Bookkeeper360 Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives 2023
Tim is a Certified QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) Pro, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and CPA with 25 years of experience. He brings his expertise to Fit Small Business’s accounting content.
Danielle is a writer for the Finance division of Fit Small Business. She has owned a bookkeeping and payroll service that specializes in small business, for over twenty years.
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
Founded in 2012, Bookkeeper360 is a financial technology firm that offers accounting and cloud-based bookkeeping and business advisory services. As a Xero Platinum partner, Bookkeeper360 provides seamless integration with Xero’s cloud-based accounting software. For cash-basis accounting, pricing starts at $399 per month for companies with up to $20,000 in monthly expenses. For accrual-basis accounting, pricing starts at $549 per month for companies with up to $20,000 in monthly expenses.
Overall Score:
3.82 / 5
Pros
- Free consultations
- Compatible with Xero and QuickBooks Online
- Wide range of services and tailored solutions
- No contract required; cancel anytime
- Simple setup that generally takes one to two weeks
Cons
- Not as affordable as other online bookkeeper options
- Can’t integrate with FreshBooks
- Although starting prices for each service are listed online, pricing is largely quote-based
- Pay-as-you-go plan requires a $500 initial retainer
When To Use Bookkeeper360
- Businesses that use Xero: We recommend Bookkeeper360 as the best online bookkeeping service for Xero users because of its scalability and seamless integration with Xero accounts.
- Startups and growing businesses: It has scalable and customizable solutions and even offers add-on services such as payroll and human resources (HR) solutions, tax filing, and chief financial officer (CFO) advisory.
- Businesses that use accrual-based accounting: Accrual accounting is available with Bookkeeper360, which includes deferred revenue, inventory, and accrued expenses.
When To Use an Alternative
- Businesses that use FreshBooks: Bookkeeper360 integrates with QuickBooks Online and Xero. So, if you’re a FreshBooks user, check out Bench for online bookkeeping assistance.
- Businesses that need assistance with sales tax returns: Bookkeeper360’s provides tax services for income tax compliance. But if you also need assistance with sales taxes, we recommend Bookkeeper.com instead.
- Businesses that want to track income and expenses at an affordable price: If you’d like a transparent price that you can depend on and isn’t determined by numerous variables, then Merritt Bookkeeping is a good option.
If you’re unsure whether Bookkeeper360 is the right assisted bookkeeping service for you, check out our guide on the best online bookkeeping services for more choices.
Bookkeeper360 Alternatives
Monthly Pricing | Dedicated Bookkeeper | Catch-up Bookkeeping | Bill Pay | Invoicing | Bank Reconciliation | Payroll Integration | Tax Filing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Starts at $200 | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
 | Starts at $299 | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
 | Starts at $395 | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
 | Starts at $399 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| $190 | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
 | Starts at $499 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
 | Starts at $375 | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
For detailed comparisons, you can read our guides on QuickBooks Live vs Bookkeeper360 and Bench vs Bookkeeper360.
Bookkeeper360 Deciding Factors
Supported Bookkeeping Software | QuickBooks Online and Xero |
Pricing |
|
Free Trial | ✕ |
Assigned a Personal Bookkeeper? | ✓ |
Bookkeeper Communications | Telephone, video meeting, and live chat |
Monthly Account Reconciliations & Financial Statements | ✓ |
Back-office Services, Such as Customer Invoicing & Bill Pay | Separate plan starting at $99 per month |
Full Service Payroll | Separate plan starting at $45 per month |
Tax & Consulting Services | Separate plan starting at $800 per filing for businesses |
Bookkeeper360 New Feature 2023
Bookkeeper360 users can now access Marketplace. This section shows you all third-party software products that can integrate with Bookkeeper360. You can access apps in the following categories: lending, payroll, payments, ecommerce, sales tax, crypto, and business services.
The new Bookkeeper360 Marketplace is a place where you can connect third-party apps that can integrate with Bookkeeper360 services. New customers can get exclusive discounts from these services. Take note that not all third-party integrations offer special discounts and offers.
Bookkeeper360 is an excellent software and bookkeeping service in terms of service quality. However, it scored low in pricing because it’s quite expensive compared to competitors, and we believe that very small businesses with limited budgets might find its services expensive. It offers several solutions for business owners and, because of the prices of its different services, the total cost will vary.
Below are the costs for the three subscription plans for core bookkeeping services. Any services beyond bookkeeping, such as payroll, HR, taxes, or keeping your books up-to-date, are available at an additional cost.
Up to $20,000 in Monthly Expenses
Frequency | Cash | Accrual |
|---|---|---|
Pay-as-You-Go | $125 per hour of support | |
Monthly | $399 per month, including support | $549 per month, including support |
Weekly | $549 per month, including support | $749 per month, including support |
Up to $35,000 in Monthly Expenses
Frequency | Cash | Accrual |
|---|---|---|
Pay-as-You-Go | $125 per hour of support | |
Monthly | $499 per month, including support | $649 per month, including support |
Weekly | $649 per month, including support | $849 per month, including support |
Up to $50,000 in Monthly Expenses
Frequency | Cash | Accrual |
|---|---|---|
Pay-as-You-Go | $125 per hour of support | |
Monthly | $599 per month, including support | $749 per month, including support |
Weekly | $749 per month, including support | $949 per month, including support |
Up to $65,000 in Monthly Expenses
Frequency | Cash | Accrual |
|---|---|---|
Pay-as-You-Go | $125 per hour of support | |
Monthly | $699 per month, including support | $849 per month, including support |
Weekly | $849 per month, including support | $1,049 per month, including support |
Up to $100,000 in Monthly Expenses
Frequency | Cash | Accrual |
|---|---|---|
Pay-as-You-Go | $125 per hour of support | |
Monthly | $899 per month, including support | $1,049 per month, including support |
Weekly | $1,049 per month, including support | $1,249 per month, including support |
More Than $100,000 in Monthly Expenses
Frequency | Cash | Accrual |
|---|---|---|
Pay-as-You-Go | $125 per hour of support | |
Monthly | Custom priced | Custom priced |
Weekly | Custom priced | Custom priced |
Bookkeeper360 App
Aside from bookkeeping services, Bookkeeper360 offers a web-based app that summarizes your data from QuickBooks or Xero and transforms it into visually appealing charts and graphs. At $19 per month, you can keep track of your business performance directly from the app after integrating it with your QuickBooks Online or Xero account. If you get any plan from Bookkeeper360, the app is included in the package.
Other Services
- CFO advisory: This starts at $1,000 per quarter and includes business planning, profit, cost, margin analysis, coaching, corporate governance, capital strategies, and financial projections and forecasting.
- Tax: This starts at $800 per filing for businesses and $300 per filing for individuals. It includes business and individual taxation, sales taxation, 401(k) planning, tax planning, and tax credits.
- Payroll and HR: This starts at $46 per month and includes full-service filings, paid time off (PTO) and time tracking, workers’ compensation insurance, W-2s and 1099s, medical benefits, direct deposits, and department mapping.
- Back office: This starts at $150 per month and includes invoicing and billings, inventory management, expense reimbursement, payments, collections, point-of-sale (POS) integrations, and enterprise resource planning (ERP).
Upon enrollment, you’ll be assigned a dedicated bookkeeper who will work with you to determine the best strategy for your business. Bookkeeper360 assigns United States-based bookkeepers to keep your books up to date. Its bookkeepers are employees, not contractors or freelancers. If you need help, you can call them via phone or set up unlimited meetings with your dedicated bookkeeper.
You can also reach out to your dedicated adviser through the Tasks section, which eliminates the need to email your bookkeeper if you have questions. Instead, you can create a task for your bookkeeper, set a due date, and wait for them to get back to you. This feature is comfortable because the communication happens within the Bookkeeper360 interface.
When you sign up for Bookkeeper360, you’ll be assigned a dedicated bookkeeper who will meet with you over the phone to create a service strategy that meets your needs. That includes determining the frequency of the service and deciding whether you require services in addition to bookkeeping, such as payroll and HR or tax filing. Then, you’ll connect Bookkeeper360 to your accounting system—either QuickBooks or Xero—and work online collaboratively with your bookkeeper to manage your finances.
If you need to reach your bookkeeper, you can do so at any time via email, live chat, or phone. Meetings to review financial reports are scheduled on a monthly basis and are conducted by phone. The bookkeeper will also grant you access to their screen so that you can view your books.
Bookkeeper360 allows the accrual basis of accounting with its bookkeeping service. If you’re using the cash basis, Bookkeeping360 will handle the accruals and deferrals for you. The dedicated bookkeeper will meet you monthly to fix your books and generate monthly reports. Excluded in the bookkeeping service would be customer invoicing, inventory management, and vendor billing because these fall under a separate product called Back-office services.
Business Performance Dashboard
If you’re using Xero or QuickBooks, both the desktop and mobile apps will connect to your account and provide information like scorecards and metrics. Using the app, you can keep track of business performance by looking at dashboards and auto-generated reports. You can view profit and loss details, revenues, direct costs, and net income. Yearly comparisons are also available.
Trailing 12 Months Profit and Loss Dashboard
Metrics
If you want a more detailed view of business performance, you can switch to the Metrics view to year-over-year data for revenue and common size amounts for gross profit, net income, and payroll. You can also check your working capital and debt-to-equity ratio to measure your business’ short-term and overall liquidity.
Bookkeeper360 Metrics
The interactive charts in Bookkeeper360 show a blue and gray line. The blue line represents current year data, while the gray line represents previous year’s data. You can use this year-over-year comparison to spot seasonality in revenues and expenses. You can also immediately abnormal fluctuations in numbers and investigate the reason for these fluctuations further.
Trends
Trends show you business revenues, direct costs, and operating expenses along its composition. This section of Bookkeeper360 can provide you with insights regarding composition of revenues and cost behavior.
Column Chart Showing the Composition of Revenues
The chart above shows you information about revenue. It shows that revenue sometimes increases, decreases, peaks, or plummets. But more importantly, it shows you its composition. For instance, pay attention to syndication revenue (yellow columns). This revenue source is not present in all months while merchandise licensing is consistent in almost all months. As a business owner, you can use this chart to analyze revenue not just as a whole but in different components.
Column Chart Showing Composition of Direct Costs
The direct cost column chart above is another chart that you’ll find very useful in costing. What we like about this chart is that you can see the cost behavior of different cost drivers in the business. For instance, we see consistent labor costs throughout the year except in July. Hence, we can say that labor costs are fixed costs. Moreover, costs arising from Scooby Snacks can be a mixed cost because it has fixed and variable components. You can interpret this chart in many different ways, and it can aid you in decision-making.
Column Chart Showing Operating Expenses
In cost and management accounting, operating expenses are mostly fixed costs and this cost behavior is evident in the sample chart above. You can use this chart to analyze the behavior of your business’ operating expenses. It isn’t in all cases that operating expenses are fixed and the chart from Bookkeeper360 can reveal fluctuations in expenses. For example, there is a significant increase in Other Expenses in March 2022 and Advertising Expenses in April 2022.
Payroll & HR
The payroll team will process payroll for both employees and contractors and provide full-service support with health benefits, direct deposit setup, W-2s, and 1099s. Bookkeeper360 also integrates with other payroll providers like Gusto and ADP. If you decide to get this service, it will only take less than two weeks to set up.
Cash Management
The Bookkeeper360 app can also provide cash management insights using illustrative charts. The charts will show your cash inflows and outflows for the past 12 months, past 24 months, last calendar year, last two calendar years, and last three calendar years. It also shows cash insights by computing your net cash after deducting credit card liabilities.
Cash Analyzer
The cash analyzer above shows your cash position per month. You can also change it per quarter and present it as trailing 12 months, trailing 24 months, or previous calendar years. The columns represent the volume of cash inflows and outflows while the line shows your net cash position. By using this chart, you can assess monthly cash needs based on expected cash inflows and outflows.
Cash Insights
The cash runway, also called cash burn rate, shows the estimated number of months until cash runs out. In the example above, the cash burn rate is 13 months, assuming the average monthly cash outflow remains the same.
Bookkeeper360 offers tax services that include individual or business income tax filings, local tax filings, 1099 reporting, and overall tax planning and compliance. Included in the tax services is tax advisory, where you can consult your dedicated tax advisor for tax-related matters.
Aside from tax, the Bookkeeper360 team will work with you to analyze your financials and determine a strategy to manage and grow your business through the CFO advisory program. This separate service includes capital management and business coaching. With a CFO, you can optimize your business, minimize costs, and maximize profits through effective planning, organizing, and monitoring.
The CFO will help in determining and evaluating key performance indicators, performing profitability analysis, developing a growth strategy, and optimizing cash flow. If you’re planning to expand your business but need additional capital, the CFO will help you forecast the business’s financials, craft business plans, and determine the optimal capital structure.
Bookkeeper360 User Reviews
There are few Bookkeeper360 reviews from users. However, most scores are high. Since the software works best when integrated with QuickBooks and Xero, we took user scores from the app stores of these accounting software.
- QuickBooks App Store: 4.7 out of 5 based on around 20 reviews
- Xero App Store: 4.9 out of 5 based on about 30 reviews
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Does Bookkeeper360 offer catch-up bookkeeping?
Yes. It can update your books even if they’re way behind, but you have to tell your dedicated bookkeeper during the first meeting so that they know where to start.
Do I need to have accounting software installed before using Bookkeeper360?
Yes, you need to be a QuickBooks or Xero subscriber. Subscriptions to these accounting software are excluded from Bookkeeper360’s monthly fees.
What’s the difference between cash-basis and accrual-basis accounting?
Under cash-basis accounting, revenues and expenses are recorded when cash is paid or received. Meanwhile, accrual accounting records revenue and expenses when earned or incurred. Learn more in our cash- vs accrual-basis accounting method comparison, which also covers when to use each.
Bottom Line
Bookkeeper360 is an accounting solution designed to help businesses view financial data, streamline bookkeeping operations, and track goals on a unified platform. It allows business owners to create business and financial plans, conduct cost and margin analysis, generate income statements, and calculate sales taxes. Moreover, Bookkeeper360 integrates with two of our best small business accounting software, QuickBooks Online and Xero. The price is high, so we recommend Bookkeeper360 for startup and growing companies.
