The salary line is only the beginning. When businesses calculate the cost of an in-house back-office team, they typically look at base compensation. The real number is considerably higher, and the gap is where most of the risk lives.

What the salary line misses

A full-time bookkeeper or back-office coordinator in the US typically costs between $45,000 and $65,000 in base salary. Add payroll taxes (approximately 7.65%), health benefits, paid leave, software licences, and the management overhead required to supervise and develop the role, and the all-in cost rises to roughly $75,000–$90,000 per year for a single headcount.

The turnover multiplier

Average tenure in back-office roles in small and mid-size businesses is under two years. Each departure carries a recruitment cost (typically 15–20% of annual salary), a transition gap of four to eight weeks, and a knowledge-transfer risk if process documentation is weak, which it usually is.

The compliance exposure

An in-house team operating without specialist oversight carries regulatory risk that grows with the complexity of the business. Multi-jurisdiction payroll, multi-currency reporting, and changing tax rules are not well-served by a generalist hire.

Put numbers on it: our free true cost of an employee calculator adds payroll taxes, workers’ comp and benefits to a salary, and compares the total with outsourcing.

What the comparison actually looks like

A managed back-office engagement through Ledger Brigade typically delivers bookkeeping, reconciliation, payroll processing, and reporting at a fraction of the all-in cost of a single in-house hire, with no turnover risk, no systems overhead, and no compliance gap.

The question is not whether you can afford to outsource. It is whether you can afford not to.