What Does It Cost to Hire a Legal Bookkeeper?

Welcome back. So this week I'm gonna discuss what does it cost to hire a legal bookkeeper? And I think this is a tough one because it's hard to kind of gauge, and this is obviously is as of this date, so I'm 2025 in August. So know that diving into numbers could change dramatically. If this, you're seeing this video 5 years from now, you'll be like, she doesn't know what she's talking about. But remember that this is the date. I'm gonna break down the steps to figure out the costs, and there's an article that goes with this, so please read the article. I think it will really help. There's also an easy chart to compare in-house hire to outsourcing hire to going global. An average bookkeeper salary is about $50,000 in the year 2025, but there's a lot more to it. It's not just the salary, 'cause we all know that we have to provide them with a good place to work, which means you need to, provide them with some of the things like healthcare and vacation time and workers' comp. There's a lot there. So know that, and obviously you match the payroll, which you would know that if you're a bookkeeping company. So decide how you'll pay them. If you want to hire in-house, that means you're going to have to get a salary. You're going to have to get on a payroll program, whether it's QuickBooks, Gusto, ADP, Paychecks. There's many of them out there. We really stick to just two, but our clients sometimes need more. So we usually stick to just QuickBooks or Gusto, but sometimes the client has a higher— we have higher needs and it doesn't work. So find the ones that you like, but those are the two best ones that are out there. And then know that if you're going to pay them, hourly rates can be $15 for somebody who really doesn't know much of anything to $29, depending on your area. That's $15 to $29 for a new person starting out, maybe a junior bookkeeper. And obviously the lower rate, you're gonna have to do a lot more training than if you pay more towards the $29. And then for professional bookkeepers, someone who's done this before and knows their stuff, you're looking at $50 to $70 an hour. So that's a lot. It's a lot of money to consider. I haven't seen too many at the $70 range. It's more— range really what I've seen from speaking with my colleagues is about $29 to like $35, $40. That's really the range. But if you look on Glassdoor, this is the range that they have. I think when you get up to $70, they're probably already a business owner, but it depends on what you need them for. And don't forget, you need to add about 20 to 30% extra. So on top of whatever you're paying them for benefits like health insurance or any kind of retirement plans that you're— if you offer them, and some states require you to offer them, so you might want to really look into What's the workers' comp rules? And then if your state requires you to set up a 401(k). 401(k). There's a lot of states that are doing that now, and you're going to see more of that. And then don't forget about the hidden costs. So there's recruiting fee if you have— if you go to a headhunter. There's training, which is going to be costly because you're going to have to train. So you're paying the person, you're paying your fee, whatever your hourly rate is while you're not doing your work, and it's expensive. You might need to have a— many to get a bigger office if you're going to be adding on and you need a bigger space for your team. You might need hardware. You're probably going to need software, so you're going to have to pay for user ID, user licenses. So know that you will probably be looking at some of those fees as well. There's also an opportunity cost. So what you were— could be earning if you weren't stuck doing the books yourself. So that can be around $100 a month. In lost productivity on your side. So it's an important metric to factor in. It could be a lot more than $100 depending on how many hours and what your typical rate is. And then there's also the extras and the special cases. So there's taxes, there may be bonuses if you're gonna be offering bonuses, or maybe you have specialized work that you need done. Maybe you need a specialized person that does the billing for attorneys that knows leads billing and all that other kind of billing or accounts receivable. You also need to really think about security, especially working with the type of clientele we work with, with the attorneys. I think with any kind of client, no matter what you have, you really wanna make sure that your client is protected, their data is protected. The attorney's client's data is sensitive and we have access to it. So know that that's paramount in your decision-making of adding to your staff. If you're hiring global, where are the servers located that you're working with? Are they in Bangladesh? Are they in the United States? Those are things you wanna think about. Where are the servers located? What kind of security measures does the contractor or Global Team Contractor have in place to protect your data? It's just like anything else. It's the same as if you hire in the United States. You need to make sure your data is secure. Most of us work with remote staff, so you need to make sure that there's security in place. And if you don't think it seems like you really need to go so, so deep with the in-house hire or somebody who is working remotely, but they are working as a staff member, an employee with your firm. But think about the computer sitting on the desk and they have a teenager and the teenager uses the mom's computer when she's not working on a weekend. They could go on a bad site and then you could get hacked. So those are things you have to really consider when you hire somebody. Um, those are really the most important tips when you're hiring in regard to cert, uh, in regard to finding good staff and making sure that you're set up properly, you really want to make sure that every person who works for you has a login with Intuit. They're on your team. You can see via the audit log who's doing the work. So that's important too. So tally— when you start to do the math, tally the salary, tally the benefits, add to those expenses what it costs to train, add to those expenses user licenses and things like that, and maybe you have to buy the computer, and then security measures. All that is part of it. And so for a full-time person working for you, that could add up to be about $3,516 a month. That's on average. If you need to hire a part-time, which is a great entry point to having somebody work on your staff, you can adjust that down, maybe half of that for a part-timer. But some of that— actually, when you start to do the math, you should really do the math because If you have to buy them a computer, even if they're part-time, still that whole expense is being laid out for that person. That license, user license is paid out for that person, any software licenses. So know that that's part of it. So I do have a helpful chart that will assess the different costs for staff. I think sometimes a lot of people go into thinking global team, I'm gonna hire people in India or the Philippines or Mexico, and they think they're gonna get somebody for like $2 or $4 an hour. That is not the case. If you're finding somebody that inexpensive, then you're really looking at— Yeah. Probably something that's not secure. You know, you, you get what you pay for, and that's a big thing you should always believe in. And I think when you're working with global teams, it's a different mindset. They're going to be working on your client files when you're sleeping, but they're not going to be able to discuss things with the client. So you're going to be giving up that opportunity to have a person be assigned a client and they take on that client. For sure. Fully. So know that that's another part of hiring outsourcing to other countries. If the time zone's a problem, that might be a problem when you look at hiring. You maybe have to give something up with that for getting a little bit lesser rate than if hiring someone in the US in your same time zone. So sometimes it can help you cut costs, but don't expect it to cut a lot of costs. And don't forget, in the long run, no matter what person you hire, whether a contractor or a Global Team person, a person in your office, a person remote, They all need training. And I know I've mentioned this in the last couple of videos. Remember that you're gonna have to train them as a new employee, no matter who you hire. So that's the biggest important piece to have a successful engagement with a person and hire a new hire. So know that you can't skip that step, factor that in. And we'll see you all next week. Bye now. Bye.