CSI Accounting & Payroll Blog

Pricing Your Monthly Accounting Service: What CSI Considers to Be “Complexities”

Written by Brian Paulson | Dec 9, 2024 3:45:00 PM

As you browse our website and learn more about our pricing, you may find yourself wondering, “What on earth is an accounting complexity?”

Well, there’s a lot that goes into pricing a monthly accounting service, so we had to establish a system. A big part of this system involves applying a blanket term (complexities) to certain business scenarios. We’re about to tell you all about them!

At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve worked with small business accounting for nearly 60 years. That means we’ve established a pricing system with complexities – and gotten a lot of questions about it, including:

  • How does CSI price its monthly accounting service?
  • What are complexities? How do they influence the price?
  • How can I find a pricing estimate for CSI’s monthly accounting service?

How We Price Our Monthly Accounting Service

Our pricing for monthly accounting has two main factors: your accounting activity and complexities. As each one increases, so does the cost of the service. This is because more time and effort is required from our team.

Accounting Activity

Your accounting activity refers to the amount of activity that exists in your business bank accounts and business credit cards, which largely determines how much bookkeeping you will require. 

Complexities

As mentioned in the introduction, “complexity” is a blanket term that refers to a variety of situations. We’re going to talk about specific examples of complexities in the next section, but for now, you just need to know that the term represents additional work or potential hurdles in processing your statements each month.

What Are Accounting Complexities?

Now let’s get into specific accounting complexities. They include:

  • Multiple business locations
  • Business locations in multiple states
  • Using accrual-basis accounting
  • Gas station industry
  • Sales tax management
  • Payroll with a company other than CSI
  • Multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and/or loans

Multiple Business Locations

If you have multiple business locations and want each location to have its own monthly Profit & Loss Statement, then it’s twice as much work for our accountants to create those statements each month. 

You may also want your expenses separated by location, which is an additional task for our accountants.

Business Locations in Multiple States

If you have an additional location and it’s in another state, there may be an additional tax return required.

Accrual-Basis Accounting

This means there is accounts payable (A/P), accounts receivable (A/R), and/or inventory on your Balance Sheet, requiring additional accounting adjustments.

Gas Station Industry

We still welcome the gas station industry because we have a lot of value to offer them, but they also require much more complex accounting.

Sales Tax Management

If you have sales tax requirements, it needs to be filed with the State on a monthly or quarterly basis. This increases the complexity of what our accountants do by having them calculate the tax and work through the filing process.

Payroll With a Different Company

Having payroll with a different provider means our accountants have to go through the extra work of retrieving that data for your books each month. (If you don’t have payroll, then none of this would apply.)

On the other hand, if you bundle accounting and payroll with us, you can save an average of $105 per month! That’s a pretty good deal, and it saves our accountants a lot of effort since the data is under their roof.

Multiple Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, and/or Loans

To give you an accurate proposal, we’ll need your last few  months of bank statements for all business bank accounts and credit cards used for business expenses. This helps us confirm the accounting activity and accounts involved, since more accounts means more for your accountant to monitor and reconcile.

Get Your Pricing Estimate for Monthly Accounting

Our average accounting fee comes out to approximately $675 per month. However, depending on your activity and complexities, your fee can range from $500 to $1,000+ per month. This investment includes:

  • Monthly profit and loss statements
  • Monthly balance sheets
  • Monthly bank reconciliation
  • Business tax work
  • Sales tax filings (if applicable)
  • Audit representation
  • Unlimited one-off questions

With the factors above in mind, you may wonder what your fee would be. Luckily, you can get an estimated fee by answering a series of questions about your business via our new pricing calculator!

Schedule a Call to Get a Formal Quote!

Now that you know how we price our monthly accounting service, what complexities are, and how to get your pricing estimate for our service, are you ready to chat?

To see if we can be a good fit for your business, click the button below for a free consultation:

Not ready to talk? That’s okay! First, learn more about what it’s like to work with CSI by clicking the image below: