How we price a month of books

Bookkeeping software is priced in more ways than a buyer can compare in an afternoon. Ledgers step on users and features. Tools that work inside QuickBooks Online or Xero charge their own fee, and the ledger is a second bill. Bookkeeping services price by your monthly expenses or your revenue. Some plans cap transactions or bank accounts.

So every listing here carries one figure: what it costs a month to keep one small business’s books, with the ledger the product still needs. We also show a busier month.

The standard month

We price the same business for every product.

• 100 bank and card transactions a month. The second figure uses 500. The JPMorgan Chase Institute’s small business study puts a typical small business near this level, and vendors size their first tiers there too.
• About $11,400 of expenses a month. The same study’s median business pays out $374 a day. Plans set by monthly expenses are priced at that band.
• About $139,000 of revenue a year, from the same study’s median daily inflow.
• One business, one user, a few bank and card accounts.

The cheapest plan that keeps the books

We take the cheapest public plan that can keep a full set of books for that month. A plan whose limits are below the month (too few transactions a year, too few accounts, an expense cap below $11,400) does not take part, and the listing says why.

The ledger is part of the month

A tool that works inside QuickBooks Online or Xero needs that ledger. We add the cheapest ledger plan the maker says it works with, at the ledger’s regular price, and show both parts. A buyer comparing a $129 add-on with a $65 ledger would otherwise compare the wrong numbers.

Regular prices only

First-months offers, free trials and coupons are left out. We price the month a business pays after the offer ends. Where a plan is sold only on a yearly contract, the figure is its monthly equivalent and the listing says it is billed yearly.

The tick

A tick beside a figure means we read that price on the maker’s own pricing page and quote it on the listing, with the page and the day we read it. An open tick means part of the month is not stated there. A product that publishes no price shows the words “Quote only” instead of a number.

What we do not do

Tick Mark Books compares software. It is not tax, legal or accounting advice. We say what a product does and what it costs, where the maker says so, and never what you should do with your books or your taxes.