You have the client's bank login and their payroll. The insurance is for the day either goes wrong.Founded by an agent who has written professional liability for large accounting and law firms.
A bookkeeper needs professional liability (E&O) for errors such as a missed payroll tax deposit, and cyber with social engineering coverage for a fraudulent payment instruction, and both are inexpensive for a solo practice. A bookkeeper touches the client's money more directly than their accountant does: the accounts, the payroll, the sales tax filing, often the bank access. The claims that follow are a missed payroll tax deposit, a filing that was late, a reconciliation that hid a problem, and, increasingly, a fraudulent payment instruction that arrived by email and was paid. A bookkeeper policy is professional liability for the errors and cyber for the fraud, and both are inexpensive for a solo practice. We place them for independent bookkeepers, small firms and bookkeepers who also prepare taxes.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
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Your malpractice policy gets read by someone who has placed it for big firms.
Kevin Kelsey
Founder | Principal Agent
Boring’s founder, Kevin Kelsey, has written professional liability for large accounting and law firms. So the retroactive date, the tail and the definition of the services you perform get read by someone who has placed these policies where the stakes were large. A sole practitioner or a small office gets that same reading. Before insurance he edited television for fifteen years and handled compliance and risk for large production companies, and he writes software, including the platform this agency runs on.
Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.
Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.
What bookkeeper businesses actually need.
Professional liability (E&O)
Claims that your bookkeeping caused a financial loss: a missed payroll or sales tax deposit and its penalties, a late filing, an error in the books a lender or a buyer relied on.
Without it — The client's penalty is your claim, and it arrives a year after the mistake.
Cyber and social engineering
Client data breached, and funds transferred on a fraudulent instruction that appeared to come from the client, with the notification costs.
Without it — A bookkeeper with bank access is the target of choice for invoice fraud, and general and professional policies exclude a transfer you were tricked into making.
Third-party crime bond
Theft of client funds by you or your staff, which some clients require.
Without it — Access to the accounts is the exposure, whether or not anything is ever taken.
General liability
Injury or damage at your office or a client's.
Without it — A lease or a client contract requires it.
The claims we actually see.
Ordered by how often we see them, not by how dramatic they are. Each one names the coverage that answers it — and the policy people wrongly assume already does.
Most common
A payroll tax deposit or a sales tax filing is missed and penalties follow
Covered by Professional liability
Payroll tax penalties compound fast. The policy pays the penalties and interest the error caused, not the tax itself.
Common
A fraudulent email instructs a payment and it is paid
Covered by Cyber, social engineering coverage
The sublimit for social engineering is often small. A call-back rule for any payment instruction is worth more than the coverage.
Less common, severe
Books a lender or buyer relied on turn out to be wrong
Covered by Professional liability
An engagement letter that says who may rely on your work is half the defense.
Common
Client records exposed from a stolen laptop or a hacked account
Covered by Cyber and privacy
A bookkeeper's laptop holds every client's bank data. Encryption and multi-factor authentication are conditions of most cyber quotes.
What the policy will not cover.
Pick a procedure to see what the exclusion actually means and whether it can be placed somewhere else.
The policy is written for bookkeeping. Each of these is a separate answer on the application.
What a bookkeeper policy needs to be told
Tax preparation
Preparing returns is rated separately and often included; check that it is.
Can it be placed? Yes, by adding it to the application.
Controller and CFO services
Advising on decisions rather than recording them is consulting, with a higher rate.
Can it be placed? Yes, disclosed.
Signature authority on client accounts
Signing checks or initiating transfers raises the crime and cyber exposure and the price of both.
Can it be placed? Yes, with dual control in place.
Attest work
Audits, reviews and compilations are accountant work on an accountant's policy.
Can it be placed? Yes, on accountants professional liability.
What the insurance company will ask about your bookkeeper business
We read the applications the markets use for businesses in this field and pulled out what they actually ask. Have these answers ready and a quote takes a day instead of a week, because nobody has to come back to you for the missing piece.
About the business
- What are your total gross revenues from last year's tax return, excluding recovered expenses?
- What do you estimate your gross revenues will be for this current fiscal year?
- What percentage of your income comes from each type of service: audit, bookkeeping, tax preparation, valuation, or other?
- Do you have any subsidiary, predecessor, or acquired firms for which you need coverage?
How you operate
- Do you use engagement letters with all clients, and do you update them every year?
- Do your engagement letters include alternative dispute resolution or mediation clauses?
- Do you have written procedures for screening clients and disengaging from clients?
- Do you use nonengagement letters to advise potential clients when you won't be providing services?
- Do you maintain a system for identifying and avoiding conflicts of interest?
Safety and controls
- Does anyone in your firm have discretionary authority to manage, pay bills, or invest clients' funds?
- Do you have an employee dishonesty insurance policy or bond that covers theft of client funds?
- Do you maintain a firm practice management system to ensure timely completion of reports and filings?
- Are all your financial statements and balance sheets signed by your owners, officers, or partners?
- Are all work papers indexed to show what was done, when, and by whom?
Your history
- Have you had any professional liability claims in the past?
- In the past year, have you performed services for any clients that later declared bankruptcy or failed as a business?
- Within the past year, have you sued any clients to collect fees?
- Do you know of any act, error, omission, fee dispute, client bankruptcy, or other circumstance that could be the basis for a claim?
- In the past five years, have any of your professional staff had a license suspended or revoked?
Money and people
- What deductible amount do you want per claim and in aggregate?
- What limits of liability do you want per claim and in aggregate?
- Do you want a separate limit for defense expenses?
- Do you have a second person review your attest work, tax work, or all work?
- Are all your professionally qualified staff or billable staff listed with hire dates, designations, hours, and licenses?
Have these ready
- Your last year's federal tax return
- Copies of your current engagement letters
- Your current professional liability insurance declarations page if you have existing coverage
- Resumes of any recently hired lateral hires
- Details of any claims, lawsuits, or incidents from the past five years
You answer what you can; a licensed agent fills the rest with you.
What our bookkeeper clients ask us.
How much does bookkeeper insurance cost?
Bookkeeping is one of the lower-rated accounting services, and many insurers package cyber with it. The price rises with revenue, the number of clients, signature authority or login access to client bank accounts, any tax preparation, claims history and the limit. We do not yet have enough of our own bookkeeper quotes to state a range, so we will not guess one. A quote takes those answers and comes back with the real number.
A client wants proof of insurance before giving me bank access. What do they mean?
Usually a certificate of professional liability at a stated limit, and sometimes a third-party crime bond that pays the client if funds are stolen by you or your staff. Larger clients may also name cyber. Read what they ask for exactly, because a crime bond and E&O answer different losses and a client who asked for one will not accept the other.
I also prepare tax returns. Does that change anything?
Yes, twice. The application rates tax preparation separately, so list it. And the FTC Safeguards Rule names a tax preparation service completing income tax returns as a financial institution, so you need a written information security program and multi-factor authentication on systems holding client data.
What is tail coverage, and do I need it when I retire or close?
Professional liability is written claims-made, so it answers only claims made while a policy is in force, for work done after the retroactive date printed on it. Stop buying it and a claim about work you already did has nowhere to go. Tail coverage, an extended reporting period, keeps the right to report those claims open for a set number of years after the last policy ends. It is bought once, usually priced as a multiple of the last annual premium, and the decision is easiest to make before you cancel.
Do I need insurance as a freelance bookkeeper?
Clients increasingly ask, and the exposure is real regardless: a missed payroll deposit for one client can cost more than a year of premium, and a fraudulent payment instruction can cost a great deal more. The policies are cheap and the certificate wins the client.
What does a bookkeeper insurance application ask for?
The applications we work from ask the services you provide (bookkeeping, payroll, sales tax, tax preparation, advisory), the number of clients and their industries, whether you have access to or authority over client bank accounts, whether you use a call-back procedure for payment instructions, your software and security practices, annual revenue, staff, and five years of claims. Bank access is the question that moves the price.
Does E&O cover money I sent on a fraudulent instruction?
Usually not; a payment you were tricked into making is social engineering, a cyber coverage with its own sublimit, and professional liability excludes it. Carry the cyber policy, ask for the highest social engineering limit offered, and confirm every payment instruction by a phone call to a known number.
Commercial insurance is 96% of what we do — it is not a department here, it is the whole business. Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.
Handed a lease, a vendor packet or a client contract with insurance requirements? Paste it into the COI Requirements Decoder to see what each one means for your business, or read what the requirements mean.