What Do QuickBooks Experts Charge?

Intuit Staff

If you are interviewing potential Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors to help you with making the most of QuickBooks in your business, how can you make a judgment on any figures quoted by the ProAdvisor? After all, you may not have any experience with what range of rates QuickBooks experts may charge.

Intuit can't tell anyone what to charge and it's not our role to establish rates. However, at the request of QuickBooks experts who use our software, we conduct an unscientific straw poll each year on what rates experts seem to be charging. We can therefore share figures with you, rough though they may be.

These figures are meant for you as a point of comparison with the following caveats:

Rigor. Our poll is unscientific and consists of volunteer participants over the Web. Intuit does not attempt to verify respondents' answers.
Other Variables. Rates vary a great deal, based on seniority of practitioner, levels of certification, local rates, population density, depth of service, and many other variables.
Timeliness. Rates were collected at the end of 2006 and first published in early 2007.
Decision Making. Rates are only one factor on which to base your decision.

Hourly Rates

The majority of Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors tend to charge hourly rates. They will be able to estimate how many hours of work they expect to put in each month after they review your situation.

Often ProAdvisors and other accounting and bookkeeping professionals will charge different hourly rates for different tasks. For a sense of the range of these rates by task, see the following table, which shows national averages for hourly rates on frequent QuickBooks-related tasks. These rates include Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors and other practitioners.

Hourly Rates Overview Table

Response	General Bookkeeping	Non-Software Business Consulting	Generating Reports	Software Install/ Setup	Troubleshooting	Training	On-site Maintenance	Telephone Consulting
Count	750	701	670	666	662	652	601	524
Average	$61	$95	$73	$86	$82	$81	$81	$79
Low	$10	$15	$10	$15	$15	$15	$15	$10
High	$180	$350	$300	$1000	$300	$350	$350	$265
Mode(Most Frequent)	$50	$75	$75	$75	$75	$75	$75	$75

Flat Fees

The use of flat fees to cover certain QuickBooks-related services has been increasing over time. Many ProAdvisors and other professionals charge a combination of fixed fees and hourly rates, depending on the nature of the work.

We also asked practitioners about their use of fixed fees; again the following table shows a national average across Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors and other professionals.

Fixed Fees Overview Table

Response	Installation and Setup (New User)	Quarterly Tune-Up	Personal Training (1-2 Hrs.)	Personal Training (3-4 Hrs.)	Personal Training (Full Day)
Count	323	311	280	276	257
Average	$321	$246	$153	$287	$565
Low	$25	$25	$25	$25	$50
High	$3000	$1200	$540	$600	$1500
Mode	$250	$150	$150	$200	$500

Note that the fees are priced along a very broad range, with the high fee often more than ten times as much as the low fee in a category.

Round Numbers

While the average rate can end in any number, in practice the rates are typically expressed in round numbers. See the last row in each table, for Mode, to see what price point is charged most often.