Bookkeeper Fees in Adelaide (2026)

• Transactions and accounts. Every bank feed, credit card and merchant account is another set of lines to match each month, so a cafe taking card payments all day costs more to keep than a consultant who raises a handful of invoices. Count last quarter's transactions and list every account before you ask for a price. Bank reconciliations are not a tax agent service under Tax Practitioners Board rules, so any competent bookkeeper can do them.
• Staff and Single Touch Payroll. The TPB classes a payroll service that interprets tax law as a BAS service, and that takes in setting up or reporting through Single Touch Payroll software. So whoever runs your wages for a fee needs to hold BAS or tax agent registration. That registration and the checking involved sit behind the $930–$2,350 per month package, and each award, allowance and leave type you use adds to the work.
• How often you lodge BAS. The ATO makes monthly BAS compulsory for a business with GST turnover of $20 million or more, or one it has directed to report monthly. Below that, quarterly is the default, though a business can choose monthly, which the ATO says can mean smaller, more manageable payments. More statements means more preparation, so ask whether lodgement sits inside the monthly package or is invoiced each time a statement goes in.
• Months of backlog. A shoebox of receipts or a year of unreconciled bank feeds is billed as catch-up work, $470–$2,800 in our table, until the books are current. Most records have a 5-year keeping period under ATO rules, and a company's records must be held for 7 years under ASIC's requirement, so a bookkeeper rebuilding old months is also rebuilding records you are legally required to hold.
• Lender-ready records. More Greater Adelaide households carry a mortgage (37.1%) than across Australia (35%, ABS 2021 Census), and an owner who refinances or borrows for the business can be asked for financial reports. Government business guidance lists showing your financial position to banks or other lenders among the reasons to keep good records. If a loan application is coming, say so, because year-end reports may fall outside a basic package.
• Bookkeeper or BAS agent. Plenty of bookkeepers are not registered, and that is fine for data entry and reconciliations. Arriving at, reconciling or signing off the numbers that go on your BAS is different: that is a BAS service, and the TPB says charging for it without registration carries significant civil penalties. Even registered BAS agents are limited to part of what a tax agent may do, so ask who will prepare the annual return.

Engage a bookkeeper once you have GST registration, staff, or more than a few dozen transactions a month; a clean file also cuts your accountant's year-end fee.

A sole trader with a handful of monthly transactions can keep clean books in software and hand a reconciled file to an accountant at year end.