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Solopreneur Bookkeeping: DIY or Outsource?

Outsourcing bookkeeping is a business strategy.

4 min readJun 10, 2026
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If you’re like me, you started your solo business doing your own bookkeeping. Even if you didn’t exactly know what you were doing, it was manageable at first. A few clients, a handful of expenses, maybe a spreadsheet or a simple accounting app.

As a former banker, I was comfortable with the money part of solopreneur bookkeeping. I set up my own budget, and did my own bookkeeping for years. I even prepared my own business tax return.

Then I hired a bookkeeper. Not because I couldn’t do it, but because the mental energy it took was costing me more than a bookkeeper would. Every receipt I needed to forward, every transaction I needed to categorize, every statement I needed to reconcile — it all lived in my head as one more thing to keep track of.

Most solopreneurs don’t manage their own books forever. Even if you start out with a DIY setup, eventually you’ll need help because of the amount of time or complexity involved.

If you’ve reached that point, here’s how to prepare to outsource your solopreneur bookkeeping.

1. Know when it’s time to outsource

Anna Burgess Yang
Anna Burgess Yang

Written by Anna Burgess Yang

Tech Writer + Journalist. Solopreneur Operations Strategist. Career pivots are fun. 🎉 https://start.annabyang.com/