Most accounting and bookkeeping companies charge by the hour. While this may be adequate for larger clientele, smaller business owners simply don’t have the financial flexibility to easily absorb large swings in basic business costs. In fact, this is why many small business owners either try to do the bookkeeping themselves, or forego the whole process until tax time, whereupon they just hand everything over to an outside bookkeeper to figure out.

Unfortunately, when you have an outside stranger work on your financial statements, this lack of familiarity can become a detriment to your business. Many things can become improperly classified or even get missed altogether because the person doing the books doesn’t understand the business.

By The Book is an attempt to bridge the gap between affordability and accurate & timely financial statements: our rates are flat rates. We do not charge by the hour, we charge a flat rate for specific services.

Basic Package: Accounting Essentials, $400/mo

• Financial transaction records are downloaded from your bank accounts and other online services on a weekly basis.
• These records are correlated with physical receipts that are collected once a week, and are then properly classified while the information is still fresh.
• Weekly reports for the week in question are provided within 5 business days after the end of that week. These reports include:
  • Basic financial statements: Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flows, and others. These will be both short-term as well as quarterly statements.
  • Bills due within the next 7, 14 and 21 days.
  • Overdue bills
• Client billing, including delivery (if by eMail) and postage (if by snail mail).
• Submission of orders to vendors, including payment by credit card or cheque (more info on our Requirements page).
• Government remittances (PST, GST, etc.).

Package Enhancement: Payroll, $200/mo

• Payroll services for up to 20 employees. Can be biweekly or bimonthly.
• Worker’s Compensation remittances.
• Records of employment & T4 forms.

Package Enhancement: Job Tracking & Process Costing (A.K.A. Cost Accounting), $200/mo

• Job Tracking for up to four projects at a time.
• Process Costing on a single clearly defined process.
• Either of these will allow you to truly determine if a service or product that your company provides is profitable, and how to improve its profitability.