | About 7 hours |
| Pro | $399 CAD | Up to 500 documents | About 14 hours |
What that comparison is not. It compares what the two cost, not what they produce. A bookkeeper you employ sits in your business, learns its particular mess, answers the phone and does work this service does not do at all. We have no measurement of hours saved and no case study to offer you, so we are not going to imply one. What we can show you is both price tags and the arithmetic between them.
Sources: Job Bank, Bookkeeper wages in Canada (NOC 12200) · CRA, CPP contribution rates and maximums · CRA, EI premium rates and maximums. Every figure above is dated where it is used: the wage is a national median for the 2023-24 reference period, and the contribution maxima are 2026 and change annually. Check both against the sources before relying on them.
When to outsource bookkeeping, and when not to
Answer first: outsource when the work is routine and the volume is steady. Do not outsource when what you actually need is a person in the room, or something we do not sell.
Outsourcing is the right call when
The work is receipts, supplier bills, client invoices and bank reconciliation, month after month. Volume is steady enough to name a plan. You want your accountant starting year-end from finished records rather than a folder. And you would rather not manage anybody.
It is the wrong call when
You need payroll run, which we do not sell. You need returns filed, which we do not do. You need somebody physically present, or handling things well outside bookkeeping. Or your volume is genuinely tiny, in which case the base product at $29 CAD a month is the honest answer and this page is overselling you.
Outsourced bookkeeping without losing sight of your own books
Answer first: the records stay in your account, the history cannot be rewritten quietly, and access is something you granted rather than something you surrendered.
The real objection to outsourcing is not price, it is visibility. When somebody else keeps the books, you are trusting that what you are shown is what happened. Three things answer that here, and all three are properties of the system rather than promises about our conduct.
History cannot be edited
A posted entry is frozen. Correcting one means reversing it and posting a replacement, both numbered and both visible in your register. Nobody on our side can quietly change what last quarter said, which is exactly the risk you are taking when you hand the books to anyone.
The records are in your account
Not on our machine and not in a file we send you. If you stop, you are not negotiating for a copy of your own bookkeeping, and your accountant's access is something you granted and can withdraw.
We never hold your banking login
Bank connections run through Plaid, so your credentials never reach us and are not something we could hand over if asked. More on how that works on online bookkeeping services.
Questions about outsourcing it
Anything not here, email support and a person answers.
Is this cheaper than hiring a bookkeeper?
On price, yes, and by a wide margin: $99 to $399 CAD a month against a 2023-24 median wage of $28.02 an hour, plus up to $5,802.75 a year in employer CPP and EI at 2026 rates. On scope, no, they are not the same thing. An employee does work this service does not. The comparison above gives you both numbers rather than a verdict.
What do I still have to do myself?
Send the documents, and connect the bank once. That is the whole of it. You are not asked to categorize anything, approve entries, or answer queries about transactions you had forgotten about.
I already have a bookkeeper. Should I switch?
Not necessarily, and if the relationship works you probably should not. The clearer case is when you are outgrowing a spreadsheet, when the books are drifting between year-ends, or when you are about to hire for the work for the first time.
Can I outsource only part of the bookkeeping?
Yes. The base product does receipt and document categorization on its own, from $29 CAD a month for 100 documents, without the double-entry ledger or the reviewer. Plenty of people keep their own books and only want the sorting to stop being a job.
Is there a contract or a minimum term?
No contracts, and you can cancel at any time. The trial runs 15 days and takes no credit card, so you can see a real month of your own documents before committing to anything.
What happens to my records if I stop?
They are in your account, so they stay yours, and reports download whenever you want them. Outsourcing the work does not mean handing over custody of the books.
Canada and the United States
There is no service radius and no office anywhere. For the provincial detail, including which sales tax applies where, see bookkeeping services in Canada.
Test it against a real month before you decide
Fifteen days free, no credit card, no contract. Send the documents you would otherwise have handed to somebody and compare the result with what you are paying for now.
No credit card required.