How much are you paying to have your bookkeeping & taxes handled?
I run a SaaS (https://webtoapp.design) and receive payments via Paddle. So sales tax/VAT is already handled by them luckily. I get 2 invoices per month from Paddle (technically from me to Paddle) to get my payout, independent of how many transactions/customers I have. Aside from that I get around 10 invoices per month from services I use to run my business.
Since taxes are an absolute nightmare topic for me, there's no way I'm dealing with it myself. That's why I'm paying 113.05€/month to a local bookkeeper/tax consultant here in my city in Germany. Just wondering whether that's a lot for a small business with around 1500€/month in revenue. How much are you paying? Or are you handling it yourself?
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Until recently we had similar revenue and accounting as yours. We were also paying around €120 for accounting and tax filing for our tax consultant in Berlin. (In the last year our company grew and now it is a bit more).
So, I would say your expenses are in the normal range.
My costs (GmbH, also based in Berlin) are similar. Around 100€ for monthly bookkeeping + ca. 1000-1500 for my year-end statement + other related stuff.
Note that most tax people bill by the time spent, not based on your revenue. Haven't heard of a tax person that is not billing at least an hour (starting at 70€ net) for monthly accounting.
Awesome, great to have some feedback from Germany :) Congrats on the growth!
Hi there, yes, this is a lot!
With Loggify I do payments via Stripe, which is much more complicated in terms of bookkeeping, but saves a lot of money per booking as it's much cheaper already.
So i have more invoices than you going out.
Probably similar coming in.
Also Germany.
I do the bookkeeping myself, even though I also hate it, it's only around 1 hour every 3 months.
I just started off, but my tax consultant told me to expect less than 500 € per year for the service.
I'd do more myself, as it's super easy and not a lot of more work (you need to send the invoices to your bookkeeper anyway, so uploading them to some bookkeeping tool is the same thing).
Happy to connect and share more.
Just ping me :)
OOC, are you using Stripe Tax or just raw payments?
Using it all. Stripe Subscriptions, Payments, Tax, Invoicing
Was in talks with Chargebee, and simply found no single reason to pay so much money for a service on top, as Stripe has all built in.
(You miss out on PayPal, if that's important for the product).
Gotcha, thanks!
£220 per month for taxes, gov stuff & payroll (just my consulting income, long story). Includes Xero and auto expense/receipt/invoice software. They do my business and personal taxes.
Good to know - thanks for sharing your experience!
I run a branding studio in Portugal, we avg. €2k in monthly revenue and we pay a local accountant roughly 90€. They handle VAT, IRS, and fiscal optimization and it's pretty much it. They also run other things for me personally because of my investments, so it's a 2-in-1.
In Portugal, at least for me, it's kinda a struggle because some things are a bit complicated and the time to learn it it's not worth it.
Good to know! Yea I also feel like I'm better off paying someone for it and investing the time in my business.
I do my own bookkeeping. My software is B2B so there are not much taxes involved anyway (EU customers with VAT nr get the 0% VAT invoice and non-EU customers do not pay VAT anyway. My main headache are the EU compnies without a VAT nr (somehow only from Germany 🤔), so that I have to issue invoices with local tax and file the MOSS tax form.
Interesting - I decided to go with Paddle to avoid that hassle, since I think lots of countries outside of the EU have their own sales tax laws too, see https://tax-agony.paddle.com/. But no clue (that's a common theme for me with taxes ;) ) if it's fine to just ignore that until some threshold or if they're not applicable to EU companies.
Well, tax agony is their sales pitch. I would definitely us Paddle if I had a lot of B2C customers with low monthly price. Having to register and process each such invoice for accounting would be super painful. I sell to companies and with a yearly subscription option only, so that’s 12 times less invoices to process, an amount that I can manage on my own.
It definitely is! Good point on the yearly invoices, that reduces the work load drastically.
Roughly 40€ per month, I get ~5 invoices per month
My accountant handles:
I'm based in Estonia
That's a great price! I heard Estonia is very digital too, so that might help too. Thanks for your feedback!
i am DIY person. I do my own taxes so 0.
Awesome - I tried it at first but gave up after a while due to making lots of mistakes and having to correct them took up lots of time.
An average should be EUR100/month. So you're not really that far off. If you have a limited liability business this should be higher because your business needs to publish documents too.
From your message I don't think your bill goes up when you send a few more invoices (things will probably change when you send 100/500 invoices), but it may be smart to talk to your consultant about working on a way to reduce work for them, so your cost can stay low / doesn't scale with your growth.
I think what you're paying (even though it looks expensive right now) is average/good! :)
Thank you very much for your feedback! You're right, it's not a limited liability business yet - I should've mentioned that :)
Good point on asking how I can save them time, will do that!
0$ - I do it all myself using a free application. This applies to Denmark, though. I don't know the options in other countries.
Neat - german bureaucracy is known to be awful, so it might be especially hard here haha. Glad to hear you can do it for free :)
These days all the bookkeeping can be 90% automated using mobile data capture apps (often free) and PDF email received to record within a bookkeeping app (often free also). Both feeding into the bookkeeping app.
Both MYOB and Xero have excellent options. Xero is more expensive. There are many great app options in this space. They are just 2 from recent countries I lived and worked in. Its been years since I have helped a german business but I would shocked if it is any different.
The bookkeeping app you use, will have recurring transaction feature, standard transaction feature, so it is all automated. Then a bookkeeper or accountant, can review your books periodically if your desiring added reassurance. Then once a year, depending on your country you submit your electronic file to the country's tax office. Again if you wish to have some added assurance, a registered Tax Agent in your country can review it. Like 1hr max if that. Typically 15min. If any ideas then a bit more time. Most are stock standard these days until your turn over is 200K +
The key point, is configure the bookkeeping app correctly, so app works for you rather than you work for the app. I have taught many a 60 + year old how to use these apps so they are super simple. It is about setting them up correctly.
What you are paying is over 10 times over, what you could pay
My business is based out of India. I pay Rs 800 for Sales Tax ( GST ) filling.
I do incomtax myself once a year.
I have my books done by decent company in India, you can send over a sample of your invoices and they will give you a quote. I was referred to them by another online business owner. DM me for their email.
I live in South America, I get 3 invoices per month and I have to pay $80 to a federated accountant. I think that $133 isn't bad, especially in the US.
I'm in Germany ;) But thanks for your feedback!