It isn't really either-or — the software is in both columns. Accounting software such as QuickBooks Online or Xero imports your transactions, suggests categories from rules, and builds reports on demand, for a subscription that costs a fraction of any human service. What it doesn't do is decide. A bank feed can't tell whether a hardware-store charge was a repair, an asset, or personal, and it can't notice that a rule has been quietly filing something wrong since spring. Reconciliation and the monthly close are still human work. A bookkeeping service is that same software plus the person who reviews, reconciles, and closes it — Karbon's starts at $500 a month.
See what in-house bookkeeping includes →| Software Alone | Karbon | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | Wins here, decisively. A software subscription is a small fixed cost that no human service comes close to. | The same subscription plus a flat monthly fee starting at $500, scoped to transaction volume. |
| Speed to start | Wins here. Sign up, connect a bank feed, and transactions start importing the same day. | Begins with a free review of your current books, and a catch-up pass first if prior months are behind. |
| Ownership and access | Wins here in one sense — the file is entirely yours, with nobody else in it. | The subscription and file stay in your name with your access intact; we work inside it rather than in a system you can't see. |
| What it actually does | Records and organizes: feeds import, rules suggest, and reports assemble from whatever happens to be in the file. | Decides and verifies: ambiguous transactions get categorized deliberately and accounts get reconciled against real statements. |
| Categorization | Rule-based suggestions are usually right on repeat vendors and unreliable on anything ambiguous — and a wrong rule repeats silently. | Suggestions are reviewed rather than accepted in bulk, and genuine exceptions get asked about instead of guessed at. |
| Reconciliation | The tool provides the screen; a person still has to sit at it and resolve the differences. | Bank and card accounts are reconciled every month as part of the close. |
| Month-end close | There is no close unless someone performs one — reports will happily render from unreconciled data. | A closed month, every month, with a P&L and balance sheet you can actually make decisions from. |
| Trusting the reports | Reports are exactly as accurate as the categorization behind them, and the software can't tell you which they are. | Numbers you can price and plan from, because someone verified them before the report was run. |
| Marketing ROI questions | Ad spend sits in whatever category it landed in, rarely broken out in a way that answers anything. | Ad spend broken out against revenue in the same report, so “what did the ads actually earn” has an answer. |
Neither option is right for every business. Here's a fair view of where each one fits best.
Where Karbon has the edge: not price — software wins that outright, and you'll keep paying for it either way. The gap is between a file full of imported transactions and a set of books that's actually true. We work in QuickBooks Online by default, or in what you already use, kept in-house by our own team rather than an offshore pool, starting at $500 a month after a free review of your current books.
It does the recording, not the deciding. Bank feeds pull transactions in and rules suggest categories, which handles repeat vendors well. Judgment calls — whether a charge is an expense, an asset, or personal — still need a person, and so does reconciliation, the step that proves the file matches your actual bank statements. Software will happily produce a confident-looking P&L from data nobody has verified.
Yes, and you should want to. The subscription should stay on your account, in your name, so the file and its history remain yours. A service works inside that file rather than in a separate system you can't see. Karbon uses QuickBooks Online by default and can work in what you already have.
Reconciling means proving that your books match what the bank actually shows — same transactions, same ending balance, no duplicates or missing entries. Software imports a feed, but feeds drop transactions, re-import after a reconnection, and can't tell a duplicate from a genuine repeat charge. Someone has to compare the file against the statement and resolve the differences. That's the step that turns a plausible P&L into a reliable one.
Book a free 15-minute call. If the other option on this page is the better fit for your situation, we'll tell you that too.