The Bookkeeping Business

How these numbers were built: industry size and establishment counts come from the U.S. Census Bureau (County Business Patterns and SUSB for NAICS 5412, Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping & Payroll Services); bookkeeper employment and wages come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS, SOC 43-3031); the software, certification, and referral context comes from Intuit’s QuickBooks ProAdvisor program as an industry anchor; financing terms and the size standard come from the SBA; and cross-industry survival rates come from the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics. Every source below links to the underlying public material so you can check any figure yourself. These are starting assumptions; the moment you enter a real practice’s revenue, team size, utilization, and labor costs, your numbers should replace ours. The opening kit prices each item from retailer, insurer and cost-guide pages checked in October 2026; bookkeeper pay and the outlook come from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook; client fees from NerdWallet’s pricing survey; resale multiples from Main Street Index listing data and Truforte’s practice guidance; and SBA down payment rules from SOP 50 10 8 as summarized by Live Oak Bank. Figures are current as of 2025-2026 and refreshed as the sources update.

Labor benchmarks anchor to BLS bookkeeping-clerk wage data and the tooling context already cited for this model (Intuit QuickBooks ProAdvisor). Utilization, retainer-mix, and clients-per-seat figures are estimated from general professional-services staffing norms, since no public dataset breaks small independent bookkeeping practices down to that level of detail; treat them as directional starting assumptions, not audited benchmarks.