If you're running an Australian business and looking for finance support, you have five realistic options. Most comparison content online is either generic, written by providers who won't name their competitors, or hedged with so many qualifications that it's useless for making a decision.
This page is different. We compare Scale Suite directly against the five alternatives, with specific pricing, scope, and honest assessments of where each option works and where it falls short. Choosing the wrong model can lock you into poor visibility, compliance risk, and wasted capital for years. This comparison is designed to help you avoid that.
This is written for Australian SMEs that have grown past the point where the owner can manage the books, but aren't large enough to justify a full internal finance department. You're weighing up your options and want a straight answer. Here it is.
What's included. You handle all bookkeeping, BAS preparation, payroll, invoicing, debtor management, and financial reporting. You use Xero or MYOB, probably set it up yourself or had your accountant do a basic configuration. You lodge your own BAS or hand a folder of receipts to your accountant at quarter end.
What it costs. No direct cost for the labour, though your time is worth something. Xero subscription runs $29 to $78 per month. Possibly Dext or Hubdoc for receipt capture. Your accountant's quarterly or annual fee for BAS review and tax return adds $2,000 to $8,000 per year depending on complexity.
Who it suits. Sole traders or very early-stage businesses with simple transactions. Businesses under the GST threshold. Anyone who genuinely enjoys bookkeeping and has the discipline to maintain it weekly.
Where it falls short. Research shows 21 per cent of business owners spend 21 to 40 hours per month on financial admin. For most founders, the opportunity cost of that time sits well above $100 per hour when you factor in the revenue-generating work, client relationships, and strategic decisions they're not doing instead. That puts the real cost at $2,100 to $4,000 per month in lost productive time. More than 40 per cent of SMB owners report spending more time on finance than on growing their business. Self-managed Xero files almost always develop configuration issues that compound over time, affecting BAS accuracy and profit reporting. Our benchmark data shows the majority of files we onboard need significant reconfiguration before they produce reliable numbers.
Our honest assessment. DIY works until it doesn't. The breaking point usually arrives when you miss a BAS deadline, can't tell whether you're actually profitable, or spend a Sunday reconciling bank transactions instead of being with your family. The money saved on bookkeeping fees is typically spent twice over in owner time and missed opportunities.
How Scale Suite compares. Scale Suite replaces the 8 to 12 hours per week you spend on finance admin. Your books are maintained daily, BAS is lodged on time, and you get reporting that tells you where your business actually stands. Starting from approximately $1,000 per month for core bookkeeping and BAS.
What's included. Typically 5 to 15 hours per week of bookkeeping support. Bank reconciliation, transaction coding, accounts payable and receivable processing, and BAS preparation. May or may not handle payroll depending on qualifications. Usually works on your Xero file remotely or visits your office one or two days per week.
What it costs. $35 to $65 per hour for a competent bookkeeper. At 10 hours per week, that's $1,400 to $2,600 per month. If they're a registered BAS agent, they can lodge your BAS. If not, you still need your accountant for lodgement. Add employer costs if they're on payroll: super at 12 per cent, WorkCover, leave entitlements. Total loaded cost is closer to $1,800 to $3,400 per month for a part-time arrangement.
Who it suits. Businesses with straightforward bookkeeping needs and stable, predictable transaction volumes. Businesses that prefer a named person who knows their operations intimately.
Where it falls short. The limitation isn't competence. There are excellent bookkeepers in Australia. The limitation is scope. A part-time bookkeeper does bookkeeping. They don't provide cash flow forecasting, financial strategy, pricing analysis, or growth planning. When they go on holiday, the work stops. When they're sick, the work stops. There's no backup, no escalation path, and no CA-qualified oversight unless you're also paying your accountant for review. You're also managing another employee or contractor relationship: timesheets, invoicing, performance, and replacement if they leave.
Our honest assessment. This option works well for businesses that need reliable transaction processing and nothing more. The risk is that it creates a ceiling. You get clean books but no insight from them. And if errors occur, whether incorrect GST codes, misallocated expenses, or wrong payroll tax calculations, there's often nobody checking the work until your accountant finds issues months later.
How Scale Suite compares. Scale Suite includes everything a part-time bookkeeper does, plus CA-qualified review, BAS lodgement, payroll management, and monthly financial reporting. If your analyst is unavailable, another team member steps in the same day. Starting from approximately $1,500 per month for core services, which is comparable to or less than a part-time bookkeeper, with broader scope and built-in quality control.
What's included. A dedicated employee handling all finance operations. Bookkeeping, BAS, payroll, management reporting, cash flow management, budgeting, and potentially strategic finance support. Works exclusively for your business. Available 38 hours per week.
What it costs. Base salary for a competent finance manager in Australia: $125,000 to $155,000 per year depending on experience and location, based on current data from SEEK, Glassdoor, and Robert Half. Add super at 12 per cent, WorkCover, annual leave, personal leave, payroll tax if applicable, equipment, software licences, and training. Fully loaded cost: $160,000 to $200,000 per year, or approximately $13,000 to $17,000 per month. Recruitment costs through an agency: $15,000 to $30,000.
Who it suits. Businesses large enough to keep one person fully occupied with finance work. Complex operations with multiple entities, significant payroll, or regulatory reporting requirements. Businesses that need someone physically present for cash handling or warehouse inventory.
Where it falls short. Most growing SMEs don't have 38 hours of finance work per week. They have 15 to 20 hours of transactional work and occasional strategic needs. A full-time hire means you're paying for idle capacity. You also carry single-person risk: when they leave, all institutional knowledge walks out the door. There's no CA oversight unless you hire at that level, which pushes salary well above $150,000. And you still need an external accountant for tax returns and compliance review.
Our honest assessment. If you have the volume and complexity to justify it, a full-time finance manager is excellent. The problem is that most businesses hire one two to three years too early, paying $130,000 or more for a role that's 50 per cent bookkeeping. The better approach for most growing businesses is to outsource until the volume genuinely demands a full-time in-house role, then bring someone in at a senior level to manage strategy while the operational work continues externally.
How Scale Suite compares. Scale Suite provides the operational output of a finance manager, and more given the team structure, at a fraction of the cost. Our comprehensive packages range from approximately $3,000 to $6,000 per month, which is 30 to 50 per cent of the cost of a full-time hire. You get CA oversight, team redundancy, and the ability to scale scope up or down without recruitment or redundancy.
What's included. Many mid-tier and larger accounting firms offer bookkeeping as an add-on service. Typically includes quarterly or monthly bookkeeping, BAS preparation and lodgement, and year-end compliance work. Some firms offer payroll. Work is usually done in batches: your transactions pile up and are processed in bulk at month-end or quarter-end.
What it costs. $500 to $2,000 per month for basic bookkeeping from an accounting firm. BAS lodgement often included. Payroll usually additional. Year-end tax return and financial statements: $3,000 to $8,000. Annual relationship cost: $9,000 to $30,000 or more depending on firm size and scope.
Who it suits. Businesses that want one provider for everything. Owners who prefer working with an established firm with professional indemnity insurance and regulatory oversight. Simple operations that don't need real-time financial visibility.
Where it falls short. The fundamental model is backward-looking. Your books are processed in batches, so you're always looking at last month's or last quarter's numbers. There's no daily integration with your operations. Communication happens via email, usually with a 24 to 48 hour response time. The bookkeeping is typically handled by more junior staff in the firm, and depending on firm workload, review by a senior may be inconsistent. When you have a question about your numbers mid-month, there's nobody to ask without booking a meeting. And the firm's priority clients are generally their larger accounts, not their $15,000 bookkeeping engagements.
Our honest assessment. Accounting firms are excellent at compliance. Year-end tax, financial statements, audit preparation. These are their core strengths and worth paying for. But bookkeeping is rarely their primary focus, and the batch-processing model means you never have real-time visibility. You get clean numbers eventually, but "eventually" doesn't help when you need to make a hiring decision or quote a large job this week.
How Scale Suite compares. Scale Suite operates as your finance team, not your compliance provider. Your books are maintained daily, not in monthly batches. Communication is daily in our platform, not email. Response time is same-day. You still need an accountant for your tax return and financial statements, and we work with yours, providing them with clean, reconciled data that makes their job faster and your tax position more accurate. Our model starts from approximately $1,500 per month.
What's included. A dedicated or shared offshore staff member handling bookkeeping and data entry. Typically based in the Philippines. They process transactions in your Xero file, handle accounts payable and receivable, and prepare BAS figures for your review or your accountant's lodgement. Some providers offer payroll processing.
Before we go further, a disclosure. Scale Suite uses Philippines-based finance analysts as part of our model. The difference, which we'll explain below, is that we pair them with Australian CA-qualified oversight, established processes, and local management. We're not an offshore outsourcing provider. We're an Australian-managed embedded finance team that happens to include offshore talent.
What it costs. $800 to $2,000 per month for a dedicated staff member through an outsourcing provider. Shared arrangements from $400 to $800 per month. Some providers charge hourly at $15 to $25 AUD per hour. Junior offshore bookkeepers start as low as $4 to $8 per hour, with experienced staff reaching $14 to $25. Hidden costs include training time when staff turn over, which happens frequently in offshore centres, and the hours you or your accountant spend on quality review.
Who it suits. Businesses with high-volume, repetitive transaction processing. Operations where the bookkeeping is straightforward and the primary need is labour cost reduction. Businesses where the owner or a local staff member can provide consistent oversight and quality control.
Where it falls short. The staff doing your books typically don't hold Australian qualifications. They're often unfamiliar with Australian GST rules, payroll tax, superannuation obligations, and ATO reporting requirements. BAS preparation requires a registered BAS agent to lodge, which the offshore provider usually isn't. Quality control falls on you or your accountant. Time zone differences mean your questions get answered tomorrow, not today. Staff turnover in offshore centres is high, and you may find yourself re-training a new person every 6 to 12 months. There's also no strategic overlay: you get transaction processing, not financial insight. And with the ATO increasing scrutiny on non-traditional employment and contractor arrangements, the compliance landscape around offshore models is becoming more complex.
Our honest assessment. Offshore outsourcing works for the bookkeeping component if you have strong local oversight. The mistake is treating it as a complete solution. Without Australian-qualified review, the work product often contains errors that aren't caught until BAS time or year-end. The savings on labour cost can be offset by cleanup costs and your own time spent managing the relationship.
How Scale Suite compares. Our offshore team members are trained in Australian compliance and work within our quality framework under CA-qualified review. You get the cost efficiency of offshore talent with the quality assurance of local professionals. You deal with us daily with same-day responses, not directly managing an offshore worker. The difference is structure, oversight, and accountability.
If you're a sole trader or micro business with simple transactions and genuinely have the time and discipline to maintain your own books weekly, DIY probably still works. Invest in a proper Xero setup and a good accountant.
If you're growing and spending too much time on finance, or you've started missing deadlines and can't get a clear picture of your numbers, that's where Scale Suite or a part-time bookkeeper comes in. Scale Suite offers broader scope at a comparable price point with built-in quality control and no single-person risk.
If you're running a complex operation with multiple entities, significant payroll, or regulatory reporting requirements that genuinely fill 38 hours a week, a full-time finance manager makes sense. Scale Suite can support the transition or handle operational work alongside an in-house hire.
If your primary need is compliance at the lowest possible cost and you don't need real-time visibility, a traditional accounting firm's bookkeeping service may be sufficient. Accept the trade-off of batch processing and limited accessibility.
If you need high-volume transaction processing only and have strong local oversight to manage quality, offshore outsourcing works for the transactional component. Scale Suite provides this as a managed solution with the oversight built in.
For the majority of Australian SMEs experiencing growth, where the owner is spending too much time on finance, the books need attention, and the business needs real-time visibility without the cost of a full-time hire, an integrated embedded finance model delivers the best balance of cost, quality, and coverage. That's what Scale Suite was built for.
How much does Scale Suite cost compared to hiring a bookkeeper?
Scale Suite's core bookkeeping and BAS package starts from approximately $1,000 per month. A part-time bookkeeper typically costs $1,400 to $3,400 per month including on-costs. Scale Suite includes CA-qualified oversight and team redundancy that a sole bookkeeper doesn't provide.
Can Scale Suite replace a full-time finance manager?
For most growing SMEs, yes. Our comprehensive packages at $3,000 to $6,000 per month deliver the same operational output at 30 to 50 per cent of the cost of a full-time hire, with broader team expertise and no single-person risk.
What's the difference between Scale Suite and an accounting firm's bookkeeping service?
The model. Accounting firms process your books in monthly or quarterly batches. Scale Suite maintains your books daily and communicates with same-day response times. We handle operations. Your accountant handles tax compliance. The two work together.
Does Scale Suite use offshore staff?
Yes. Our team model includes Philippines-based finance analysts paired with Australian CA-qualified oversight. This gives you cost efficiency with quality assurance and Australian compliance expertise. The difference between our model and a standalone offshore provider is the structure, training, and local management layer.
What's included in Scale Suite's service that a bookkeeper doesn't provide?
Depending on your package: BAS lodgement by a registered BAS agent, payroll management, monthly financial reporting, cash flow forecasting, debtor management, and fractional CFO support. A bookkeeper typically handles transaction processing only.
We already have a bookkeeper. How does Scale Suite work alongside them?
It depends on what you need. Some businesses transition their bookkeeping to Scale Suite entirely and keep their bookkeeper for other operational tasks. Others use Scale Suite for the oversight, reporting, and strategic layer that sits above bookkeeping. We work with your existing providers rather than requiring you to replace everyone at once. The right approach depends on where your gaps are.
How quickly can Scale Suite get started?
Most businesses are fully onboarded within three to four weeks. Businesses with significant backlogs or cleanup requirements may take six to eight weeks to reach steady state. Our benchmark report covers what the onboarding and cleanup process typically looks like.
What software does Scale Suite use?
We work primarily in Xero, paired with Employment Hero for payroll and HR. We use Dext for receipt management and integrate with your existing tools where possible.
Do I still need my accountant if I use Scale Suite?
Yes, for your annual tax return and financial statements. We work alongside your accountant, providing them with clean, reconciled data that makes their job faster and your tax position more accurate. Most accountants prefer working with us because they receive well-maintained books instead of a year-end cleanup job.
Scale Suite provides embedded finance teams for Australian SMEs. We replace the need for an in-house bookkeeper or finance manager with a dedicated team that integrates into your business daily. Our services range from core bookkeeping and BAS through to full fractional CFO support. For the data behind the problems we solve, see our Australian SME Finance Operations Benchmark Report.
Scale Suite is a provider of the embedded finance team model described in this comparison. While we've aimed for accuracy and fairness, this comparison naturally reflects our perspective and experience. We review and update this page periodically to reflect current pricing and market conditions. All figures are accurate based on available information at time of publication. Competitor pricing represents typical ranges and may vary based on location, scope, and provider. This comparison does not constitute financial advice. Businesses should evaluate their specific needs before making a decision.
Scale Suite delivers embedded finance and human resource services for ambitious Australian businesses.Our Sydney-based team integrates with your daily operations through a shared platform, working like part of your internal staff but with senior-level expertise. From complete bookkeeping to strategic CFO insights, we deliver better outcomes than a single hire - without the recruitment risk, training time, or full-time salary commitment.
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