Do I need a full-time or part-time bookkeeper?
Most small businesses don’t need a full-time bookkeeper. Unless you’re processing hundreds of transactions daily or running complex multi-entity operations, you’re paying for capacity you won’t use.
A full-time bookkeeper costs more than salary. Factor in payroll taxes, benefits, software licenses, equipment, training time, and management oversight. In Northwest Arkansas, you’re looking at $40,000 to $55,000 annually when you add everything up. For a business doing under $1 million in revenue, that’s a significant line item for a function that might only require 10 to 15 hours of actual work per week.
Part-time in-house can work but comes with its own challenges. You still handle hiring, payroll, and the inevitable gaps when someone calls in sick or quits. Finding someone reliable who only wants 15 hours weekly limits your candidate pool. And you’re responsible for keeping them trained on changing tax rules and software updates.
Transaction volume is a reasonable starting point for the decision. Under 200 to 300 monthly transactions with straightforward operations rarely justifies even part-time in-house staff. Between 300 and 800 transactions with moderate complexity might warrant part-time help or a more comprehensive outsourced arrangement. Once you’re consistently over 1,000 monthly transactions with inventory, job costing, or multiple locations, full-time starts making sense.
Complexity matters as much as volume. A construction contractor tracking job costs across 20 active projects has different needs than a service business with the same number of transactions. Payroll with multiple pay rates, inventory accounting, and progress billing all add workload that raw transaction counts don’t capture.
For most small businesses in Benton County and the surrounding area, outsourced monthly bookkeeping hits the right balance. You get professional work product without employee overhead. Books are reconciled, statements are prepared, and everything stays current. When tax season comes, your CPA gets clean records instead of a shoebox of receipts.
The question isn’t really full-time versus part-time. It’s whether your bookkeeping volume justifies having anyone on payroll at all. For most businesses under a few million in revenue, it doesn’t.
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