Bookkeeping for a multi-marketplace ecommerce business costs somewhere between a few hundred dollars a year and six figures, depending entirely on which of three models you pick. The published numbers are easier to find than most sellers assume, and laying them side by side makes the crossover points reasonably clear. Every figure below carries its source, and all vendor pricing was checked on the vendor’s own site in September 2026.
Model 1: In-house bookkeeper
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, the median annual wage for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks was $50,670 in May 2025, which works out to $24.36 per hour.
That is the wage, not the cost. An employer also pays its share of Social Security and Medicare, which is 7.65 percent of wages under the rates published by the IRS in Publication 15, plus federal and state unemployment tax. Add health coverage, paid time off, equipment, software licenses, and the management time to supervise the role, and total employer cost sits well above the wage figure. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its Employer Costs for Employee Compensation series for anyone who wants to model the benefits load properly rather than guess at it.
Two things about the in-house model that the wage number does not capture:
- Ecommerce experience commands a premium. The BLS median covers the whole occupation, most of which is general bookkeeping. A bookkeeper who understands marketplace settlements, reserve accounting, and landed cost is a narrower hire than the median describes.
- Single point of failure. One person holding all institutional knowledge about your books is a continuity risk that costs nothing until they leave.
Part-time is the more common shape for sellers under roughly $5M. At 15 hours a week, the BLS hourly median of $24.36 puts base wages near $19,000 a year before employer taxes and benefits.
Model 2: Outsourced bookkeeping service
Published pricing from providers in this category, taken from their own pricing pages in September 2026:
Bench lists Bookkeeping Light at $199 per month for businesses at or under $250,000 in annual revenue, Bookkeeping at $399 per month, and Bookkeeping plus Tax at $649 per month. Bench also offers a fractional bookkeeper working inside a client’s existing QuickBooks account at $55 per hour plus a $1,200 one-time onboarding fee. Annual prepayment is discounted 20 percent.
Xendoo prices on monthly expense volume rather than revenue: Essential at $395 per month for up to $50,000 in monthly expenses, Growth at $695 for up to $75,000, and Scale at $995 for up to $125,000. Catch-up bookkeeping starts at $295 per month and a fractional CFO add-on starts at $1,500 per month. Annual billing saves 10 percent.
So the outsourced band runs roughly $2,400 to $12,000 a year for ongoing bookkeeping at the published tiers, before tax filing and before any catch-up work.
The ecommerce caveat
Both providers above price on expense or revenue volume, and both are built primarily around categorizing bank and card activity. That model fits a services business cleanly. Marketplace sellers have a structural complication: a settlement deposit is a net figure containing referral fees, fulfillment, storage, advertising, refunds, and reserve movement, and categorizing the deposit as one transaction produces books that balance but misstate revenue and omit expenses entirely.
Sellers evaluating a generalist service should ask directly how settlements are handled, because the answer determines whether the output is usable.
Model 3: Software plus light human oversight
The third model puts software between the marketplace and the general ledger, with an accountant reviewing rather than data entering.
A2X publishes Amazon channel pricing starting at $29 per month for up to 200 orders, $59 for up to 1,000 orders, $79 for up to 5,000, $159 for up to 10,000, $229 for up to 15,000, and $289 for up to 20,000, continuing through higher tiers to $1,499 per month at 250,000 orders. One detail worth noting from its pricing page: cost of goods sold posting is not included on the $29 entry tier and begins at the $59 plan.
Other tools in this category, including Link My Books, ConnectBooks, Synder, and Webgility, price on similar volume-based structures. Some publish full tier tables; others quote on request, which makes direct comparison harder.
Add the accounting platform itself. QuickBooks Online and Xero both publish current subscription pricing on their own sites, and both change it periodically, so the figure to use is whatever their pricing page says on the day you buy.
Then add human time. A seller using this model still needs someone to close the month, review the output, and handle judgment calls on accruals and write-downs. That might be four hours a month from an outside accountant, or it might be the owner’s own time, which is not free but is often not budgeted.
Where the crossover points land
Comparing the published figures:
- Under about $500,000 in revenue, one or two channels: software plus a few hours of external review is the cheapest defensible option. A2X at $59 plus an accounting subscription plus quarterly review sits far below the $199 to $395 monthly entry points of the outsourced services.
- Roughly $500,000 to $3M, multiple channels: this is the contested band. Outsourced services at $395 to $695 per month compete with software plus a monthly accountant, and the deciding factor is usually whether the provider genuinely handles settlement decomposition or just categorizes deposits.
- Above roughly $3M with inventory complexity: the in-house or specialist-firm models start making sense. At the BLS median of $50,670 plus employer costs, a dedicated person is comparable to the upper outsourced tiers, and the difference is availability rather than price.
The cost nobody prices
The figures above are all direct. The larger number is usually the cost of books that are wrong.
Misstated inventory affects taxable income. Missing fee detail means pricing decisions get made on a margin figure that is several points off. Unreconciled settlements mean a financing or sale process turns into a reconstruction exercise billed at professional rates under deadline. None of that appears on a pricing page, and it routinely exceeds the annual cost of any option listed here.
Anyone weighing these models should also confirm their own tax position rather than inferring it from a comparison article. The IRS recordkeeping guidance sets out retention requirements, Publication 538 covers accounting methods and inventories, and the Small Business Administration has a general overview of managing business finances. State-level obligations vary and the relevant state department of revenue is the authority on those.