How many hours a month do you all spend on accounting work?

★★ signal-medium r/smallbusiness · ↑ 73 · 💬 45 · 2025-11-04 · kw: too much time · open on reddit ↗

Tool

Ramp, QuickBooks, AI bookkeeping tools

Issue

SaaS founder at $40k MRR spends 14 hours/month on accounting (expense reports, receipt management, invoice chasing, bookkeeper coordination), growing transaction volume increases burden, cannot yet justify full-time finance hire.

Cost

14 hours/month (~3.5 hours/week); outsourced alternatives cited at $315/month

Recommendation

Ramp for expense tracking automation; part-time bookkeeper; AI bookkeeping tools; outsourced accounting firm

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

I've been running my saas company for about 18 months and I just tracked my time last month so for october (a friend who runs a similar business spends close to 10 hours so I thought why not check it myself) and it turns out I spent around 14 hours on accounting in general (expense reports receipt management etc) I've looked into hiring someone but we're only at $40k mrr and it feels too early to bring on a full finance person but I also can't keep doing this forever. The business is growing and so are the transactions (not complaining about this at all fwiw haha) Just curious how much time do you guys spend on this I just wanna know if I'm being slow Thanks!

Top comments (8)

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[score=18] Minimum_Primary641

14 hours a month sounds pretty reasonable for an 18 month old Saas especially if you're chasing invoices and dealing with bookkeeper back and forth. You're not being slow. The annoying truth is that most of those hours are probably spent on a mix of things - some you can automate and some you can't. Invoice chasing is just a reality of b2b unfortunately. Timesheets and invoicing workflows depend a lot on your specific setup. The receipts and expense tracking side got way easier for us when we switched to Ramp - that cut down on a chunk of the bookkeeper questions and manual reconciliation stuff. At 40k MRR you're probably right that a full time finance person is premature, but you might be at the point where a part time bookkeeper who does more than just answer your questions could take some of this off your plate. Or even a VA for invoice follow ups. The goal isn't to get to 0 hours (impossible) but getting it under 5 to 7 hours seems doable with the right automation + delegation. Hope it helped :)

[score=8] Kotetsu999

One. I have a guy who does it for me. Worth every penny.

[score=7] phonyticker37

14 hours doesnt sound bad if you're doing it all yourself

[score=5] ReInvestWealth_Help

Totally relatable, most founders underestimate how much time accounting actually eats up each month. 10–15 hours sounds pretty normal once you’re in the $40K MRR range, especially with growing transaction volume. If it’s starting to feel like a drag, you might not need a full finance hire yet, just better systems. AI bookkeeping tools like [ReInvestWealth ](https://www.reinvestwealth.com/?utm_campaign=251105-1221-HE-red-com)(AI bookkeeping + CPA oversight) can cut that time down to a couple of hours a month without the overhead of a full-time accountant. Hope this helps!

[score=3] BookkeeperGuy

I would say outsource the bookkeeping and accounting tasks to a firm

[score=3] NanoSoftNL

A couple of hours. I am trying to use AI tools to increase efficiency. Actually I will launch the tools for all business owner, freelancer, accountants.

[score=3] Spin_Me

Zero - I pay an accountant $315/mo to keep our books, file taxes and provide advice as needed. I tried Quickbooks when we launched, but it was a hassle. The accountant has saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars.