Top Online Bookkeeping Services
- Best for a Variety of Businesses: 1-800Accountant
- Best for Internal Integration: QuickBooks Live
- Best Mobile App: Bookkeeper360
What Is an Online Bookkeeping Service?
Online bookkeeping services connect you with a bookkeeper or accountant to assist you with managing your business’ finances. This professional can handle a variety of tasks, including:
- Tracking expenses
- Reconciling accounts
- Generating financial reports
- Filing taxes
Usually, online services are more affordable than finding a local bookkeeper or accountant. However, they give you the same advantages, including cutting out administrative work and preventing potential errors.
How Much Do Online Bookkeeping Services Cost?
Pricing for online bookkeeping services works similarly to pricing for software. There are usually several plan tiers that increase in price and functionality. To give you more details, here is how much the providers in our review cost:
| Provider | Starting Cost | Free Consultation |
| 1-800Accountant | $179 per month | ✅ |
| QuickBooks Live | $300 per month | ✅ |
| Bookkeeper360 | $49 per month plus $125 per hourly support | ✅ |
How To Choose an Online Bookkeeping Service
During our research process, we surveyed 200 professionals who have used accounting software and/or services. Below are the features they deemed as the most important to consider as you choose a provider.
Standalone vs. Add-On
A standalone bookkeeping service operates independently of any accounting software. They use either a portal or email to send documents and other updates to you. In contrast, some accounting software providers offer an add-on service where a bookkeeper works alongside you and your software.
Standalone services work well if you aren’t experienced with accounting and want to be hands-off. If you already have accounting software or want more visibility into your finances, an add-on may be better for you.
Services
The accounting help you receive varies based on the provider and plan. Below is a list of common services. Take a look to determine which ones you want.
- Financial reporting: You should receive regular updates from your bookkeeper on the state of your finances. These can come in the form of emails, meetings or even documents. Having basic information on the financial health of your company can help you make more informed decisions on how to allocate funds.
- Transaction categorization: As funds come in and out, your bookkeeper categorizes them so that you can keep track of what they’re for. For example, maybe you have categories for office supplies, travel and software subscriptions.
- Bank reconciliation: Bank reconciliation is when you connect your bank account to your financial records. The idea is to compare them to ensure that all incoming and outgoing funds are accounted for.
- Cleanup accounting: If you have been handling bookkeeping and accounting yourself up until now, you may have made errors in the past. Cleanup services fix those errors so that your finances can get back on track. Cleanup usually happens within the first month of working with an online bookkeeping provider, as they need your finances to be in order to do their job.
- Tax support: This is a broad category that can include both tax guidance and tax filing. Maybe your accountant provides you with guidance on how to file your taxes but leaves it up to you to actually do so. Or, maybe they file on your behalf.
- Payroll processing: As your accountant already has their hands in your accounts, they can help you pay your employees. Outsourcing payroll can ensure timeliness, accuracy and tax compliance.
Accounting Method
There are two main types of accounting: cash and accrual. Cash accounting logs revenue as soon as you have the cash in hand. On the other hand, accrual accounting recognizes it as soon as you earn it, which could be before you actually receive it.
Whichever method you use, you want to choose an online bookkeeping service that can continue with it. Using different accounting methods can lead to discrepancies, affecting the accuracy of your financial records.
Customer Support
The quality of customer support is difficult to know before you start working with a provider. However, see if you can find information on the provider’s website about what onboarding looks like and how frequent check-ins are after that.
Onboarding should involve a few meetings where you sit down with your accountant to explain the current state of your finances and pass everything over to them. This is where they would do cleanup if that’s part of the services you selected. After that, you want regular check-ins, maybe monthly or quarterly, where they report on how everything is going. If you have questions between that time, you should be able to reach them via email or phone.
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are one way to get insights on a provider’s customer support from real clients. You can also use them to get a sense of the quality of the service (e.g., are they using qualified bookkeepers and accountants, do they make errors, do they perform the services you paid for).
The Bottom Line
Using online bookkeeping services hands over your finances to qualified accountants and bookkeepers to manage. As opposed to using accounting software and doing it yourself, you cut down on administrative work and the potential for errors.
If these services are of interest to you, we recommend looking into 1-800Accountant, QuickBooks Live and Bookkeeper360. QuickBooks Live is an add-on to the QuickBooks Online software, while 1-800Accountant and Bookkeeper360 solely provide bookkeeping services. 1-800Accountant offers variety with several services, plans and price points, and Bookkeeper360 excels at transparency, giving you a mobile app to keep track of your finances.
Frequently Asked Questions About Online Bookkeeping Services
Some accounting software has features for you to carry out basic bookkeeping tasks yourself, such as organizing expenses. However, bookkeeping services where a bookkeeper handles these tasks for you are not included with accounting software. If they’re available, they would be an add-on that you pay extra for.
Bookkeepers primarily focus on recording financial transactions and maintaining accurate financial records, while accountants analyze financial data, prepare financial statements and provide financial advice.
Yes, you can be your own bookkeeper. Taking a training class can teach you what you need to know about bookkeeping to minimize potential errors.
Bookkeepers can handle the organization and recording of financial records, but they aren’t usually certified to prepare and file taxes.
Methodology
We at the MarketWatch Guides team spent over 100 hours researching and testing 15 accounting software providers. We looked at all-in-one tools, such as QuickBooks, as well as specific tools for mileage tracking and expense management.
We conducted a survey in 2024 of 200 professionals who were currently using accounting software or had used accounting software within the past year. We analyzed the results of this survey to determine the following rating criteria:
- Reputation and Reviews (15%)
- Features (63%)
- Pricing (10%)
- User Experience (7%)
- Customer Support (5%)
Visit the full accounting methodology page for more details on our rating system.
If you have feedback or questions about this article, please email the MarketWatch Guides team at editors@marketwatchguides.