How to hire a bookkeeper is a different problem from hiring an accountant, because the title carries no floor. The Bureau of Labor Statistics profile for the job lists some college and no degree as the typical entry-level education, no prior work experience in a related occupation, and moderate-term training on the job. The two national credentials behind the title are voluntary, and each attests something narrower than the title suggests.
So the resume screen does less work here than it does for an accountant, and what you test before the offer has to carry the weight the credential does not.
What the Bookkeeper Title Actually Certifies
On its own, nothing. People enter the job from several directions, and the federal profile says so plainly.
Typical entry-level education for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks is listed as some college, no degree. Work experience in a related occupation is listed as none. On-the-job training is listed as moderate-term. The same profile lists no license for the occupation, and puts certification firmly on the optional side: although not usually required, some bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks may choose to earn professional certification, which can help to demonstrate competency in their field (BLS, Occupational Outlook Handbook, bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks).
Two voluntary credentials sit above that floor, and it is worth knowing what each one actually asks for before you weight it in a shortlist.
The American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers awards the Certified Bookkeeper (CB) designation. A holder has passed the four-part national certification exam, signed the Code of Ethics, and submitted evidence of at least 2 years of full-time bookkeeping experience, or 3,000 hours of part-time or freelance experience. That evidence can come before or after the exam, and there are 3 years from the date of passing to supply it (AIPB, The Certified Bookkeeper (CB) Designation).
The National Association of Certified Public Bookkeepers awards what it calls the Certified Public Bookkeeper (CPB) license, granted by the association rather than by a state board. It rests on coursework paired with exams: Accounting Fundamentals with the Bookkeeping Certification exam, Business Communication with its own certification exam, and QuickBooks Fundamentals with the Intuit QuickBooks Certification exam. An applicant holding an associate's or bachelor's degree in accounting can submit transcripts in place of those courses and still has to pass all three certification exams. Experience is verified separately, either one year of bookkeeping experience, stated as 2,000 hours, under the supervision of a qualified bookkeeper, CPB, CPA or accountant, or 3 months of bookkeeping experience included in the CPB program. An applicant also agrees to abide by the Code of Professional Conduct and to obtain 24 hours of continuing professional education, or CPE, each year, beginning the first year after the license is issued (NACPB, Certified Public Bookkeeper (CPB) License Application).
Read those two side by side and they attest the same pair of things: a passed exam, and experience the association was willing to accept. Both are real, and neither is a state license. Neither tells you the candidate has closed a month that looks like yours, in the software you actually run. What the QuickBooks part of that proves, and what the badge does to the rate, is a separate question worth reading on its own (cost of hiring a QuickBooks bookkeeper).
Use the credential as a floor, then test above it.
How to Hire a Bookkeeper: Employee, Freelancer, or Outside Team
Three routes carry almost the same job description and very little else in common, and the choice decides what you are actually buying.
An employee on your payroll. This is the route where the overtime classification bites first, because the regulation names this seat directly. Accounting clerks, bookkeepers and other employees who normally perform a great deal of routine work generally will not qualify as exempt professionals (eCFR, section 541.301(e)(5), Learned professionals). Exempt means the overtime rules do not reach the role, so plan this seat as non-exempt and price the overtime of your month-end and year-end peaks into the band before you make an offer rather than after your first close.
Duties that broaden past routine work do not make this seat exempt on their own, because the routine-work line is only the part of the exemption that names this title. The test itself asks for a primary duty of work requiring advanced knowledge in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction. The same section then says the exemption is not available for occupations that customarily may be performed with only the general knowledge acquired by an academic degree in any field, with knowledge acquired through an apprenticeship, or with training in the performance of routine mental, manual, mechanical or physical processes (eCFR, section 541.301(a) and (d), Learned professionals). Everything else about the employee route, from building a defensible band to the federal checks that attach at the offer stage, runs the same way as any accounting hire (how to hire a staff accountant).
An outside provider. Here the decision stops being a hire and becomes a handover, with its own sequence for the monthly deliverable, system access and the exit (how to outsource bookkeeping).
A single freelancer. One person is the cheapest route and the thinnest cover, and what changes is who reviews the work and what happens the week they are unavailable (outsourcing vs freelancers in accounting).
If the real question underneath is which model should own which work, rather than who fills one seat, that comparison turns on control rather than on rate (in-house vs outsourced accounting).
Settle the route before the job ad goes out. Almost every requirement in the ad, from hours to software access, follows from the answer.
What to Test Before You Make an Offer
Give a sample that looks like the work, then ask one question the sample cannot answer.
The most useful exercise for this seat is a coded transaction set. Take a batch of real transactions from a month you have already closed, strip the client identifiers, and ask the candidate to code them and explain the calls that were not obvious. You learn three things a resume cannot show: whether they classify consistently, whether they flag what they are unsure about instead of guessing, and whether their explanation would survive being read by someone who was not in the room.
A reconciliation works too, but run it differently here than you would for an accountant. Give the candidate a reconciliation that already ties, and ask what they checked in order to believe it. Someone who can only tell you the difference is zero has confirmed the arithmetic and nothing else. Someone who talks about the timing of deposits in transit, stale outstanding items, and whether anything was cleared without support is describing the actual job.
Then ask the control question that belongs at hiring rather than at onboarding: who releases payments once this person records them. It is a hiring question because the answer changes the job. Where one person codes the bill, adds the payee and sends the money, you have not filled a bookkeeping seat, you have concentrated recording and paying in one pair of hands. The answer also changes the offer, since a candidate who expects payment authority and does not get it has accepted a smaller job than the one in their head. The access mechanics that follow from your answer belong to the handover rather than to the interview (how to outsource bookkeeping).
Write the mark scheme before any output exists, and check what the law allows you to test for while you are writing it (accounting candidate assessment).
Questions Owners Ask
What Does a Bookkeeper Charge per Hour?
There is no single rate, and the useful anchor underneath every quote is the wage. The most recent federal wage survey puts the median hourly wage for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks at $24.36 in May 2025 (BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 national table).
Treat that as a payroll input for an employee, not as a price for an outside service. What sits between the two, and why two quotes for the same books differ, is a pricing question rather than a hiring one (bookkeeping services pricing).
At What Point Should You Hire a Bookkeeper?
When the recording is late enough that you are making decisions on numbers you do not trust, and when the work is repeatable enough to write down. Both conditions matter. Volume on its own does not justify the seat, and a process that changes every month cannot be handed to anyone, inside or outside.
If You Run a CPA or EA Firm
A firm hiring a bookkeeper for client work is buying something different from an owner hiring for their own books. The question stops being whether this person can keep the books and becomes whether their work survives review under your firm's name. A review layer answers that question. A badge does not.
Client files also bring duties that do not travel with the task, and those are a provider selection question rather than an interview question (outsourced bookkeeping companies for CPA firms).
If you run a US CPA or EA firm and the constraint is capacity rather than process, Accountably places trained offshore accountants and tax preparers inside your firm and ramps them on your own software and procedures in about 3 to 4 weeks. The scale is 20+ US firms and 30+ placements since 2022. The Free 40-Hour Proof Pilot is the low-risk way to test that: a fixed block of your own representative work, prepared on your process, put through multi-layer review, and graded by your reviewer before a live client file depends on it. Anyone who is not the right fit inside the first 30 days is replaced free under the 30-Day Fit Guarantee. Don't trust us. Test us.
Test the Work, Not the Title
The title tells you almost nothing, and the two credentials tell you a little more than that. What tells you the most is a coded transaction set from a month you already closed, a reconciliation the candidate has to justify rather than recompute, and a straight answer about who moves the money.
Settle the engagement form first, classify the seat honestly if it is an employee, then spend your effort on the sample. That is the part of the process the title was never going to do for you.