well, my sister does the bookkeeping that doesn't require an accountant, you know, dealing with buying equipment and such, and we're still sorting that out (I'm having the accountant train her, so it's probably more expensive, for now at least, than a regular bookkeeper would be, but that will change once she's up to speed.) Really, though, that's not the problem. Yeah, I buy equipment every month, but not that much equipment. For a while I was having the accountant do that bookkeeping for me, and it worked okay (though that was a whole lot more expensive than a regular bookkeeper. Accountants charge a lot more than bookkeepers.) You are talking in the low tens of transactions a month, if you don't count my small customers, so accounting for my expenses and income from large customers can be done manually even using rather expensive labor.
But I have a rather large number of very small customers. my median customer is probably close to $8 or $12 a month. Considering that I've got to pay for power/hardware out of that, really, if it requires /any/ human intervention for every monthly bill, even if that human bills me at bookkeeper rates rather than accountant rates, I'll have to raise my prices, probably above that of the competition, which uses custom in-house billing software, as far as I can tell.
I'd consider using a service, in that case. I think Xero does this sort of auto-billing stuff; in Australia MYOB will do it for you also. If you haven't already, consider using a payment gateway service to take money from credit cards.
But I have a rather large number of very small customers. my median customer is probably close to $8 or $12 a month. Considering that I've got to pay for power/hardware out of that, really, if it requires /any/ human intervention for every monthly bill, even if that human bills me at bookkeeper rates rather than accountant rates, I'll have to raise my prices, probably above that of the competition, which uses custom in-house billing software, as far as I can tell.