What bookkeeping actually costs in Estonia

Monthly bookkeeping for an Estonian company generally runs from about €20 a month for a dormant company to €300 or so for a multi-country operation with staff. Most working small companies sit between €45 and €120. That range is wide enough to be almost useless on its own, so it is worth understanding what actually moves the number.

The two things that genuinely drive price

Almost every honest quote comes down to two questions.

How many people you pay. Payroll is the single biggest cost driver, because every employee means a TSD declaration line every month, holiday and sick pay tracking, and a calculation that has to be right to the cent. A company with no payroll and one with three employees are different products, not different sizes of the same one.

How many transactions you generate. Twenty bank lines a month is a review. Five hundred is data work. Somewhere around a hundred transactions a month the bookkeeping itself becomes the bulk of the job rather than a byproduct of it.

Everything else - your industry, whether you are VAT registered, which country you live in - adjusts the number rather than setting it.

What adjusts the number, and by how much

Payroll and transaction count set the band. These are the specifics that move you within it, roughly in order of how much they matter:

• VAT registration. A monthly KMD and the KMD INF annex are a fixed piece of work every month, whether you had two sales or two hundred. On our own plans that is the step from €20 to €45
• Payroll headcount. Not only whether you pay people but how many, because holiday balances, sick leave and mid-month joiners each add a calculation that has to be right to the cent
• Transaction volume. The point where posting stops being a review and becomes data work sits somewhere near a hundred lines a month
• Inventory. Stock and cost of goods sold mean a monthly valuation, not just a bank feed. It is the reason a shop costs more than a consultancy at the same turnover
• Number of currencies. Each additional currency adds exchange-rate work and a revaluation, and mixed-currency card accounts are worse than they look
• Number of platforms. One bank account is simple. A bank plus Stripe plus Amazon plus PayPal is four sets of settlement reports that have to agree with each other before anything can be posted

These compound rather than add. A VAT-registered seller on three platforms in two currencies with stock is not four small adjustments above the base plan - it is a different plan, which is why our own e-commerce pricing starts at €99 rather than €60.

Two things people expect to matter and mostly do not: your industry and your turnover. A consultancy invoicing €300,000 on twelve invoices a year is less work than a shop turning over €40,000 across nine hundred card payments. If a quote goes up because your revenue went up while nothing else changed, ask what extra work that revenue created.

What the cheap quote usually excludes

A €25 monthly quote is not necessarily dishonest. It is often just narrow. Check specifically whether it includes:

• The annual report. Frequently quoted separately at €150 to €400, which changes a €25 monthly fee into something closer to €50
• VAT returns. If you register for VAT mid-year, does the monthly fee change?
• Payroll. Often per employee, often not mentioned until you hire
• Questions. Some firms bill advisory time separately, so asking whether a purchase is deductible costs you money
• Platform reconciliation. If you sell through Amazon, Etsy, Shopify or Stripe, untangling netted payouts is real work and some quotes assume a simple bank feed

Hourly versus fixed

Some Estonian firms bill by the hour, typically €40 to €80. It sounds fairer and often is not, for a reason that has nothing to do with the rate: clients who are billed hourly stop asking questions. They wait until the annual report to mention the loan they took from the company, or the €4,000 laptop, or the fact that they moved to Portugal in March. Every one of those is cheap to handle in the month it happens and expensive to unpick in June.

A fixed fee is not automatically better value. It is better behaviour, and behaviour is what actually costs money in accounting.

What catch-up work costs

If your books are behind, this is quoted separately and it is not a monthly fee problem. Reconstructing a year means obtaining bank statements, matching every transaction to a document, rebuilding the ledger, and filing whatever declarations were missed - along with any interest that accrued.

Expect catch-up to cost more per month than ongoing bookkeeping would have, because the documents are harder to find after the fact and the work is compressed. It is still worth doing immediately: the price rises every year you wait, and overdue annual reports are public.

What it costs when you are not an Estonian resident

Non-residency is not a price driver. An OÜ owned by someone in Lisbon, Bangkok or Toronto carries the same Estonian obligation as one owned from Tallinn: the same KMD, the same TSD, the same annual report by 30 June. The work is the same work, so a fee that is higher purely because you live abroad is pricing distance rather than effort. It is a fair question to put to any firm that quotes you a non-resident rate.

What genuinely does cost more is what tends to arrive with a founder abroad, and none of it is about your passport:

• Customers in several EU member states, which brings OSS returns into the picture
• Money arriving through Wise, Revolut, Stripe or PayPal instead of one Estonian bank account
• A board member fee that both Estonia and your country of residence have a claim on
• Purchase documents in several languages, which take longer to check against the VAT Act requirements
• A cross-border question that needs an answer before the year closes, such as whether your activity abroad creates a permanent establishment there

That last one is worth separating out. The Estonian side of it is included in ordinary bookkeeping - we can tell you where the risk sits and what Estonia will do. The opinion about the other country's law is not something an Estonian accountant can give you, and a firm that offers one cheaply is selling you something it cannot deliver. Budget for a specialist there if the question is live.

What a fully remote engagement looks like month to month

Remote is the default here rather than a concession, so it is worth being concrete about the shape of a month. In the first week, documents arrive - a bank feed, a folder, or a push from your invoicing tool - and get posted. Somewhere around the middle of the month you get one short list of questions: what this €600 transfer was, whether the laptop is company or personal, which project the subcontractor invoice belongs to. Payroll and TSD go in by the 10th if you have people, the VAT return by the 20th if you are registered, and the monthly report follows.

Your side of that is small and it is the whole of it: answer a handful of questions, and once a year sign the annual report digitally. Signing works from anywhere with an e-Residency card, Smart-ID or Mobile-ID, and the e-Tax Board authorisation that lets us file is granted online. Nothing needs posting, stamping or notarising, and we have clients who have never been to Estonia.

Say plainly where remote does not work: it does not fix a shoebox. If receipts exist only on paper in a drawer and nobody photographs them, the documents will be missing whether your accountant is in Tallinn or next door, and you will pay catch-up rates to reconstruct what the bank statement alone cannot prove. Remote bookkeeping needs you to take thirty seconds per document, which is less than the drawer costs you.

Where cheap genuinely is fine

A dormant company with no VAT registration, no employees and a handful of bank transactions genuinely does not need much. Paying €80 a month for that is paying for capacity you are not using. The cheapest plan is the right plan when the company is genuinely quiet - the mistake is staying on it after the business wakes up.

Frequently asked questions

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