What a CPA Costs: Our Published Pricing

Published pricing

What each service costs

Below are the ranges we work in, and what moves an engagement toward one end of each or the other. If your situation is reasonably straightforward, you should be able to place yourself within a few hundred dollars without talking to anyone.

These three are where most engagements start.

Service	What it costs	How it's billed
Bookkeeping	$250 to $5,000 per month	Monthly subscription
Tax preparation and planning	$500 to $4,000	One time, per engagement
Payroll	$80 per month, plus $10 per employee per month	Monthly subscription

There is no hourly billing behind any of these, and no invoice arriving after a phone call you thought was included. You know the number before the work starts, and it moves only if the scope does.

What you get, and what moves the price

Two of those ranges are wide, and the width is doing real work. A single-member LLC with one bank account and a multi-location operation carrying inventory are not the same job, and pretending otherwise would just mean overcharging one of them.

Bookkeeping, $250 to $5,000 per month

Every bookkeeping engagement includes monthly bank and credit card reconciliations, financial statement preparation, and review by a licensed CPA.

At the bottom of the range: one entity, one or two accounts to reconcile, a modest monthly transaction volume, and books that are already current.

The number climbs when there is more to reconcile and more judgment involved in reconciling it. The usual drivers are additional entities filing separately, higher transaction volume, more bank and credit accounts, multiple locations that each need their own profit and loss, inventory that has to tie to cost of goods sold, and multi-currency activity.

Books that are months or years behind are their own conversation. We scope catch-up work before the monthly engagement starts, so it never gets absorbed quietly into your first few invoices. Here is how our monthly bookkeeping works.

Tax preparation and planning, $500 to $4,000

Return type does most of the work here. These are the ranges each one typically lands in.

Return type	Typical range
Individual return (Form 1040)	$500 to $1,500
S-Corporation (Form 1120-S)	$1,500 to $4,000
C-Corporation (Form 1120)	$1,500 to $4,000
Partnership (Form 1065)	$1,500 to $4,000
Multi-entity or multi-state	$2,500 to $4,000 and up

Within whichever row you are in, the number climbs with a personal return filed alongside the business one, filings in more than one state, trust or estate returns, and K-1s arriving from other entities.

Planning work through the year, rather than a single filing in the spring, also sits higher in the range. It is usually the part that pays for itself. See what our tax preparation and planning covers.

Payroll, $80 per month plus $10 per employee

The formula is the whole story. Ten employees is $180 a month, twenty-five is $330. Headcount is the variable, and there is not a second one.

That covers payroll processing, direct deposit, payroll tax deposits, quarterly 941 and TWC filings, and annual W-2s and 1099s. The filings are the part worth checking when you compare us to a payroll platform, because they are frequently where the platform's number stops and its add-ons begin. Here is how our payroll service runs.

Two more, priced on their own

Neither of these is a starting point for most businesses. Both are quoted separately from the three above.

Service	What it costs	How it's billed
Outsourced CFO	$1,500 to $5,000 per month	Monthly retainer
New business formation	$500 to $1,500	One time, plus state filing fees

Outsourced CFO work is CFO-level thinking without the hire: monthly financial review, cash flow forecasting, KPI dashboards, budgeting, and planning sessions. Where it lands in the range depends on scope and how often we meet. Because it is advisory built on top of clean books, it is normally a step businesses take once the bookkeeping is already current. See what outsourced CFO work involves.

Business formation covers entity selection guidance, the state filing itself, your EIN application, and the S-Corp election where it makes sense. State filing fees vary by state and are separate from our fee. Bookkeeping setup and your first year of bookkeeping are quoted separately, not folded into the formation fee. See how we handle new business formation.

Quoted case by case

Some work does not have a useful published range, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. Franchise tax, sales tax filings, multi-state compliance, and trust and estate returns are quoted against the actual filing once we have seen it.

The same applies to anything unusual. Published ranges describe typical engagements; your quote comes from the real scope, complexity, and timeline of your situation, and an engagement that falls outside a range gets priced on its own terms rather than forced into one.

Every engagement

What's included at every price

The fee changes. What sits behind it doesn't.

A named CPA who knows your file and answers you directly, instead of a ticket queue or a new account manager every few months.
Access year round, not a relationship that wakes up in March.
Work performed inside the accounting system you already run, whether that is Xero, QuickBooks Online, or Zoho Books. We do not require a migration as a condition of working together.
Secure document exchange, so nothing sensitive travels by email attachment.
Contact from us when something in your situation needs a decision, instead of a call in April explaining what already happened.

Buying more than one

Each line is priced on its own and can be bought on its own. Plenty of clients only need one.

Most end up with two, usually bookkeeping and tax, because a return built from books we already maintain needs far less reconstruction than one assembled in March from a folder of receipts. When an engagement covers more than one service, we quote it as a single monthly figure so you are tracking one number instead of three.

"I can't afford a CPA every month"

It is the most common hesitation we hear, and it deserves a straight answer.

The monthly fee is visible, which is exactly why the cost of not having a CPA gets underestimated next to it. Deductions nobody flagged, an entity structure that stopped fitting your business two years ago, a penalty for a deadline nobody was watching: none of that arrives as an invoice, so it never gets compared against one. It shows up in what you sent the IRS.

For most owners the arithmetic is not close, and the fixed fee is the part that makes it checkable. You can compare a known monthly number against your last return. You cannot compare anything against an hourly bill you have not received yet.

"Darshi is knowledgeable, responsive, and extremely detail-oriented. She takes the time to explain complex tax matters in a way that is easy to understand and always ensures everything is completed accurately and on time."
Elizabeth Hanks

And if the fee does not work for your business right now, we will say so on the call instead of selling you into it.

The bottom line

You should be able to work out roughly what we would cost you from this page alone. That is the reason it exists.

What a conversation adds is the specific number: which end of the range your books actually sit at, whether any catch-up is needed before a monthly engagement starts, and whether you need all three services or one. Bring your last return and a rough sense of your monthly transaction volume and we can usually get there in a single call.

FAQ

Questions about what a CPA costs

How much does a CPA cost for a small business?

It depends on which work you need. Ongoing bookkeeping runs $250 to $5,000 per month depending on entity count, transaction volume, and how much reconciliation the business generates. Tax preparation and planning runs $500 to $4,000 per engagement, scaling with return type and complexity. Payroll is $80 per month plus $10 per employee. Most small businesses that need clean monthly books and an annual return sit well inside the lower half of both ranges.

How much does an S-corp tax return cost?

An S-Corporation return on Form 1120-S typically runs $1,500 to $4,000. Where it lands depends on how clean the books are going in, whether your personal return is filed alongside it, whether you have filings in more than one state, and whether K-1s from other entities are in the picture. A C-Corp return on Form 1120 and a partnership return on Form 1065 sit in the same range. An individual return on its own runs $500 to $1,500.

What does an outsourced CFO cost?

$1,500 to $5,000 per month, depending on scope and how often we meet. That covers monthly financial review, cash flow forecasting, KPI dashboards, budgeting, and planning sessions. It is advisory work built on top of books that are already current, so it normally sits alongside a bookkeeping engagement.

Why do you publish pricing when most CPA firms don't?

Because hiding it wastes everyone's time. A prospect who cannot afford us finds out after a call instead of before, and a prospect who could comfortably afford us sometimes never calls because they assumed a CPA was out of reach. Published ranges let you self-select. The only thing a call adds is precision.

What if my books are months or years behind?

That is a common starting point, and a large part of what new clients arrive with. Catch-up work is scoped separately from the ongoing monthly fee so you can see what it costs to get current before committing to what it costs to stay current.

Do you charge extra for questions during the year?

No. There is no hourly meter running on a phone call. Year-round access to a licensed CPA is what the monthly fee is for, and a client who avoids calling because they are worried about the bill is exactly the outcome fixed pricing is meant to prevent.

Can I start with one service and add others later?

Yes. Services are priced independently and clients regularly begin with tax preparation, then add bookkeeping once they want the return built from books that are already reconciled. Adding a service adjusts the monthly figure and nothing else.

Do you work with businesses outside Texas?

Yes. CPA licensure carries practice privileges across state lines, and we currently file in 10 states. Multi-state filings do sit higher in the tax range, so it is worth flagging early if your business operates in more than one.

What a CPA actually costs