The short answer
A bookkeeping practice is priced on its recurring client fees, not on its equipment, software or brand. We found no reliable published range for bookkeeping-only practices. The closest benchmark is commentary on small Australian accounting practices: one Queensland broker's guide says one or two person accounting practices have historically sold at 60 to 80 cents per dollar of fees (with assets and work in progress added), and one adviser's 2025 guide gives 60 to 100 per cent of annual fees as a basic rule of thumb. Some commentary on accounting firms quotes figures above a dollar, but those firms carry tax and advisory income that a bookkeeping practice does not, and in one valuer's New Zealand example, quoted by CPA Australia in 2025, bookkeeping fees were priced at 80 cents in the dollar against 120 cents for accounting work including advisory. Treat those figures as reference points, not a price. Three things decide where a practice lands: how much of the fee base is contracted, recurring and likely to stay once the owner steps back; whether the buyer can lawfully take over the work, because providing BAS services for a fee requires registration with the Tax Practitioners Board; and how exposed the practice's hours are to automation in accounting software. A fee multiple is a cross-check. The defensible number comes from maintainable earnings after a market wage for the owner, tested client by client.
What the buyer is really paying for
A bookkeeping practice owns little that a buyer wants apart from its client engagements. The computers are ordinary, the accounting software is rented, and the premises, if there are any, are rarely the asset. What is being bought is a schedule of monthly and quarterly engagements, the people and procedures that deliver them, and client relationships that keep paying. So the fee schedule by client and service line is the first document a knowledgeable buyer asks for, and lenders funding practice purchases ask for the same: one Australian finance broker's guide lists recurring fees by client and service line, concentration, retention and loss history, and the vendor's role in the transition. Not all fees are equal. Fixed monthly fees under a signed engagement are contracted income. Hourly work, catch-up projects and set-up work for new clients are one-off, and a buyer will price them separately or leave them out. The evidence that does the work:
- ·The fee schedule by client and service line (monthly bookkeeping, BAS, payroll, reporting, projects), reconciled to the financial statements and the bank
- ·Signed engagement letters or terms, notice periods, and whether fees are fixed monthly amounts or invoiced as work is done
- ·Client tenure and losses over three years: who left, why, and whether the fees were replaced
- ·Concentration: the share of recurring fees from the top five and top ten clients, and any related-party clients
- ·Fee rates against hours actually spent on each client, which shows underpriced fixed fees
- ·Service mix: fees from BAS services, payroll and work that is not a BAS service, because the regulatory position differs
- ·Who each client deals with day to day (the owner, a staff member or the software), and who holds each client's subscription
- ·Staff hours, pay, tenure and notice terms, and which staff hold their own BAS agent registration
BAS agent registration: the licence to do the work
Providing BAS services for a fee or reward is regulated work. Under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009, anyone who does it must be registered with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) unless an exemption applies, and the TPB publishes that significant civil penalties apply to providing or advertising BAS services while unregistered. A BAS service, defined in section 90-10 of the Act, is broadly ascertaining or advising about a client's liabilities, obligations or entitlements under a BAS provision (which includes GST and parts of the PAYG system), or representing the client to the Commissioner of Taxation on those matters, where the client can reasonably be expected to rely on it. The TPB's published examples treat completing an activity statement and coding transactions in a way that needs a BAS provision applied as BAS services, and bank reconciliations, data entry needing no interpretation of tax law, and coding done under a registered agent's supervision as not. That line runs through the fee base. Registration is held by a named individual or entity. For an individual the TPB requires a Certificate IV Financial Services or higher in bookkeeping or accounting, a Board approved GST/BAS course and 1,400 hours of relevant experience in the past four years (1,000 for a voting member of a recognised association). A company or partnership must register as an entity with enough registered individuals to provide and supervise the work. So a buyer either holds their own registration or takes over an entity that keeps enough registered individuals once the seller leaves, and a change of directors on a sale must be notified to the TPB within 30 days. Clients cannot simply be assigned: the Code of Professional Conduct in the Act bars disclosing a client's affairs to a third party without the client's permission, which reaches a buyer's due diligence, and the TPB's guidance on an agent changing its own practice structure requires clients' permission before they are transferred to the new structure. Registered agents must also hold professional indemnity insurance with retroactive cover, so expect questions about claims history.
Different kinds of bookkeeping practice price differently
The business model changes what a buyer will pay. A practice built on BAS lodgment and payroll compliance carries work that recurs every reporting period and has to be provided by or under a registered agent, so its buyers are limited to those who hold registration or operate through a registered entity. A practice that mainly does reconciliation and data entry needs no registration for that work, so more people can buy it and more can compete with it, and it sits closest to what software now automates. Fixed monthly fees are contracted; hourly billing is revenue at will. A fee parcel, a list of clients sold without staff or procedures, is a different asset from an operating practice whose team can deliver without the owner, and is priced on what the buyer can retain and service. Commentary on accounting practices ranks advisory and management reporting retainers above routine compliance, and the same logic applies to a bookkeeping practice that has moved into cash-flow reporting and forecasting. As fees grow, commentary moves from fee multiples to maintainable earnings.
Software and automation: the risk sits in the fee base
Routine bookkeeping is heavily exposed to software. Xero's own product page, for example, describes an AI feature that reconciles bank transactions automatically when it is highly confident of a match and suggests matches for the rest. A valuer cannot responsibly assume a figure for how much bookkeeping work will disappear, so the test is the practice's own history: has the time spent per client fallen over three years, and what happened to the fee? If clients are billed hourly, automation cuts revenue directly. If fees are fixed, automation lifts margin today but invites the client to ask why the fee has not fallen, and a buyer will price the chance of repricing or of clients doing the work themselves. Then look at what the practice sells beyond data processing, such as BAS review, payroll compliance and management reporting, where judgement and client contact still matter. Platform dependence matters too: a practice built around one vendor's partner program and pricing carries a risk outside the owner's control. None of this justifies assuming a low price. It justifies testing the fee base hard before applying any multiple.
Owner dependence and keeping the clients after the sale
Owner dependence is the main reason one practice sells near the bottom of a band and another near the top. One adviser's 2026 guide to accounting practice sales puts it plainly: if revenue continues without the owner, the practice earns the top of the range, and if revenue walks out with the owner, the bottom. The test is concrete: who do clients phone, who signs off each BAS, how many clients came through the owner's own network, and could a client name their bookkeeper without naming the owner. Goodwill that attaches to the owner personally does not transfer on sale. Retention then depends on mechanics. For clients that are companies, trusts, partnerships and other entities with an ABN (sole traders are outside the process), the ATO requires the client itself to nominate the new registered agent, and the agent then has 28 days from nomination to add the client. The handover runs client by client, each one the client's decision. One Queensland broker's guide to professional practices says a seller may need to stay on in a transition role for a minimum of 90 days, usually paid, and that retention is normally a concern for 9 to 12 months. That is why part of the price is often deferred or reset against fees actually retained. Vendor finance is a separate lever: the same adviser's guide describes sellers of accounting practices carrying 20 to 40 per cent of the price as a loan repaid over two to four years.
A worked example: from headline fees to a supportable price
Consider a hypothetical bookkeeping practice registered for BAS services, with one owner-operator and two part-time staff. Last year's fees were $420,000: $360,000 from 40 clients on signed monthly fixed-fee engagements and $60,000 of one-off catch-up and set-up projects. A buyer prices the $360,000, not the $420,000, because the project work will not recur by itself. The largest client pays $54,000 a year, 15 per cent of the recurring base, and the owner personally handles every client relationship. Staff cost $150,000 including superannuation, and overheads are $45,000, so recurring fees of $360,000 less $195,000 leave $165,000 before the owner. Assuming a market wage of $100,000 including superannuation for the owner's role, and ignoring the profit or loss on the one-off work for simplicity, maintainable earnings are $65,000, about 18 per cent of recurring fees. A fee multiple carries an unstated margin assumption, so thin margins weigh on it. Applying an assumed multiple of 0.8 times recurring fees for illustration, inside the accounting-practice rules of thumb given earlier, gives a price of $288,000. Now suppose the parties agree 70 per cent at completion ($201,600) and 30 per cent ($86,400) deferred for twelve months, reset at 0.8 times the recurring fees still billed at that point. If clients paying $36,000 a year leave in the meantime (10 per cent of the recurring base), the reset price is $259,200 (0.8 times $324,000) and the deferred payment falls from $86,400 to $57,600. The $28,800 difference is the price of the retention risk. If the largest client alone left, the price would fall by $43,200, half the deferred amount, which is how concentration and owner dependence turn into dollars. Every figure in this example is illustrative, not a benchmark.
What a defensible bookkeeping practice valuation file contains
Because fee multiples are loose rules of thumb, the supportable position is won in the evidence. For a bookkeeping practice the file typically contains:
- ·Three years of financial statements plus year-to-date trading, reconciled to the billing system and the bank
- ·The fee schedule by client and service line, split into recurring, periodic and one-off fees, with tenure and losses by client
- ·A sample of engagement letters and terms, showing notice periods and fee review rights
- ·A normalisation schedule with evidence for each adjustment, above all a market wage for the owner's hours
- ·A map of the owner's role: who holds each client relationship, who reviews and lodges each BAS, and the hours involved
- ·The regulatory position: who holds TPB registration, whether a registered company keeps enough registered individuals after a sale, and the professional indemnity policy with its retroactive date and claims history
- ·Hours per client over time, the software platforms relied on, and who holds each client's subscription
- ·A retention sensitivity showing price under different client-loss scenarios, with any comparable sales stated as asking or settled prices
When the number has consequences
A rule of thumb is enough for early thinking. A formal valuation earns its place when someone else will test the number: a sale, a buyer's lender, a partner's exit, a family law property settlement, a shareholder dispute, or a capital gains tax event, including claims for the small business CGT concessions in Division 152 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, where the $6 million maximum net asset value test can turn on documented market values. The market value standard comes from Spencer v Commonwealth (1907), a willing but not anxious buyer and seller, and the ATO's guidance is titled 'Market valuation for tax purposes'. Oliver Group prepares independent valuations only. We are not a tax agent and do not give tax, legal or financial advice; your accountant and lawyer apply the valuation in their own fields. Our reports follow the guidelines of APES 225 Valuation Services. Oliver Group's fees are set by the annual turnover of the business: a Small Business Valuation is $1,495 + GST for turnover under $2 million, a Medium Business Valuation is $2,495 + GST for turnover between $2 million and $10 million, and a Large Business / Start-Up Valuation is $3,495 + GST for turnover over $10 million or for a start-up. A small-business draft is delivered in 2 business days and a medium-business draft in 3 business days; the delivery date for a Large Business / Start-Up Valuation is agreed before commencement. Delivery time starts once payment and all required information have been received. The fee is fixed in writing before work begins and never depends on the concluded value.