What does it cost to hire an accounts assistant in the UK?

A full-time accounts assistant costs a UK employer about £36,304 a year at the median salary of the job's official pay group, once employer National Insurance and the minimum pension are added, and about £38,304 in the first year with recruitment. That group, unit group 4122 in the Office for National Statistics' classification, is book-keepers, payroll managers and wages clerks, and because it also includes payroll managers, its full-time median of £31,560 in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2025 sits above what many junior accounts assistant posts pay. The middle half of the group earn between £26,802 and £40,123. On top of the salary the employer pays National Insurance at 15% on everything above £5,000, a pension contribution of at least 3% of qualifying earnings and 5.6 weeks of paid holiday, and the hire itself costs a median of £2,000 to make.

How much is an accounts assistant paid?

The ONS does not publish a figure for "accounts assistant" by name. Its occupational index codes the title, along with accounts clerk and ledger clerk, to unit group 4122, book-keepers, payroll managers and wages clerks, and that is the group the figures above describe, for the tax year to April 2025 and for full-time employees who had been in the job for more than a year. The group includes payroll managers, so its top quarter is not an assistant's pay.

Adverts carrying the title are spread widely. Reed.co.uk's salary checker put their average at £32,444 on 3 October 2026. That is an average of the 2,814 adverts live on the day it was read, senior and part-qualified posts included, and it moves from day to day.

What does an employer pay on top of the salary?

• Employer National Insurance. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year the rate is 15% on earnings above the secondary threshold of £5,000 a year. On £31,560 that is £3,984. If your business qualifies for the Employment Allowance, it takes up to £10,500 off your total employer National Insurance bill for the year.

• Pension. Under automatic enrolment the employer pays at least 3% of qualifying earnings, the band between £6,240 and £50,270 a year. On the median salary that is about £760.

• Holiday. Almost every worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday, 28 days for a five-day week, so a full-time salary pays for a little over 46 weeks at the desk.

• Recruitment. The CIPD's Resourcing and talent planning report 2026 gives a median cost per hire of £2,000 for employees below senior management, counting in-house time, advertising and agency fees. It is a survey median from a small sample, the 223 employers who could estimate the cost to within a fifth.

Add the first three to the salary and the employment cost at the median is £36,304 a year. Add the recruitment cost and the first year is £38,304, before a desk, software licences and training.

What does an accounts assistant do all week?

In a manufacturing business an accounts assistant usually lives on the purchase ledger, and the week is supplier invoices. Each one is matched to the purchase order and the goods received note, and a price or quantity that does not agree is queried. The assistant reconciles supplier statements against the ledger, answers the suppliers asking when they will be paid, prepares the payment run and helps close the month. Most of those hours go on reading documents and keying them into Sage, Xero or QuickBooks.

In an accountancy practice the same title works on clients' books, which is a bookkeeper's week under another name. That job has its own article: what it costs to hire a bookkeeper.

Can AI do part of an accounts assistant's job?

An AI worker can take the part that is repeatable and rules-based. It is given a written role in your accounts system; it proposes each entry and waits for approval where a decision is involved. On the purchase ledger the role we would specify is purchase invoice processing, which reads every supplier invoice, does the three-way match against the order and the delivery, codes it and queues it for approval with the differences listed. On your own sales ledger it can run invoice and payment chasing. For an assistant who works on clients' books in a practice, the matching role is bookkeeping data entry.

What stays with a person?

• The payment run, and every payment in it.

• The approval of each supplier invoice.

• Setting up a new supplier and any change to a supplier's bank details, which fraud advice says to confirm with the supplier on the details already on file.

• The VAT treatment of anything unusual, and the bank reconciliation.

• The phone call to a supplier who is disputing something, and the month-end judgement about what the numbers mean.

An AI worker gets the paperwork ready for each of those; it decides none of them.

Start from last month's payment run

Before you place the advert, take last month's payment run and work back from it. Count the invoices that went through without a question, and the ones that needed a call, a credit note or a decision. If most went straight through, the hours you are about to advertise are mostly matching and keying, which is work an AI worker can take, and what is left may be a part-time or more senior finance person, not a full-time assistant. If most needed a decision, hire the person at the figures above. AI staff compared with hiring an administrator sets the two side by side, what it costs to hire an administrator runs the sum for a general admin post, and what it costs to employ someone in the UK covers any hire. The wider case is in how to scale an accountancy practice without hiring more staff and how to scale a manufacturer without hiring more staff. Our starting price is on the homepage.

On a purchase ledger an AI worker could take the matching and the keying, and your people would keep the payment run, the approval of each invoice and any new supplier or change of bank details. Count how many invoices in last month's payment run went through without a question; where most did, talk to our agent.