One coordinated back office—books, payroll, and tax—handled by a team that works year-round.
- Clean, Accurate Books
- CPA-Led Review
- Clear, Fixed Pricing
New Business Client Welcome — 10% Off Your First Year!
Switching to Hilltop? Enjoy 10% off your first 12 months of bookkeeping, accounting, and payroll services—handled by a CPA-led team that keeps your books clean and your people paid on time.
Who We Help
Owners and leaders who want reliable numbers and fewer surprises:
- Local service businesses and professional practices
- Multi-owner LLCs and S-corps
- Solo owners ready to hand off the back office
- Growing teams that need payroll handled the right way
What You Get
Why Hilltop for the Back Office
- One team, fewer handoffs: Accounting, payroll, and tax strategy under one roof.
- Fiduciary mindset: Your finances are managed to support your plan, not ours.
- Clear cadence: A predictable monthly close with proactive check-ins.
- Useful reporting: Short, skimmable financials and KPIs—no jargon.
- Nationwide support: We work with clients across the U.S. on modern platforms.
Talk. Plan. Handle.
Talk with a CPA
Get a Simple Game Plan
We Handle the Heavy Lifting
Planning Moments That Matter
- Choosing owner compensation (salary vs. distributions)
- Entity setup or elections (e.g., S-corp considerations)
- Hiring your first employee or expanding the team
- Retirement plan design and employer contributions
- Major purchases and depreciation timing
- Preparing to sell, merge, or add partners
Tools We Work With
Client testimonials: accuracy, clarity, and trust
The following reviews are based on experiences from current clients. No compensation was provided to clients. The ratings and comments reflect each client’s own views and opinions, and there are no known conflicts of interest. All ratings are included in the overall rating and all comments are published unless they meet one or more exclusion criteria.
Bookkeeping, Accounting & Payroll: Frequently Asked Questions
Do you replace my current bookkeeper or payroll provider?
Either way works. We can take over bookkeeping and payroll completely, or run alongside your current provider during a transition so nothing lapses mid-quarter. Most clients move in stages: we start with the monthly close, then add payroll at a natural break like the start of a quarter or calendar year, when filings and W-2 reporting line up cleanly. There is no requirement to move everything at once.
Can you catch up messy or behind books?
Yes — catch-up bookkeeping is a standard engagement for us, whether you are three months or three years behind. We scope the clean-up as a one-time project: reconstructing bank and credit card reconciliations, correcting misclassified transactions, cleaning up the chart of accounts, and producing accurate financial statements for the periods in question. Once the books are current, you move onto a steady monthly close. Behind on filings as well? Our tax team handles the back returns at the same time.
Will you work with my CPA at tax time?
Yes. If you keep an outside CPA, we deliver a clean year-end package — reconciled accounts, financial statements, fixed asset and depreciation detail, and payroll summaries — in the format they need, and we answer their questions directly rather than routing everything through you. Well-kept books usually reduce what an outside CPA charges, since they are not billing hours to fix categorization. If you would rather consolidate, we can prepare the return in house as well.
Do you only work with QuickBooks?
No. We work in QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop most often, and also support Xero and other major platforms, along with payroll systems including Gusto and ADP. If you are choosing a platform for the first time, we will recommend one based on your transaction volume, whether you carry inventory, how your payroll runs, and what your reporting needs actually are — not on which software we prefer.
How is pricing structured?
Fixed monthly fees, scoped to the actual work — transaction volume, number of accounts to reconcile, payroll frequency and headcount, and how much reporting you need. You get the number in writing before we start, and it does not change because a month was busier than usual. Catch-up projects are quoted separately as one-time work. No hourly billing and no surprise invoices.
What is included in monthly bookkeeping?
A monthly close: bank and credit card reconciliation, transaction categorization, accounts payable and receivable tracking, and a financial statement package — profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow — delivered on a set schedule rather than whenever you ask. Most clients also get a short review conversation to walk through what the numbers show. The point is having current, accurate books all year, not assembling them in a panic each April.
What payroll services do you handle?
Full-service payroll: processing on your schedule, direct deposit, federal and state withholding, quarterly filings including Form 941, annual W-2 and 1099 preparation, new-hire reporting, and multi-state payroll for businesses with employees in more than one state. Hilltop has a dedicated payroll specialist on staff rather than outsourcing it, and because payroll, bookkeeping, and tax all sit in one office, your quarterly filings already match your books. Talk to our team.
What is the difference between bookkeeping and accounting?
Bookkeeping is the ongoing record: categorizing transactions, reconciling accounts, and closing each month accurately. Accounting is the interpretation layer — financial statements, cash flow analysis, entity structure, and tax strategy built on top of those records. Accounting is only as good as the bookkeeping underneath it, which is why we do both. Clean books are not the goal; they are what makes everything else possible.
Is outsourcing bookkeeping cheaper than hiring in-house?
Usually, once you count everything. An in-house bookkeeper costs salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, software licenses, training, and the coverage gap when they take vacation or leave. Outsourcing converts that to a fixed monthly fee with no single point of failure and no hiring cycle. The exception is high transaction volume with genuinely full-time work — at that scale in-house can pencil out. We will tell you honestly which side you fall on.
What should I look for in a bookkeeping service?
Four things. Does someone reconcile your accounts every month, or only at year-end? Do you get financial statements on a fixed schedule without asking? Is there a named person who knows your business, or a rotating queue? And does your bookkeeper talk to whoever prepares your tax return? That last one causes the most damage when the answer is no — books built without the return in mind create work and missed deductions every spring.
How does bookkeeping connect to my tax return and financial plan?
Directly, and this is the reason Hilltop offers all three. Your books determine your business’s taxable income, which drives your return, which shapes your personal cash flow, retirement contributions, and entity distributions. When those functions sit at three different firms, nobody sees the whole picture and planning opportunities get found in April instead of October. Under one roof, a distribution decision in Q3 is evaluated for its tax and planning consequences before it happens.