Ever called a bookkeeper, asked what they charge, and heard “well, it depends”?
It does depend. A little.
But you should still get a real number before you book a call. So here’s ours.
At MBC Canada, bookkeeping for a BC trades or construction business starts at $800 a month.
That’s for a business that’s current on its books and wants them kept that way. Clean monthly books, your accounts reconciled, reports you can actually read, and your GST filed on time.
If there’s more going on in your books, the number goes up from there. Below is exactly what decides that, so you can guess your own number before we ever talk.
What do you get for $800 a month?
Here’s what’s in our monthly bookkeeping:
- Monthly bookkeeping. Every bank account and credit card reconciled, and every transaction recorded and categorized.
- Monthly financial reports. An income statement and a balance sheet, every month, in plain English.
- GST filed every quarter. Prepared, filed and on time.
- Paperless receipts. Your crew snaps a photo of a receipt in MBCapture, our own app, and it lands in your books.
- One dedicated bookkeeper. Someone on our own team, the same person all year, so you never re-explain your business.
That’s the base. For a lot of small contractors, it’s all they need.
Why doesn’t every business pay the same?
Because some books take a few hours a month and some take days.
Honestly, any bookkeeper who quotes you a flat price without asking questions is guessing. Here’s what actually drives the work:
- How far behind you are. Current books are one thing. Eighteen months of shoebox receipts is another.
- How many accounts you run. Every bank account and credit card gets reconciled every month. Four of them take more time than one.
- How many transactions you have. A contractor with ten big invoices a month and a contractor with three hundred small purchases are not the same file.
- Payroll. Paying a crew every two weeks means source deductions, remittances, T4s and ROEs. That’s real work.
- Job costing. If you want to see the profit on every job, every cost has to land on the right job.
- Subcontractors. More subs means more bills to code, more WorkSafeBC clearance letters to keep, and more T5018 slips at year-end.
So that’s why our bookkeeping starts at $800 instead of stopping there. Your number depends on your books, and we’ll tell you what it is before you sign anything.
Why does bookkeeping for a BC contractor take more work?
Construction books carry more moving parts than most. And a few of them are specific to BC.
Holdbacks. Under BC’s Builders Lien Act, the person paying on a contract has to hold back 10% of what’s owed. That money is earned but not in your bank yet. Your books have to show both.
WorkSafeBC. Your premiums have to match your payroll. And before you pay a sub, you want a clearance letter showing they’re registered and paying their premiums. If they aren’t, WorkSafeBC can come to you for the premiums on the work they did for you.
T5018 slips. If more than half your business income comes from construction, CRA wants you to report what you paid each subcontractor. That’s only easy if every sub payment was recorded right all year.
Progress billing. You bill in stages as the job moves. Every invoice has to tie back to the right job and the right stage.
Receipts from the truck. Fuel, the supply run at 6 am, the part you grabbed on the way to site. Each one carries GST you can claim back, but only if the receipt makes it into the books.
None of this is hard once it’s set up. But it’s work, every month. And it’s why trades and construction is our specialty: you’re not paying us to learn what a holdback is.
What if your books are behind?
Then there’s a catch-up before the monthly work starts.
On our monthly bookkeeping, catch-up isn’t in the monthly price. We look at how far back it goes and what shape your records are in, then give you a number before any work starts.
If you’d rather commit for a year, The Clean Books Year includes up to 12 months of catch-up.
Either way, behind isn’t a reason to wait. It’s a reason to call. The longer it sits, the bigger it gets.
Is a bookkeeper worth the cost for a small contractor?
Here’s the honest answer: not always.
If you’ve got a handful of transactions a month, no crew, and you’re current, doing your own books is fine. Keep at it. Seriously.
But messy books cost money too. You just never get an invoice for it.
- Late GST returns. CRA’s late-filing penalty is 1% of what you owe, plus another quarter of that 1% for every full month you’re late, for up to 12 months. And interest runs on top.
- Lost receipts. Every receipt that never makes it into the books is GST you paid and never claimed back.
- Bad quotes. If you don’t know what your last job really cost, you’re guessing on the next one.
Sometimes the bill does show up, though. One of our trades clients got a GST/HST audit letter from CRA saying he owed $20,000.
We took the file, produced the books, the backup and the GST/HST workings, and dealt with CRA directly on his behalf. He stayed on the tools the whole time.
He paid zero. Not a dollar of the $20,000.
Real clients, not typical of every business.
The time to hand them off is when they start slipping. Or when you can’t answer one simple question: which jobs made money last month?
How do you compare bookkeeping quotes?
Compare what’s included, not just the monthly number. Before you sign with anyone, us included, ask:
- Is it a flat monthly fee, or billed by the hour?
- Is GST filing included?
- Is payroll included, and for how many people?
- Can they track profit by job, or do your expenses just get sorted into categories?
- Is catch-up included, quoted up front, or billed hourly as it goes?
- Is there a setup fee or a minimum term?
- Will the same person handle your books every month?
- Do they know holdbacks, WorkSafeBC and T5018 slips?
If two quotes look far apart, those answers usually explain why.
And look, if you already have a bookkeeper you trust who handles all of that, keep them. That relationship makes total sense. If you want people who specialize in BC trades and construction, that’s us.
Want your actual number?
Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll look at where your books are, tell you what we’d do first, and give you a real price. No pressure.
Want to see everything we do first? It’s all on our services page.
We take three new clients a month.