The short answer: what bookkeeping costs a domiciliary care agency
A UK domiciliary care agency typically pays from £299 a month for bookkeeping bundled with payroll and compliance up to 30 carers, from £549 a month for 30 to 100 carers, and from £999 a month once you pass 100 carers. Those are 2026/27 figures for a specialist care package, and they buy far more than someone keying invoices into software.
Standalone bookkeeping, meaning transaction entry and bank reconciliation with nothing attached, starts nearer £49 a month for a low-volume business. Very few home care agencies buy it that way. The reason is simple: in a care agency the bookkeeping is the raw material for the payroll and the management figures, so splitting it off from those tends to create rework rather than save money.
LOYALS works as a specialist for care providers, so when we quote a home care agency the number reflects the real workload behind the accounts. If you want the wider picture on running costs, our guide on accounting for healthcare and care providers sets out where a specialist earns the fee, and our bookkeeping service page shows what sits inside a monthly plan.
What is actually inside a care agency's monthly bookkeeping fee
The monthly fee is not one job, it is five overlapping ones, and payroll is the largest slice. In a home care agency the bookkeeping has to feed weekly or fortnightly wages built from rostered visits plus travel time, so the two are never really separate. The chart below shows how a typical monthly fee breaks down for a mid-sized agency.
Read left to right, the fee pays for weekly payroll built from rostered hours and travel time, then everyday transaction processing and bank reconciliation, then the VAT position and reconciling what councils actually pay against what you invoiced, then a management pack showing hours delivered and cost per hour, and finally reconciling the numbers back to your care rostering system. Miss any one of those and the accounts stop telling you the truth about the agency.
What bookkeeping costs by domiciliary care agency size
The fee tracks carer numbers, transaction volume and how many funders you bill, so it climbs in steps rather than a straight line. A small agency billing a handful of private clients is a different job from a 60-carer operation splitting income across three councils and a hospital discharge team. The chart below shows the typical monthly range at three common sizes.
One thing worth saying plainly: the jump from £299 to £549 is not the software costing more. It is the payroll headcount doubling, a second or third council remittance to reconcile, and a management pack that now has to hold up in a funding conversation with a commissioner. Larger agencies with multiple rotas or branches move toward £999 and beyond because the reconciliation multiplies with every rota.
Why care bookkeeping costs more than a shop's books
Care bookkeeping costs more because the compliance risk lives inside the numbers, not because there are more receipts. A shop reconciles a till and a handful of suppliers. A home care agency processes hundreds of visits a week, checks travel time against minimum wage, accrues holiday pay on zero-hours contracts, and reconciles income across councils and private payers. Three of those carry real money risk if they go wrong.
The first is the travel-time trap. Time spent travelling between back-to-back care calls counts as working time, so it has to be paid at least the National Living Wage, which rises to £12.71 an hour for those aged 21 and over from 6 April 2026. If your pay per visit does not cover the gaps between visits, an averaged hourly rate can quietly fall below the minimum. HMRC treats that as an underpayment, adds a penalty of up to 200 percent of the arrears, and can name the employer publicly. Our deeper guide on domiciliary care mileage and travel time walks through exactly what counts.
The second is VAT, and it splits agencies in two. A CQC-registered managed provider that delivers personal care makes exempt welfare supplies, so it charges no VAT and that exempt income stays outside the £90,000 registration threshold. An introductory or staff-supply agency that merely places carers is usually standard-rated at 20 percent. Which side you sit on changes the bookkeeping, the pricing and the threshold maths, and we cover it in full in is domiciliary care VAT exempt. HMRC's position is set out in its welfare services VAT notice 701/2.
The third is getting paid. Councils pay on delivered hours, often weeks after the visits, and their remittances rarely match your invoices line for line because of disputed calls, changed packages and rounded hours. Reconciling that mismatch is bookkeeping work a generalist skips, and it is the difference between chasing the right shortfall and writing off money you were owed. The Homecare Association puts the minimum sustainable price for homecare in England at £34.42 an hour for 2026/27, so on thin margins every unreconciled hour matters. Underpinning all of it, the CQC expects registered providers to stay financially viable, and clean monthly numbers are how you show it.
Here is how the three common approaches actually compare for a domiciliary care agency's books:
| What your agency needs | DIY spreadsheet | Generic bookkeeper | LOYALS specialist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checks travel time against the £12.71 minimum wage | ✗ Not covered | ✗ Rarely | ✓ Built into payroll |
| Handles the welfare VAT exemption correctly | ✗ | ● If asked | ✓ VAT Notice 701/2 |
| Reconciles council remittances to invoices | ✗ | ● Bank only | ✓ Funder by funder |
| Reconciles the books to your rostering software | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ Monthly |
| Monthly pack: hours, cost per hour, debtor days | ✗ | ● P&L only | ✓ CQC-ready |
| Fixed monthly fee, open Mon to Sat | ✓ No fee | ● Hourly billing common | ✓ Fixed, 10am to 7pm |
This is why most growing domiciliary care agencies move from a general bookkeeper to a care specialist once travel-time pay and council billing get serious.
Spreadsheet, generic bookkeeper or specialist: which fits your agency
The right choice depends on your carer count and how you are funded, not just on price. A brand-new agency with two carers and a couple of private clients can run a clean spreadsheet for a while. The moment you take on a council contract, hit double figures on carers, or start paying travel time, the spreadsheet becomes the most expensive option because the risk it carries dwarfs any fee it saves.
A generic high-street bookkeeper solves the volume problem and will keep the bank reconciled and the VAT return filed. What they usually will not do is test travel time against the minimum wage, reconcile a council remittance against your invoiced hours, or produce a management pack a commissioner will accept. Those gaps are invisible until an HMRC minimum wage check or a funder query lands, which is exactly when they cost the most.
A specialist care bookkeeper folds all of it into one monthly fee, which is why the headline number looks higher than a generalist's quote and usually is not once you add the payroll, the VAT handling and the year-end back in. For most agencies past the start-up stage, one specialist fee replaces a bookkeeper, a payroll bureau and a year-end accountant, and the parts finally agree with each other.
When bookkeeping fees pay for themselves in a care agency
The fee pays for itself the first time it stops a real loss, and in a care agency those losses are predictable. Reclaiming a single mispriced council remittance, avoiding one HMRC minimum wage penalty, or catching a VAT position before it forces a needless registration will each cover a year of the monthly fee on its own. That is before you count the time an owner gets back to spend on care quality and winning packages.
Put a number on it. A £549-a-month package is £6,588 a year. An HMRC minimum wage underpayment across a 50-carer agency, with a penalty of up to 200 percent of arrears, runs comfortably into five figures. One clean set of monthly figures that keeps you the right side of that, and keeps your CQC financial viability evidence ready, is not a cost centre. It is cheap insurance on the two things that can actually close a care business: a payroll liability and a cashflow gap.
What this typically costs at LOYALS
- Domiciliary care agency, up to 30 carers (bookkeeping, payroll and compliance): from £299/month
- Domiciliary care agency, 30 to 100 carers: from £549/month
- Domiciliary care agency, 100+ carers (multi-rota or multi-branch): from £999/month
- Standalone bookkeeping, low volume: from £49/month
All quotes issued in writing within 24 hours, after a 15-min scoping call so we price your actual rota, funders and VAT position, not a guess. See full price list.
What to check before you choose a bookkeeper for your agency
Before you sign with anyone, put five questions to them and judge the answers against your own rota. The right bookkeeper for a care agency should not hesitate on any of these.
- How do you handle travel time in payroll? If the answer is anything other than counting it as working time toward the £12.71 minimum wage, keep looking.
- Do you know whether my income is exempt or standard-rated for VAT? They should ask whether you are a CQC-registered managed provider or an introductory agency before answering.
- How do you reconcile council remittances? The right answer is funder by funder against invoiced hours, not just against the bank balance.
- Will the books reconcile to my rostering software? Your care management system holds the delivered hours, so the accounts must agree with it.
- What management figures do I get each month? You want hours delivered, cost per hour and debtor days, not just a profit figure once a year.
Get clear answers on those five and the monthly fee becomes easy to judge, because you are comparing like for like rather than a bookkeeping-only quote against a full care package. You can check your agency's position, and get a fixed quote for your actual setup, in a free call with LOYALS.