Cost of Hiring an Accountant for Small Business

A key consideration when hiring an accountant for any small business is cost. When you hire in-house, you have to shoulder the entire cost of hiring the staff. This includes salary, statutory benefits, and even accounting software licensing. This represents a significant investment to small businesses. 

Your options on how to hire an accountant has an effect on the overall cost. Besides hiring internally, you can hire a retainer or from an offshore accountant. In this guide, we will explore how much investment you need to hire an accountant for your small business. 

Cost of Hiring an In-House Accountant

An in-house accountant sits inside your business, works your hours, and is fully integrated into your systems and communication channels. 

It is also the most expensive of the three models, because you carry the full cost of employment: salary, statutory contributions, benefits, equipment, and software.

Salary Benchmarks

Annual salaries for accountants in the three highest-cost English-speaking markets:

Sources: 

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
• Jobs and Skills Australia (Gov.au) – ANZSCO 2211 Accountants Occupation Profile
• UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) – Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE)

Employer Costs on Top of Salary

Aside from base salary, you must also take into account statutory contributions, payroll taxes and competitive benefits packages. This can typically add 20%-30% on top of the base salary. 

For example, if you want to hire a mid-level accountant in the U.S. with an USD 80,000 salary per year, you would need to cover the following costs:

Based on this calculation, you would need to pay an additional 29.6% on top of the base salary. 

Total Cost for Equipment

Other costs that you need to take into account are the equipment as a one-time cost. You need to issue laptops, secondary monitors, and secure networking equipment. You need to set aside an additional USD 2,000 - 2,500 for equipment. 

When Should You Hire an In-House Accountant?

Although the upfront costs are high, it doesn’t mean that hiring an in-house accountant has zero returns for your business. You should build an internal accounting team if:

• Your business requires navigating complex local tax rules, such as multi-state economic nexus sales tax compliance across dozens of US states.
• Operations in heavily regulated industries. This includes construction job costing, trust accounting for legal firms, or Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) compliance.
• Your business requires certified financial reviews or formal audits signed by licensed local CPA. This includes applying for large commercial bank loans or institutional venture capital. 

Cost of Hiring a Retainer from a Local Accounting Firm

A retainer from an accounting firm gives you access to qualified professionals without employing anyone. You pay for hours or for a defined scope, which makes this the cheapest option at low volumes.

Pricing Models: Hourly Rates vs. Monthly Retainers

Accounting firms generally charge in one of two ways:

Sources: 

• *AICPA & Journal of Accountancy National MAP Survey
• **  Xero - Bookkeeping vs Accounting

What to Watch For

The retainer model works well at low volumes but has limits as your workload grows:

• Scope limits: Retainers define included hours and services. Ad hoc analysis, urgent payment runs, and quick questions are often billed separately at hourly rates.
• Staff rotation: Firms reassign staff between clients. Each change means re-explaining your workflows and systems.
• Shared attention: Your account is one of many. Time-sensitive tasks such as customer invoicing or vendor payment checks can wait behind other clients' deadlines.

At full-time volume, the hourly model stops making sense. Forty hours a week at USD 127 an hour is more than USD 260,000 a year.

When to Hire a Retainer from a Local Agency

Partnering with a local firm is ideal if your operational workload is low and highly seasonal: 

• Low Monthly Workload: Businesses that only require 1 to 5 hours of transaction categorization per week.
• Project-Based Needs: Organizations that require one-off annual clean-up projects, historical ledger adjustments, or end-of-year corporate tax return filings.

Cost of Hiring a Dedicated Offshore Accountant Through an EOR

The third model is to hire a full-time accountant in a lower-cost market and employ them through an EOR. 

This is different from outsourcing.

The accountant is your employee in every practical sense: they work only for you, in your systems, on your schedule. The EOR is the legal employer in the accountant's home country and handles the contract, payroll, statutory contributions, and local compliance on your behalf.

Salary Benchmarks in the Philippines and Indonesia

Both countries have large pools of English-speaking, university-trained accountants with experience serving Western clients through shared-services and BPO firms.

The key takeaway here is that you can cut costs up to 70%-75% when you hire an accountant in the Philippines or Indonesia. 

Sources: 

• Philippine wage benchmarks: Jobstreet Philippines Salary Guide and PICPA Industry Benchmarks
• Indonesia wage benchmarks: Jobstreet Indonesia Accountant Benchmarks and Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS) Formal Sector Labor Statistics

Cost of Hiring an Accountant with an EOR

Say for example you want to hire a mid-level accountant in the Philippines with a PHP 750,000 base salary (~USD 13,150 USD/year or ~USD 1,095 USD/month). Because the EOR is the legal employer of your accountant, you don’t need to worry about starting your own subsidiary in the Philippines nor compliance with local labor laws. 

Using the example above, here is how much hiring an accountant in the Philippines would cost: 

We detailed the cost of hiring an employee in the Philippines in our guide. Here we looked at calculations based on salary level inclusive of calculating statutory benefits. 

By comparison, hiring an accountant with an EOR is roughly 83% more cost-effective compared to hiring inhouse and is 51% cheaper than having a local retainer. 

What to Watch For

The offshore model has its own trade-offs, and it works best when you plan for them:

• You still manage the person. This is a full-time employee, not a service. Onboarding, training on your processes, and day-to-day direction are yours.
• They cannot sign your tax return. A Philippine or Indonesian accountant can prepare everything, but a licensed local CPA still has to sign off on filings and audited statements in your home market.
• Time zones. Manila is 12 to 16 hours ahead of the U.S. and seven to eight hours ahead of the UK. Most offshore accountants work a shifted schedule to overlap, but you need to agree on that up front.
• Recruitment quality is on you or your EOR. The salary saving only holds if you hire the right person. Ask your EOR whether they recruit and vet candidates or only handle employment.

Why Use an EOR Rather Than Hiring Directly

Hiring overseas without a local entity exposes you to contractor misclassification and local labor law claims. Setting up your own entity costs upwards of USD 20,000 in legal and registration fees and takes months. An EOR removes both problems: it employs the accountant under a compliant local contract, runs payroll and statutory contributions, and charges a flat monthly fee, so you can hire within days without incorporating anywhere.

When to Hire Offshore

• You need daily bookkeeping, invoicing, reconciliations, and management reporting at full-time volume
• Your accounting runs on cloud platforms such as QuickBooks, Xero, or NetSuite, which offshore accountants use routinely
• Local hiring cost is the constraint on adding finance capacity

In-House vs a Retainer vs Offshore Hire: Cost Comparison

For a mid-level accountant, the three models compare as follows:

The Hybrid Model

Most growing small businesses do not pick one. The common pattern is a dedicated offshore accountant for daily execution, plus a local CPA firm for five to ten hours a year to review and sign year-end filings. Daily work gets full-time attention at offshore cost, and the local sign-off requirement is still met.

Hiring a Dedicated Accountant with RecruitGo

With RecruitGo, your business can onboard dedicated, full-time CPAs and mid-level accountants in top talent hubs like the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Here’s how we can help:

• Transparent EOR Pricing: Pay a simple 10% service fee capped at USD 250/month, keeping overhead proportional and predictable.
• Zero Entity Setup: Skip the USD 20,000+ foreign incorporation costs and let us handle 100% of local payroll, statutory taxes, and compliance.
• Fast Onboarding: Get your dedicated remote accountant interviewed, contracted, and integrated into your workflow in as little as 3 to 5 business days.

Ready to build a cost-effective, world-class accounting team? Request a demo from our local HR compliance experts.