Stillpost vs a hired bookkeeper, posed plainly.

The bookkeeper tax, named plainly.

What it earns its keep on.

Three returns the loop earns its price against, measured the way an operator measures them — the Sunday tally the bookkeeping hours used to build, the late-notice inbox the per-state calendar was hand- managed on, the four-or-five hours a week the operator carried before the loop carried them instead.

• The four-feed Sunday tally, retired.

  The before-breakfast ritual of opening the banking tab, the payments processor, the POS report, and the bookkeeping spreadsheet to hand-subtract holds from balances is a ritual the loop retired. The Sunday the operator used to build the number is the Sunday the operator got back.

• The seven-DOR late-notice inbox, emptied.

  Per-state remittance calendars hand-managed on Sundays become per-state accrued estimates posted each night at 23:55, pegged to the calendar the DOR of record publishes. The Monday morning the operator opens the inbox, the late-notice stack has been replaced by the digest the loop wrote overnight.

• The five hours a week the owner got back.

  Bank + POS exports, holds and ACH subtractions, per-state DOR replies, past-due chasers drafted at the kitchen table — the seven recurring jobs the bookkeeping loop fires unattended are the seven recurring jobs the owner used to carry. The bookkeeper or fractional bookkeeper stays on payroll for the parts that need a human.

The five questions the alternatives search actually asks.

Cost vs the fractional rate, when the loop clocks in vs when the bookkeeper clocks out, multi-state sales-tax coverage, the hours a week the owner hands back, and whether the loop replaces the bookkeeper or just the bookkeeping chores — straight answers the search snippet can carry. The FAQPage-structured-data block above emits the same questions in a machine-readable shape Google reads directly.

• What does the bookkeeping loop cost per month vs a hired bookkeeper?

  Three flat tiers, priced against the rate an operator would otherwise pay a fractional bookkeeper handling the same weekly loop, with a 10% discount baked into the public headline: Starter under $81 / month, Pro $243 / month, Managed $1,620+ / month. The contrast frame: a fractional bookkeeper at $80 / hour, billed two-to-three hours every week to send the same polite chaser the loop sends at 09:00, runs the same receipts reconcile the loop runs at 20:00, and posts the same period close the loop posts when the month ends — the operator is paying for the hours, not the bookkeeping. A full-time bookkeeper runs $5,000+ / month with benefits and the office space to seat them in; a fractional bookkeeper runs $2,500–$4,500+ / month at the same four-hours-a-week cadence. The Loop on Starter sits under $81 / month — a 97% cut against the fractional rate, a 98.5% cut against the full-time rate — and ships the same seven recurring jobs the bookkeeping hours used to bill against. The pricing grid is where the side-by-side lives.

• When does the bookkeeper clock out vs when does the loop stop watching the books?

  The bookkeeper clocks out at 5pm on weekdays — Monday's receipts get reconciled on Tuesday, Tuesday's chaser drafts on Wednesday, Wednesday's per-state accrual posts on Sunday. The Loop doesn't clock out: the cash position refreshes every fifteen minutes, the before-midnight receipts reconcile runs every night, the multi-state sales-tax estimate posts at 23:55, the past-due chaser drafts the day an invoice ages past its term, the weekly margin digest lands on Friday before the operator closes the laptop. Weekends and holidays are covered the same as weekdays. The contrast matters because the night a chargeback lands is the morning the operator opens the inbox — the loop is the one reading the merchant portal at 23:45, matching the receipt against the costing ledger, and writing the per-source trail into the day's reconciliation file before the books go out in the morning. The bookkeeper's calendar is on the operator's calendar; the Loop's calendar is on the calendar the books already carry.

• How does the multi-state sales-tax capability compare — bookkeeper vs loop?

  The bookkeeper hand-manages a per-state remittance calendar — usually a sticky note, sometimes a spreadsheet, occasionally a per-state DOR reminder set on their phone. The Loop pegs to the calendar the DOR of record publishes for each of the fifty states: per-state nexus threshold (a $500K + 100-transaction two-prong in New York, a $100K single-prong in California, $100K single-prong in Texas), per-state cadence (most default to monthly on the 20th, a smaller set quarterly, Alaska / Delaware / Montana / New Hampshire / Oregon annual), and per-state add-ons (Florida's 0.5%–2% county surtax, Pennsylvania's Allegheny 0.5% and Philadelphia 2% overlay). The Pro tier layers the multi-state sales-tax estimate on top of Starter; Managed files the returns through the per-state DOR portal (a step that carries a coordination cost — voluntary disclosures, nexus letters, marketplace-facilitator reclassification — the loop can't make good on without a human reviewer). Pro estimates and accrues; the operator files. Starter ships without the sales-tax layer at all.

• How many hours a week does the owner hand back?

  Roughly five. The bank + POS export pulls, the hold + ACH subtractions, the per-state DOR replies that never quite make the Sunday calendar, the past-due chasers drafted on a sticky note on the laptop hinge, the weekly margin digest rebuilt on a Sunday afternoon — seven recurring jobs the bookkeeping loop fires unattended are seven recurring jobs the operator was carrying themselves, the bookkeeper was billing against, or the operator was quietly paying for in the form of unscheduled Sundays and missed family dinners. The five hours is the conservative figure — the operator who also closes the books themselves (a quarter close, a year-end handoff, an audit-response packet) reclaims another two to three hours a week during the periods where the bookkeeping loop is running on top of the books rather than beside them. The five hours is also the figure the small-businesses pillar carries in the editorial section that walks the chronological week end-to-end.

• Does this replace my bookkeeper — or just the bookkeeping chores?

  No. Stillpost takes the seven recurring jobs that take up a bookkeeper's weekdays — the overdue chaser, the nightly receipts reconcile, the multi-state sales-tax accrual, the weekly margin digest, the period close, the cash-flow feed, the past-due ledger — and runs them unattended. The bookkeeper (or the fractional bookkeeper, or the cloud-bookkeeper who logs in twice a week) stays on payroll; they spend their time on the parts of the books that actually need a human reviewer (the corporate restructuring, the audit response, the one-time reconciliation against a prior period, the conversation with the operator about which direction the next quarter should bend). The expansion was deliberately tasteful about this. Our story is the editorial hall where the rationale lives; the tier mapping that does the heavy lifting (Starter under $81 / month carries the chaser + receipts reconcile, Pro $243 / month layers the multi-state sales-tax accrual, Managed $1,620+ / month adds a human reviewer) is on the pricing grid. The bookkeeping loop the tier replaces is walked end-to-end on the small-businesses pillar. There is no salesperson trying to retire the bookkeeper — the dividing line is the same dashboard view, week after week.

5 questions answered · the per-tier cost frame is on the pricing grid, the wire-once beat is on the small-biz pillar