Business Strategy

What a Small Business Accountant Costs in Australia

Nobody can tell you what your accountant should cost without knowing your business. What anybody can tell you is how the pricing works, so you can read a quote properly.

Travis Krantz CPA & Registered Tax Agent 4 September 2026 6 min read

Want a number for your own situation? Book a free strategy session (opens in new window) and you'll have it in writing.

Key Takeaways

Three fee models exist: hourly, fixed price for a defined job, and a fixed monthly fee. They behave very differently when the job turns out to be harder than expected.
Structure, GST, payroll and the state of your books move a quote far more than turnover does.
Get the scope in writing before you agree. Most fee disputes are scope disputes wearing a different hat.

"How much does an accountant cost?" is the question I get asked earliest and answer last, because the honest answer is that it depends on things the person asking has not told me yet. That is not a dodge. It is the whole point: two businesses with identical turnover can be a four-hour job and a forty-hour job.

What I can do is show you how accounting fees are actually built, so that when you get a quote you can tell whether it is a good one.

The three ways accountants charge

1. Hourly

The traditional model. You are billed for time recorded against your file. It is transparent in one sense and completely opaque in another: you cannot know the total until the work is finished, and the number depends on how fast the person doing it happens to be.

The real problem with hourly is what it does to the relationship. Every phone call has a meter on it, so you stop ringing. You stop ringing, so the decisions get made without advice, and the advice turns up afterwards as a bill for cleaning up the decision. I do not bill by the hour for exactly that reason.

2. Fixed price for a defined job

One number, agreed before the work starts, for a job with edges: a tax return, a set of financial statements, a company setup, a Xero migration. This is the right model for one-off work, and the thing that makes it work is the word "defined". A fixed price is only fixed if both of you agree what is inside it.

3. A fixed monthly fee

One amount every month covering everything your business has to lodge, plus the ability to ask questions without a clock starting. It suits a business with ongoing obligations, which in practice means anyone registered for GST and lodging BAS. It also spreads the cost across the year instead of landing as one lump after 30 June, which is usually when cash is tightest anyway.

This is how I work, and I will be upfront about the trade-off: in a very quiet year you may pay slightly more than a strict hourly count would have produced. What you buy with that is a predictable number, no hesitation about picking up the phone, and someone who has looked at your position more than once a year.

What actually drives your quote

Turnover is the number people expect to be asked. It matters less than these five.

Your structure. A sole trader has one return. A company has a company return plus financial statements plus its own ASIC obligations plus your personal return. A trust adds a resolution and a distribution decision every year. Each step up is genuinely more work, which is why fees step up with it rather than scaling with revenue.
Whether you are registered for GST. Registration means a BAS every quarter, which is four more lodgements and four more reconciliations a year. It is the single clearest line between "an individual with a business schedule" and "a business".
Payroll. Employees bring Single Touch Payroll, super obligations and their own year-end. The jump is between zero staff and one, not between five and ten.
The state of your books. This is the biggest swing factor and the one nobody volunteers. A clean, reconciled Xero file and a shoebox of receipts are not the same job. If your books need rebuilding before anything can be lodged, that is real work and it should be quoted separately and honestly rather than hidden inside a headline number.
How far behind you are. Three years of unlodged returns is three jobs, not one. It is fixable and it is common, but it should be priced as what it is.

What should be included

Whatever model you are quoted, get these in writing before you agree:

Exactly which returns and lodgements are covered, and for which entities. "Your tax" is not a scope.
Whether your personal return is in or out when the business is a company or trust. It is often out, and that is fine, as long as you knew.
Whether bookkeeping is included. It usually is not, because transaction volume varies far too much to fix a price around before anyone has seen the file.
What happens when you ring with a question. If the answer involves a timesheet, price that in.
Which charges are the government's rather than the accountant's. ASIC's annual review fee for a company is a government charge your company pays directly to ASIC, and it should never appear on an accountant's invoice.

Five questions worth asking any accountant

"Is this fee fixed, and for how long?" A fixed fee that can move mid-year is not fixed.
"What is not included?" A good answer is specific and slightly uncomfortable. A vague one is the expensive kind.
"What do you need from me, and by when?" Fees blow out when the accountant is chasing. So do deadlines.
"Will I hear from you before 30 June?" After 30 June, an accountant is reporting. Before it, they can still change the answer.
"Are you registered, and what is your number?" The Tax Practitioners Board's own words: generally, only registered tax and BAS agents can charge or receive a fee or other reward for providing tax agent, BAS or tax (financial) advice services. The Board keeps a public register you can search, and it takes about a minute.

What I charge

My own floors are published rather than quoted on request, because a starting price is a filter and filters only work if people can see them.

Individual tax returns from $390. Rental properties, share sales, capital gains and a sole trader business schedule are all handled and all priced on top of that.
Ongoing business work from $250 a month for a GST-registered sole trader, covering the quarterly BAS, the annual return, tax planning before 30 June and questions through the year.
From $350 a month for a company or trust, because a company return and financial statements sit on top of the BAS work. There is more detail on the company page and the trust page.

Those are starting points, not quotes. Your number comes out of a conversation about the five drivers above, and it goes in writing before anything starts. The full breakdown of what sits in each level is on the pricing page.

One thing people forget

The fee is deductible. The ATO treats the cost of managing your tax affairs as a deduction, and that expressly includes lodging your return through a registered tax agent and getting advice from a recognised tax adviser. It does not make the fee free, but it does mean the real cost to you is lower than the invoice, and it is worth factoring in when you are comparing doing it yourself against paying someone.

If you want a number for your own situation, the fastest way to get one is a conversation. I will ask about your structure, your books and what you actually need, and you will get one fixed fee in writing rather than a range.

Sources

Travis Krantz, CPA

Registered Tax Agent and founder of Summit Tax. Over a decade of experience helping small business owners take control of their finances.

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