Bookkeeper Fees in Canberra (2026)

• Value of your own time. The median ACT household brings in $2,373 weekly (ABS 2021 Census), which means that for many owners an evening spent on data entry is expensive time. Set that against a bookkeeper at $50–$130 per hour. If you keep part of the work yourself, the piece worth handing over first is usually the one with rules attached, such as activity statement figures, which need a registered agent when someone else is paid to prepare them.
• Payroll and super. Employers are paying for more than a pay run. Applying tax law to wages, sending pay data through Single Touch Payroll and working out leave and withholding all sit on the Tax Practitioners Board's BAS services list, and a BAS agent can also calculate and report any shortfall in superannuation guarantee. Those duties are what the $1,100–$2,700 per month package covers, so check the staff numbers and pay cycles it was priced on.
• Companies and trusts. A business run through a company or trust usually means more ledgers, loan accounts between owner and entity, and year-end work for a tax agent. Company records carry a 7-year retention requirement from ASIC, longer than the 5-year ATO period for most records. Name every entity, bank account and card when requesting a quote, and ask whether the package has a cap on transactions and what a busy month over that cap costs.
• Quarterly or monthly BAS. Unless the ATO directs otherwise, a business turning over less than $20 million for GST purposes is on quarterly BAS, and it can opt into monthly reporting if it prefers smaller, more frequent payments. Monthly lodgement means three statements a quarter instead of one, and the package price should reflect that. Lodging through a registered agent can also bring extra time, according to the ATO.
• Records that have slipped. Rescue jobs ($540–$3,250) deal with months of unmatched bank lines, missing supplier bills and payroll that never reconciled. Records have to be in English or readily convertible, the ATO says, and the 5-year clock for most of them runs from whichever is later: when the record was made or when the transaction ended. A sound rescue quote lists the months to be rebuilt and what you need to supply.
• Registration status. Ask whether you are hiring a bookkeeper or a registered BAS agent. The TPB does not treat data entry that involves no tax-law judgement as a tax agent service, but completing activity statements for a client, or telling them which figures to include, is a BAS service. Should an unregistered preparer get your BAS wrong, the ATO may impose administrative penalties on you, with no access to the safe harbour protection that using a registered practitioner can give.

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.