Botkeeper 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 2015, Botkeeper is an automated computer-based service meant to replace manual labor at bookkeeping firms. The virtual bookkeeper supports your accounting practice through machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). It was developed to handle your bookkeeping with more accuracy and efficiency than a regular bookkeeper.
Botkeeper charges a platform fee starting at $1,000 per month plus $55 per client entity.
Botkeeper
What We Like
- Helps accountants service their clients better by reducing data entry
- Unlimited connections and transactions available
- Strong data security
What's Missing
- Compatible only with QuickBooks and Xero software
- No free trial
- $1,000 per month base platform fee
If you’re unsure whether assisted bookkeeping is right for you, read our guide to the best small business accounting software for great do-it-yourself (DIY) accounting software options.
Botkeeper Deciding Factors
Intended Users | Bookkeeping firms and large enterprises |
Supported Bookkeeping Software | |
Pricing | Starting at $1,000 per month for platform fee and $55 per month for each client entity |
Additional Cost for QuickBooks or Xero Software | ✓ |
Free Trial of Botkeeper | ✕ |
Assigned a Personal Bookkeeper? | ✓ |
Bookkeeper Communications | Telephone, email, and live chat |
Monthly Account Reconciliations and Financial Statements | ✓ |
Back-office Services (Customer invoicing, bill pay, etc.) | ✓ |
Full Service Payroll Available | ✕ |
Tax & Consulting Services Available | ✕ |
Botkeeper Alternatives
Best for: Businesses looking for assisted bookkeeping for QuickBooks Online | Best for: Businesses that need an affordable bookkeeping service | Best for: Businesses that want bookkeeping and other services like CFO advisory |
Service fee: Starts at $200 per month | Service fee: Flat fee of $190 per month | Service fee: Starts at $599 per month |
Botkeeper Pricing
Botkeeper doesn’t provide detailed pricing information but requires firms to pay both a platform fee and a per-client fee:
- Platform & Tools: Starting at $1,000 per month
- Client Entity Fee: Starting at $55 per month
Personal Bookkeeper
With Botkeeper, support is included with every plan. As soon as you sign up, you’ll be assigned a dedicated account manager who will review your business structure and help you migrate your entire bookkeeping framework to Botkeeper. They’ll also provide onboarding assistance and customization of essential system components.
Communication with account manager (Source: Botkeeper)
Once that has been completed, Botkeeper will hand your account over to your Bot Team, an expert team of experienced accountants. Your account manager acts as the primary contact, while your Bot Team supports your core bookkeeping processes.
Botkeeper also comes with multilevel specialized support to assist you with both bookkeeping and technical issues. You can email your assigned Botkeeper, and your questions will be answered typically within 24 hours of submission. Support can also be accessed via live chat and by phone.
Bookkeeping Services
In our evaluation of the best online bookkeeping services, we determined Botkeeper to be the best for accounting firms needing to outsource client bookkeeping. Its many valuable services include its mobile app ScanBot, the ability to provide multi-entity accounting, and unlimited custom reports.
However, while it has useful features, such as automated bookkeeping via ML and AI, it doesn’t provide full payroll services; instead, it has solely payroll administration.
Botkeeper has many features that distinguish it from other online bookkeeping services and accounting software.
Automated Bookkeeping
The machine learning (ML) engine and artificial intelligence (AI) facilitate automated bookkeeping, which includes comprehensive financial reports, account reconciliations, and categorization of transactions. The company’s team of specialists counter-checks the data, ensuring tax compliance and error-free accounting.
Botkeeper’s automated bookkeeping features (Source: Botkeeper)
Multiple-entity Accounting
Botkeeper allows you to cover supplementary entities that form part of an entire organization, such as subsidiaries alongside the parent company.
ScanBot
ScanBot, a mobile app that integrates with Botkeeper, can extract financial data directly from a photo of a receipt or invoice taken with your mobile phone. You can drag and drop files in ScanBot, and it’ll read the file automatically.
ScanBot’s Drag and Drop Feature (Source: Botkeeper)
Botkeeper uses optical character recognition (OCR) when scanning documents. With OCR, it can organize files as receipts, unpaid bills, and revenue automatically.
Dashboard
Botkeeper boasts an interactive dashboard that grants you direct access to your key performance indicators, trending analytics, and data visualizations. You can also share the dashboard with your clients. When sharing dashboards with clients, you can grant specific permissions and additional security, such as setting “view only” permissions, adding an expiry date of the viewing permission, and protecting the dashboard with a password.
Client Dashboard (Source: Botkeeper)
Payroll Administration
Botkeeper will help you streamline employee payroll by maintaining a consistent schedule and keeping a detailed log of employee data.
Inventory Tracking
Botkeeper integrates with your online store to keep track of items involved in each transaction, then it generates detailed reports about the subsequent stock levels of every product. Ecommerce integrations include BigCommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.
Customer Invoicing
If you need help with invoicing your customers, generating and sending statements, and applying payments to open invoices, Botkeeper will handle this for you.
Data Security & File Management
Botkeeper applies 256-bit encryption to protect user data and uses the cloud infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which means its servers are protected by some of the world’s best data security tools. Botkeeper’s file management system keeps things organized by creating folders by type, year, or tag. Within the file management system, you can directly comment on the file to communicate your concerns or questions to your client easily.
Data security and file management (Source: Botkeeper)
Botkeeper also has a Password Manager that compiles all the clients’ login credentials from banks, ecommerce platforms, and other third-party software. The Password Manager is a convenient way for Botkeeper to access client passwords easily without having to bother clients by asking for their login credentials.
All passwords are stored in an encrypted database. In this way, clients can strengthen access controls since they don’t have to keep passwords on sticky notes, in spreadsheets, or in notebooks.
Smart Connect
Besides password security, giving Botkeeper access to your bank credentials speeds up the bookkeeping process through Smart Connect. This collects bank feeds from your client’s bank account automatically and can even collect bank feeds before the end of the month through a request. With Smart Connect and Password Manager, there’s no need to bother the client to furnish a copy of bank statements.
Reporting
Botkeeper offers unlimited custom reports to help you track all the relevant data for your business. These reports are available on the “Financial Hub,” which offers a 360-degree view of your business while providing secure document management and storage, streamlining task and project management workflows, and safeguarding data integrity.
By customizing Botkeeper’s tools based on your preferences and business needs, the software will automate all the reporting and analytics functions. Apart from profit and loss (P&L) reports, you can track cash flow, accounts payable (A/P), job performance, inventory levels, credit, and fixed assets.
Tax & Consulting Services
Botkeeper does not directly provide tax and consulting services, but it provides a searchable list of its accounting partner ecosystem, which can be filtered by partners that provide tax services. Currently, there are 30 firms that provide tax and consulting services on this list. For an efficient online bookkeeping solution that includes tax and consulting services, we recommend Bench. For its features, services, and pricing, read our Bench review.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How does Botkeeper work?
Botkeeper starts by importing all of your client data and connecting the accounts with its software. The data is synced with its proprietary ML tool, which will take note of transactions and categorizations. The services provided are customizable based on your needs.
Does Botkeeper support both cash and accrual accounting?
Yes, Botkeeper supports bookkeeping on a cash and accrual basis.
Does Botkeeper work with QuickBooks?
Yes, Botkeeper works with both QuickBooks Online and Xero.
Bottom Line
Botkeeper provides automated bookkeeping support for accounting firms and businesses by using a powerful combination of skilled accountants, ML, and AI. Clients receive 24/7 accounting support and insight into their financials, with interactive dashboards and unlimited reporting. However, Botkeeper isn’t suitable for small businesses. If you think that its features are too advanced for your needs, we recommend checking out our roundup of the best online bookkeeping services.
