What does it cost to hire a bookkeeper in the UK?

A full-time bookkeeper on the median salary costs a UK employer about £36,304 a year with employer National Insurance and the minimum pension, and about £38,304 in the first year once the cost of recruiting is added. For the group bookkeepers are counted in, book-keepers, payroll managers and wages clerks, the Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2025 puts the median across all employees, part time included, at £27,743 and the full-time median at £31,560, with the middle half of full-time earners between £26,802 and £40,123. On top of the salary the employer pays National Insurance at 15% on pay above £5,000, a pension contribution of at least 3% of qualifying earnings and 5.6 weeks of paid holiday, and the CIPD puts the median cost of making the hire at £2,000.

How much is a bookkeeper paid?

Bookkeeper is one of the titles the ONS codes directly to unit group 4122, so the figures above are as close to the job as national statistics get. They describe the tax year to April 2025, for employees who had been in the same job for more than a year. The group also holds payroll managers, which lifts its upper quarter. The National Careers Service gives a narrower working range for the title itself, £24,000 for a starter to £35,000 for an experienced bookkeeper.

What does an employer pay on top of a bookkeeper's salary?

• Employer National Insurance. For 2026 to 2027 the rate is 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year. On the median salary that is £3,984. A business that qualifies for the Employment Allowance can take up to £10,500 off its employer National Insurance bill for the year.

• Pension. The minimum employer contribution is 3% of qualifying earnings, which run from £6,240 to £50,270 a year. On £31,560 that is about £760.

• Holiday. Statutory paid leave is 5.6 weeks a year, 28 days for a five-day week, which leaves a little over 46 working weeks in the year.

• Recruitment. The CIPD's 2026 survey gives a median cost per hire of £2,000 for staff below senior management, including the time your own people spend on it. It is a median from a small sample of 223 employers.

Salary, National Insurance and pension come to £36,304 a year at the median, and £38,304 with recruitment in the first year. Software, a laptop, training and the slow first weeks come on top.

A bookkeeper's week, in a practice and for a contractor

The National Careers Service lists the work: process purchase and sales invoices, make sure bank statements match the records, prepare VAT returns, run the wages and the expense claims, help prepare the annual accounts. In an accountancy practice a bookkeeper does that for a portfolio of clients, and since Making Tax Digital for Income Tax began, the sole traders and landlords it covers send HMRC an update from their digital records every three months, so those books can no longer wait for the year end. In a construction business the same job carries the Construction Industry Scheme: the deduction from each subcontractor's labour, the payment and deduction statement, the monthly return, and the domestic reverse charge on the VAT.

Can AI do part of a bookkeeper's job?

An AI worker is given a written role inside the bookkeeping software you already run, proposes each entry, and waits for approval wherever a judgement is involved. The role we specify for this job is bookkeeping data entry. It picks up the lines your capture tool and bank rules have not settled, proposes the account and VAT code from how that supplier was coded before, lists the bank lines with nothing behind them and asks the client or the site manager in writing what each one was, then prepares the entries as drafts with the doubtful ones at the top of the review list. For a contractor, it puts a subcontractor's invoice into the review list with labour split from materials, the CIS deduction worked out and the reverse charge marked, for the bookkeeper to confirm. Alongside it, purchase invoice processing matches supplier invoices to orders and deliveries, and invoice and payment chasing keeps your own sales ledger moving.

What stays with the bookkeeper?

• The bank reconciliation, which in any package is the bookkeeper's check on everything else.

• The VAT treatment of anything unusual, and the VAT return itself.

• Whether a subcontractor is paid gross or under deduction, which follows HMRC's verification.

• New suppliers, any change to bank details, and every payment.

• The call to a client who sends nothing until the quarter is due.

The AI worker gets the file to the point where those judgements can be made quickly; it does not make them.

Keying or judgement: which are you hiring for?

Write down the bookkeeper's week before you advertise it, and mark each task as keying or as judgement. If the keying list is the longer one, that is the list an AI worker can take, and what is left may be a part-time bookkeeper, or more of the one you have, rather than a new full-time post. If the judgement list is the longer one, the figures above are what a good bookkeeper costs, and you should hire one. AI staff compared with hiring an administrator sets the two side by side, the reasoning is the same as in what it costs to hire an administrator, and what it costs to employ someone in the UK covers any hire. The case for a practice is made in how to scale an accountancy practice without hiring more staff, for a contractor in how to scale a construction firm without hiring more staff. Our starting price is on the homepage.

In a role specified with you before anything is built, an AI worker would take the keying and the queries from a bookkeeper's week, and the reconciliation, the VAT return and every payment would stay with your bookkeeper. Bring the keying list from the bookkeeper's week when you talk to our agent.