How much does bookkeeping cost in Canada?

The four ways Canadian businesses get their books done

1. Do it yourself with software: $25 to $70 / month

QuickBooks Online, Xero, Wave and similar tools typically run in this range for small-business tiers. The subscription is the small part: the real price is your time. If month-end takes you six evenings and your time is worth even $50 an hour, the “cheap” option quietly costs $600+ a month, plus the risk of miscategorized expenses that surface at tax time.

2. A freelance bookkeeper: commonly $25 to $60 / hour

For a typical small business, monthly engagements often land between $200 and $500 depending on transaction volume and whether payroll or GST/HST filings are included. Quality varies more here than in any other option: a great freelancer is the best value in the industry, and a bad one is expensive at any price.

3. A bookkeeping firm: commonly $300 to $800+ / month

Firms add process, coverage (nobody disappears on vacation with your books), and often deeper CRA experience. The trade-off is price and, sometimes, feeling like a small file in a big cabinet.

4. Hiring in-house: $45,000+ / year

A full-time bookkeeper makes sense at real transaction volume: think retail with daily sales, or multi-entity operations. Most businesses under that threshold are buying more capacity than they can use.

What actually drives the price

• Transaction volume: 50 transactions a month is a different job than 500
• The state of your books: cleanup of a neglected year is often billed separately, and should be
• Payroll, GST/HST filings, and multi-currency: each adds real work
• Reporting depth: data entry alone is cheaper than reports that tell you something

The cost nobody invoices: decisions made blind

The most expensive bookkeeping setup is the one that produces numbers nobody reads. If your books are technically done but you couldn't say whether margins moved last month, you're paying for record-keeping and getting none of the steering. The point of clean books isn't the CRA; it's knowing which way to turn the wheel.

Where Vela fits (and where we don't)

Vela's Harbor plan ($395/month) sits in the middle of this map: we turn your monthly transactions into a categorized, CRA-aware profit & loss summary with plain-English notes on what changed, reviewed by a person before it reaches you. We're not an accounting firm and we don't replace your CPA; we make sure that every month you actually understand your numbers. See a complete sample report before you spend a dollar.