Guides
Monthly Bookkeeping Retainer for Reconciliation-Only Clients
A monthly bookkeeping retainer for reconciliation-only clients runs about $150 to $900 per month in the US, priced by account count and transaction volume.
What to take away
- A reconciliation-only retainer in the US typically runs $150 to $900 per month, with most small businesses landing between $250 and $500.
- Price is driven by three thingshow many accounts you reconcile, how many transactions flow through them, and how clean the client keeps the records.
- A retainer that covers bank and credit card reconciliation does not cover cleanup of prior periods, sales tax filings, or payroll liability reconciliation unless you name those in the scope.
- The cheapest quote usually excludes the work that eats the most hours. Read the scope line before you compare two numbers.
What the range covers
Reconciliation-only means the client keeps their own books, or a prior bookkeeper does, and you tie the bank and credit card statements to the ledger each month. You are not doing data entry from scratch. You are matching what is already recorded to what the bank says happened, then clearing the difference.
That narrow scope is why the price sits well below a full-service monthly bookkeeping fee. A full-service retainer for a small US business often runs $400 to $1,500 per month. Reconciliation alone strips out invoicing, bill entry, payroll processing, and reporting, so the fee drops accordingly.
Line by line
The table below shows what a monthly reconciliation-only retainer line item looks like on an invoice. Figures are illustrative ranges drawn from common US market practice, not a survey.
| Invoice line | Typical monthly range |
|---|---|
| Bank account reconciliation (per account) | $40 to $120 |
| Credit card reconciliation (per card) | $35 to $100 |
| Merchant processor or payment platform tie-out | $30 to $90 |
| Loan or line-of-credit reconciliation | $25 to $75 |
| Month-end reconciliation summary and questions | $50 to $150 |
| Total retainer, typical small business | $150 to $900 |
A single-account sole proprietor with 60 transactions a month sits at the bottom of that range. A business with three bank accounts, four cards, and a payment processor sits at the top.
What moves the number
Three drivers account for most of the spread between quotes.
What Moves the Retainer Quote
Low end
- Account count
- One account
- Transaction volume
- 40 per account
- Record condition
- Clean ledger
- Software access
- Read-only feed
High end
- Account count
- Three accounts
- Transaction volume
- 400 per account
- Record condition
- Six-month cleanup
- Software access
- Manual back-and-forth
- Account count. Each additional bank or card account adds a fixed block of work every month, whether or not it is busy. A dormant account still needs a statement tied out.
- Transaction volume. A client with 400 transactions per account takes longer than one with 40, even with the same account count. Volume is the driver most often underestimated at the quoting stage.
- Record condition. If the client hands over a ledger with unexplained balances from six months back, you are doing cleanup, not reconciliation. Cleanup is priced per hour, not per month.
A fourth factor, software access, matters less than people expect. Read-only access to the client's accounting file and bank feed removes back-and-forth, but it does not change the underlying hour count much. The bookkeeping firm software and KPI guide covers which access settings save real time.
A retainer price is a promise about scope. If the scope line is vague, the price is a guess, and the client will test it.
What quotes leave out
Most reconciliation-only quotes exclude the same short list. Naming these exclusions in writing protects the fee.
Common Retainer Exclusions
- Catch-up reconciliation before start date
- Sales tax registration, filing, remittance
- Payroll liability reconciliation, quarterly returns
- 1099 preparation and filing
- Year-end adjusting entries, tax support
- Catch-up reconciliation for any month before the start date
- Sales tax registration, filing, and remittance
- Payroll liability reconciliation and quarterly return tie-out
- 1099 preparation and filing
- Year-end adjusting entries and tax return support
Payroll is the one clients assume is included. If your client runs W-2 staff, the payroll liability accounts need reconciling against filed returns. That is separate work with its own deadline pressure. The IRS explains employment tax deposits and reporting in its guidance on understanding employment taxes, which is the reference point for tying those liabilities back to the ledger.
If a client needs catch-up work before the retainer starts, price it as a one-time project. The bookkeeping firm services and packages guide walks through how to split one-time cleanup from recurring work without confusing the client.
Where people overspend
Buyers overspend in two directions.
Retainer or Cleanup First?
Is the ledger current and tied out?
Quote the monthly retainer
Price cleanup as a one-time project
They pay for accounts that do not need monthly attention. A savings account with two transactions a year can be reconciled quarterly inside the same retainer, and the fee should reflect that.
They also buy reconciliation when the real problem is record condition. A client whose ledger is three months behind does not need a monthly retainer yet. They need cleanup first, then a retainer. Selling the retainer into a broken file guarantees a fee review within two months.
On the firm side, the common overspend is underpricing the first three months to win the client. Onboarding months carry extra work: account setup, opening balance confirmation, and a first full tie-out. Some firms charge a setup fee of $150 to $400 to cover it. Others fold it into a higher first-month invoice.
Before you quote, confirm how the client's entity is taxed, because it changes which accounts need reconciling and how the owner's draws or distributions are recorded. The IRS overview of business structures is a quick reference for the entity differences that show up in a reconciliation file.
