Outsourced bookkeeper vs part-time local hire: the real arithmetic

The job posting says $28 an hour for 20 hours a week. That is $2,240 a month before you have paid a cent of payroll tax, bought a QuickBooks seat, or covered a single sick day. Run the full cost of a part-time local hire against a dedicated outsourced bookkeeper and the number on the posting stops being the number that matters.

Neither option is wrong. They solve different problems, and the arithmetic below is how you tell which one you actually have.

What a part-time local hire actually costs

Start with the wage, then add what the job posting doesn't mention.

• Base wage. $25–$35/hour is a realistic range for a competent part-time bookkeeper in most US markets. At 20 hours a week, that's roughly $2,000–$2,800 a month.
• Payroll taxes. Employer-side Social Security and Medicare (7.65%), plus federal and state unemployment insurance. Call it 8–10% on top of wages for most states.
• Software. A QuickBooks Online seat, plus whatever else the role touches — that's another $30–$80 a month if you're not already paying for it.
• Equipment and overhead. A workstation, if they're on-site. Negligible if remote, but rarely zero.
• PTO and sick time. Even a part-time employee typically accrues some, and covering the gap costs you nothing to write down and everything to actually experience the week they're out.
• Recruiting, again, when they leave. Bookkeeping is used as a stepping-stone role by a meaningful share of the people who take it part-time. When they take a full-time job elsewhere, you are back to a job posting, a stack of resumes, and a month or two of gap.

Add it up and a $2,240/month wage line typically lands closer to $2,700–$3,000 a month in real cost — before you count your own time spent managing, training, and eventually replacing the person.

What a dedicated outsourced bookkeeper costs

Standard placement is $2,500 a month for 40 hours a week of dedicated support, plus a one-time setup fee. That's it — the number does not grow with payroll tax, benefits, or a software seat, because those aren't separate line items you carry.

What's included that a part-time hire requires you to source yourself:

• A four-year finance or accounting degree and QuickBooks certification, verified before you ever see a resume.
• Role-specific skills testing — AR, AP, chart of accounts — so you're hiring against evidence, not a two-page resume and a gut feeling.
• Full-time coverage: 40 hours instead of 20, on US business hours in your time zone.
• A client portal with daily reports and live online/offline status, so you have real visibility without having to manage for it.
• The 30-Day Right-Fit Guarantee: if the operator isn't right in the first 30 days, we re-vet and place someone else at no additional cost, or you exit and we refund the wages you've paid plus a portion of the setup fee.

The comparison, side by side

The two rows that decide most of these calls are hours and what happens when it doesn't work. A part-time hire gives you half the coverage for close to the same real cost, and if they leave, you are starting the search over. An outsourced placement gives you double the hours at the sticker price, and a defined path if the fit is wrong instead of an open-ended re-hire.

When part-time is genuinely the right call

If your bookkeeping is 8–10 hours a week and stays there — a small operation with low transaction volume, no payroll to run, no AP/AR to chase — a part-time local hire at fewer hours than 20 can be the simpler, cheaper answer. Don't force a full-time placement onto work that isn't full-time; say so on the fit call and a legitimate answer is that you don't need one of our operators yet.

The mismatch to watch for is different: a business owner budgets for "20 hours a week, part-time," but the actual workload — reconciliation, AP, AR, reporting, payroll admin — is a 35–40 hour job being compressed into 20. That doesn't make the job smaller. It means either the books slip, or you're quietly doing the other 15–20 hours yourself, unpaid, on top of running the business.