We’d look at what each quote leaves out before looking at the price. A venue that pays weekly has a pay run every week, a supplier bill for most deliveries and, once it withholds enough tax from wages, an ATO statement most months. If a cheap quote leaves out payroll or the BAS, you end up paying someone else for them.
Xero’s guide to hiring a bookkeeper in Australia puts outsourced bookkeeping at $500 to $2,500 a month, or $40 to $120 an hour. Xero ties the monthly figure to your transaction volume and what the fee covers.
A venue’s books are weekly work
For a venue paying staff weekly, a year looks like this:
- Pay runs: 52, each with an STP report to the ATO on or before payday
- Super: since 1 July, paid for each payday, so 52 of those too
- Supplier bills: about 130 a month if 30 suppliers deliver once a week
- Activity statements: 4 a year, or 12 if you withhold tax from wages monthly
The last line is the one to ask about. You lodge a quarterly BAS if your GST turnover is under $20 million and the ATO hasn’t told you to report monthly. If you withhold $25,001 to $1 million of tax from wages a year, you are a medium withholder, and you report and pay that withholding every month. On quarterly GST, that means a monthly statement for the first two months of each quarter and the BAS for the third.
$25,001 is lower than it sounds. Withhold $500 a week of tax from your staff’s pay and that is $26,000 a year, which puts you over it. Ask every bookkeeper whether their BAS price covers those monthly statements, called the IAS.
On a $20,000 week, that is about $115 to $577
Against $20,000 a week in sales, Xero’s range comes to:
- $500 a month: about $115 a week, or 0.6% of sales
- $2,500 a month: about $577 a week, or 2.9% of sales
- Hourly, at 15 hours a month and $40 to $120 an hour: $600 to $1,800 a month
Xero says rates run higher in Sydney and Melbourne, and that a registered BAS agent or certified bookkeeper typically charges more than someone without formal credentials. For a venue we’d pay that, because an outside bookkeeper doing your payroll and BAS has to be registered anyway.
Payroll and the BAS need a registered agent
The Tax Practitioners Board lists payroll that applies tax law, including STP reporting, coding that needs the GST rules applied, and completing your activity statements as BAS services. Only a registered BAS agent or tax agent can charge you for them. Data entry that needs no tax judgement is not a BAS service, so anyone can do that part.
If an unregistered preparer lodges a wrong BAS and it leaves a tax shortfall, the ATO may impose penalties on you. You also lose the safe harbour that can protect you from penalties when you use a registered agent. Look up any name on the TPB register before you sign.
Your own bookkeeper costs more than the salary
If you are weighing up hiring someone, cost it the same way. Two days a week at the bottom of Xero’s in-house salary range of $50,000 to $95,000:
- Salary, 40% of $50,000: $20,000
- Super at 12% for 2026-27: $2,400
- Total: $22,400 a year, about $431 a week
That is before workers compensation insurance, software, and someone to run the pay run during their 4 weeks of annual leave.
Price the clean-up before you sign
In files we have taken over, we have found pay runs that were processed but never filed through STP, sometimes for months. We have also found supplier invoices paid twice. One group we look after had dozens of them, which we have been recovering from the suppliers.
If your books are behind, ask every bookkeeper to quote the clean-up on its own, as a fixed price. By the hour, 20 hours of catch-up at $40 to $120 is $800 to $2,400, and the hours are a guess until someone opens the file.
What we would do
- Count a year of pay runs, supplier bills and activity statements for your venue
- Ask each bookkeeper which of those the fee covers, in writing
- Ask whether the BAS price includes the monthly IAS
- Ask what reports you get, and whether a weekly P&L is one of them
- Get any clean-up quoted as a fixed price
- Check the TPB register
For your comparison, our Core package is $499 a month for payroll, supplier payments, reconciliation and a weekly P&L. Essentials is $599 and adds the monthly IAS and quarterly BAS. Foundation is $799 and adds tax returns. All three run month to month, and the historic clean-up is free. The detail is on our pricing.