Do the books yourself, or pay someone to?
One tape, two columns. This site prints the case for keeping your own books and the case for paying a bookkeeper, entry by entry, and leaves the total to you.
Nothing is published yet. What follows is what the tape will carry — not work already done.
Both columns
Neither side is the house answer. Each gets the same width of tape.
You post every entry+
Software you pay for, hours you never bill, and a mis-categorised month you find at year end.
Someone else posts them+
A monthly fee, the hours back, and a set of books you still have to read and question.
What will print here
The topics being fed to the machine, in no order of importance.
DIY bookkeeping against a paid service×
The straight head-to-head: cost, time, control, and what breaks under each.
What each way actually costs×
Service pricing on one side; software, subscriptions and your own hours on the other.
The DIY stack, start to first close×
Chart of accounts, bank feeds, receipts, and what month-end asks of you.
Where DIY books go wrong×
The mistakes that surface at tax time, and which of them are recoverable.
Where a paid service disappoints×
Handover gaps, slow months, and the questions a bookkeeper cannot answer for you.
Moving the books either direction×
Taking them back in-house, or handing them over, without losing a quarter.
House rules
Worth printing before there is anything to read, because it is what the writing will be held to.
Nothing is scored÷
No stars, no ratings, no tier boards. Where one option suits a reader better, it is argued in words with the reasoning shown.
No test that did not happen÷
Nothing here describes a methodology nobody ran. If a service was not used, the write-up says what it is based on instead.
The debate stays open÷
Some books belong with their owner and some belong with a bookkeeper. This site is built to help you tell which, not to decide it for you.
Affiliate links are disclosed÷
Some links may earn a commission. That never sets the order things appear in, and it is stated on the page it applies to.
Reading the tape
Start from your own month=
Transaction volume and how messy it is, not the brand on the software.
Price your hours honestly=
The DIY column is only the cheap one if your time is worth nothing.
Read both columns before either total=
Every entry has a matching one on the other side. Skipping one is how the sum goes wrong.
The tape is blank. This site is new and nothing has been published yet — the lines above are the ground it will cover, not work already done. When the first write-ups are printed they will appear here, one entry per line.