The short answer: at IBEO you pay a fixed price per month, in one of three packages, depending on how often your books are processed and how much you hand over. You’ll find every package and its current price on our pricing page.
The longer answer is the useful one. Because the real question behind “what does it cost” is: what drives my price, what should always be included, and does it beat doing it myself? That’s what this article answers.
Three packages, one idea: a fixed monthly price
Monthly. Your books are processed every month. VAT returns filed on time, reports ready, one dedicated point of contact. Suits a business with a steady flow of invoices and receipts that wants order without daily involvement.
Weekly. Same idea, but your numbers are never more than a week old. Includes SEPA payment batches, so your suppliers get paid without you logging into the bank at midnight. If you steer your business on fresh margins, this is your package.
Full-service. You stop doing bookkeeping altogether. Your personal finance assistant runs the complete administration, manages your financial inbox and handles contact with your suppliers. You look at the dashboard, not at paperwork.
Compare the packages and current prices on our pricing page. No sales call needed to see a number.
What drives hospitality bookkeeping costs?
Every package price is a starting point. Three things determine the amount:
Volume. A café with 60 supplier receipts a month is not a hotel with 400 booking transactions, deposits and refunds. More lines to process means more work.
Staff. Five people on the payroll is different work from twenty-five, with the staff turnover that hospitality is known for. Every contract change, every departure, every new hire touches your administration.
Complexity. One entity, one revenue stream is the simple case. A hotel that combines room revenue with F&B, processes deposits and claims investment deductions sits at the other end.
Want to know your exact number? Request a quote and you’ll know within a day. Not after three phone calls.
Restaurant, café or hotel: what changes
For your restaurant, the price question usually hides a margin question. You don’t just need receipts booked, you want to know what each dish earns you. Tracking margin down to ingredient level is bookkeeping work, and exactly the work a generic bookkeeper skips.
For your café, the cost sits in the loose ends: ad-hoc receipts, cash and card mixed together, a POS system that doesn’t talk to your bookkeeping. A bookkeeper who connects your till directly removes the most expensive part: the manual sorting.
For your hotel, cheap bookkeeping gets expensive fast. Deposits booked in the wrong period, missed investment deductions, room and F&B revenue lumped together. One missed deduction can cost more than a year of bookkeeping fees.
The comparison nobody makes honestly: doing it yourself
Doing your own books feels free. It isn’t. Work it out in three steps:
- Count your hours. How many hours a week do you lose to receipts, invoices, VAT and payroll? For most independent hospitality owners that’s 4 to 8 hours. Be honest, count the Sunday evenings.
- Price your hour. Not at minimum wage. At what an hour of yours is worth in the business: negotiating with suppliers, getting your rota to work, being on the floor. Or simply at what you’d pay to replace yourself.
- Add the cost of mistakes. A late VAT return means a fine. A missed deduction means too much tax paid. A margin you never calculated means a menu that quietly loses money. None of this shows up as a monthly invoice, and that’s exactly why it costs the most.
Put those amounts next to the package prices on our pricing page. That’s the honest comparison. Sometimes doing it yourself wins, usually when your business is very small and very simple. In hospitality, that’s rarely the case.
Fixed price or hourly rate?
Some bookkeepers charge by the hour. That sounds fair, until peak season arrives, when your administration grows and your invoice grows with it. December, terrace season, a staff change: exactly when you have no time, hourly rates get expensive.
A fixed monthly price turns that around. Your busiest month costs the same as your quietest. You can budget it like rent.
What should always be included
Whoever you choose, us or someone else, check whether the price covers this:
- VAT returns, filed on time, every period
- Annual accounts
- One dedicated point of contact, not a rotating helpdesk
- A connection between your POS system and your bookkeeping
- Real-time insight into your numbers, not a quarterly pdf
Is any of these a paid extra? Then your “from” price isn’t your real price. Ask before you sign.
Try three months, risk free
Still comparing? Fair enough. Switching bookkeepers feels like a gamble, so we took the gamble out: if you’re not happy in the first three months, you get your money back. We also handle the handover from your current bookkeeper.
