For US CPA and accounting firms
Hire a bookkeeper who works only for your firm.
tryACOwork gives US accounting firms trained, dedicated bookkeepers in India. They work inside your software, on your clients, to your process - for a fixed monthly fee, with no recruiting, no payroll and no office to pay for.
From $1,600 a month for a full-time bookkeeper. Everything included.
No commitment. Start with a free 20-hour pilot on real work.
You do not have a work problem. You have a people problem.
Every firm owner we speak to says a version of the same three things.
“I am turning away good clients.”
Not because the work is not profitable, but because there is nobody to do it. Growth stopped being a marketing problem and became a staffing one.
“I cannot hire, and when I do, they leave.”
More than 300,000 US accountants and auditors left their jobs in two years, a 17 percent decline. Finding qualified staff is the number one issue reported by CPA firms of almost every size.
(Wall Street Journal, December 2022) (AICPA PCPS CPA Firm Top Issues Survey, 2024)
“January to April is breaking my team.”
The bookkeeping backlog does not pause for tax season. It just piles up behind it, and the review work lands on you at 10pm.
You already know offshoring is the answer that most firms are landing on - about a quarter of firms already do it, and another 12 percent plan to start. The question is who you would trust with it.
(AICPA 2023 National MAP Survey, cited in Journal of Accountancy, November 2024)
Three steps, about two weeks.
1. We find the person
Tell us what you need on a 20-minute call. We shortlist from our team and from candidates we recruit for you, then send you two or three profiles with real work samples. You interview them yourself, by video. You choose.
2. We train them on your firm
Before your bookkeeper touches live client work, we build a written process document with you, set up access inside your systems, and run them through a paid practice week on sample files. You do not pay for that week.
3. They start, and you review
Your bookkeeper works your hours, in your software, on the clients you assign. Work comes back to you for review and sign-off, because the professional responsibility stays with your firm - always. We handle their salary, benefits, equipment, office, HR and replacement.
Here is what it costs. No form to fill in first.
One price, billed monthly, in US dollars. It covers the person, their equipment, their office, their manager and their replacement if you ever need one.
Full-time bookkeeper
$1,600a month
160 hours a month, about 40 hours a week, dedicated to your firm only. Works your chosen hours.
Part-time bookkeeper
$880a month
80 hours a month, about 20 hours a week. A good way to start if you are not sure you can fill a full week yet.
Included in both, at no extra cost:
- Salary, taxes and benefits
- A laptop and a second monitor
- A desk in a secure, access-controlled office
- Power and internet backup
- A team lead who oversees their work
- Ongoing US GAAP and software training
- A free replacement if the fit is wrong
- 30 days notice to cancel, any time
Not included, and we will not pretend otherwise:
- Software licences stay in your name, because your clients’ data should live in your systems, not ours
- Work outside bookkeeping, such as tax return preparation, which we do not offer
- Hours above the ones you have bought, which are billed at $12 an hour and only with your written approval
- Full US-hours coverage from 9am to 5pm Eastern, which is a night shift in India and costs $150 a month more per person
Not a pool, not a queue.
When you book a call, we will send you real profiles of the people who could work for your firm - name, experience, certifications, a work sample and a short video introduction - before you commit to anything.
The standard every bookkeeper on our team meets
- A commerce graduate - B.Com or M.Com - who has worked on US books before joining us.
- Our own employee, on our payroll, in our office. Not a freelancer and not a subcontractor.
- Working under a senior team lead who reviews the work before it reaches you.
- Certified in the software your clients use, or trained on it during onboarding at no charge.
- Bound by a signed confidentiality agreement covering your firm and your clients.
The work you can hand over on day one.
- Bank and credit card reconciliations
- Transaction categorisation and coding
- Accounts payable: bill entry, coding, payment runs
- Accounts receivable: invoicing, statements, collections follow-up
- Payroll journal entries from ADP, Gusto or Paychex reports
- Month-end close checklists and supporting schedules
- Prepaid, accrual, depreciation and amortisation schedules
- Sales tax reconciliations and filing preparation
- Cleanup and catch-up work on neglected books
- Financial statement preparation for your review
- 1099 preparation and vendor record maintenance
Software our team works in: QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, Bill.com, Dext, Hubdoc, Gusto, ADP, Paychex. If you use something else, we will learn it during onboarding at no charge.
Your clients’ data never leaves your systems.
We work inside your software
Your bookkeeper logs into your QuickBooks, your Xero, your document portal, with their own named account and their own credentials. Nothing is copied to our servers.
Nothing is downloaded, nothing is carried out
Work happens on company machines in a locked office. USB ports are disabled, local downloads are blocked, personal phones stay out of the work area, and access is logged.
Every person is checked and bound
Background and reference checks before hire, a signed confidentiality agreement covering your firm and your clients, annual security training, and access only to the clients you assign.
What the same work costs two ways.
An honest comparison, using published US wage data rather than our own numbers.
| Cost | US in-house bookkeeper | tryACOwork bookkeeper |
|---|---|---|
| Salary or fee | US in-house bookkeeper:$49,210 a year median | tryACOwork bookkeeper:$19,200 a year |
| Payroll taxes and benefits | US in-house bookkeeper:Roughly 20 to 30 percent on top | tryACOwork bookkeeper:Included |
| Recruiting and onboarding cost | US in-house bookkeeper:Your time, plus agency fees | tryACOwork bookkeeper:Included |
| Equipment and desk | US in-house bookkeeper:Yours to buy | tryACOwork bookkeeper:Included |
| Paid time off and sick cover | US in-house bookkeeper:Yours to absorb | tryACOwork bookkeeper:Covered by us |
| If they leave | US in-house bookkeeper:Start hiring again | tryACOwork bookkeeper:Free replacement |
| Notice to end | US in-house bookkeeper:Employment law applies | tryACOwork bookkeeper:30 days |
US median annual wage for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks: $49,210, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2024. Fully loaded cost of a US in-house bookkeeper is commonly estimated at $58,000 or more once payroll taxes, healthcare, retirement contributions, paid time off and equipment are counted. Your own costs will differ.
The questions everyone asks.
A freelancer works for several firms and disappears when a better offer arrives. Your tryACOwork bookkeeper is our full-time employee, works only for your firm, sits in our office under a team lead who checks their work, and is covered by our confidentiality agreements and our replacement guarantee. If they are unwell or on leave, we cover the work.
Tell us and we replace them, at no cost, and we do not charge you for the ramp-up time on the replacement. That is why the process starts with you interviewing candidates yourself, and with a free 20-hour pilot on real work.
For bookkeeping work, the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct expects you to inform clients that a third-party service provider may be used, and to take reasonable steps to protect their confidential information. Most firms handle this with a single sentence in their engagement letter. We give you suggested wording on our security page, and your bookkeeper is bound by a confidentiality agreement that covers your clients directly. Note that tax return preparation has stricter rules: the regulations under IRC Section 7216 require signed client consent, in IRS-prescribed wording for individual Form 1040 returns, before tax return information goes to a preparer outside the United States - we do not prepare tax returns, so that rule does not apply to our bookkeeping work. Please confirm your own position with your professional adviser.
You choose. The standard arrangement is an early Indian shift that overlaps your morning, roughly 7:00am to 11:00am Eastern, so you can talk to them at the start of your day and find the work finished when you arrive the next morning. Full US-hours coverage is available for $150 a month more per person.
Every person on our team is interviewed in English and works in English all day. You will judge for yourself - you interview the candidate by video before you hire them, and the pilot gives you two weeks of real written communication to assess.
Two people. A senior team lead on our side checks the work before it reaches you, and then you review and sign off. The professional responsibility for the work your firm issues stays with your firm - we will never suggest otherwise, and any provider who does is telling you something that is not true.
One month, and 30 days notice to stop. There is no annual contract, no setup fee and no recruitment fee.
Usually 10 to 14 calendar days from the first call: two to three days to shortlist, your interviews, then a week of setup and practice on sample files that you do not pay for.
New Delhi, India, in our own access-controlled office. We are happy to walk you through it on video, and you are welcome to visit.
No. We do not prepare or review tax returns of any kind. We will not sign off on anything either, or reach an accounting conclusion on your behalf - that is your firm’s work and it stays there. The full list of what we do not do is on our services page, and being clear about the edges is part of being good at the middle.
Find out what one bookkeeper would do for your firm.
A 20-minute video call. We will tell you what it costs, how many of your clients one person could carry, and whether we are the right fit - including if we are not.