r/Bookkeeping: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

The sidebar says all are welcome and that there is no such thing as a stupid question, but the room that actually posts is working bookkeepers. They write about reconciliations, journal entries, accruals and client cleanups without explaining the terms. Business owners with a real problem are answered properly. The one question pitched too low, how do I get started, is banned and removed automatically.

• Self-employed bookkeepers and small firm owners discussing clients, pricing and staffing.
• In-house bookkeepers with a specific posting, payroll or reconciliation problem.
• Accountants and CPAs who also keep books for clients.
• Small business owners and nonprofit staff who have inherited the books and need a second opinion.
• People trying to enter the field, whose posts are mostly removed.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/Bookkeeping.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up12%
• Removed by Reddit's filters25%
• Held by AutoModerator42%
• Removed by moderators19%
• Deleted by the author3%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

97%

Removed by Reddit's filters

3%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

October 2025 to August 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   No self-promotion

   Replies asking people to DM you so they can hire you are not allowed. This isn't a job fair.

2. 2

   No commercial spam

   Discussion of commercial products, in context, is fine. Repeated low-value pointers to the web page for a product you're shilling is not.

3. 3

   Be respectful and polite

   Calm, polite, adult behavior is the norm here. Namecalling, abuse, racism, sexism, and the like will not be tolerated.

4. 4

   This subreddit is for discussion, not hiring or job seeking.

   There are lots of places where you can find bookkeepers to hire, and look for jobs. This subreddit is not for that; it's for discussion. Posts that are simply looking for work or for employees/contractors will be removed.

5. 5

   Don't post "How do I get started in bookkeeping?"

   Sadly, we get a huge number of posts of the form "Hi, I'm a [baker / butcher / computer programmer / long-distance runner], but I've heard that bookkeeping is an easy way to MAKE MONEY FAST while working from home. How do I get started?" There are plenty of pages on the internet that will provide advice on this, but it's generally not an interesting topic to /r/bookkeeping members. Posts in this category will be removed.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/Bookkeeping is a trade forum of about 86,000 members with a slow, steady feed, around ten posts a day. Nearly all are text, about 120 words long. Engagement is high for the size: the typical live post gets more than 20 comments, and a good one gets over a hundred.

The subjects are the daily work. How to treat an owner who moves cash to a personal account and calls it expenses. What to do with a client who has not filed in decades. Which software handles construction jobs. How to review a contractor's work, what to charge, how to find clients without wasting money. Rants about cleanup jobs and bad employers are a recognised genre with their own flair.

The defining feature is the gate. The moderators have been flooded for years by people who heard bookkeeping is easy money from home, and by sellers looking for bookkeepers as customers. So nearly every newcomer's post is held for review, and commenters are quick to say the internet is full of bots and people trying to sell them something. Getting through takes patience and a post that is plainly from someone doing the work.

What lands

• A real client situation with a judgment call in it, such as how to book undocumented cash withdrawals.
• A war story or rant from the job: a nightmare cleanup, a toxic employer, a business owner with a startling tax history.
• A practice management question from someone running a firm: hiring, standard charts of accounts, referral fees, what a marketing budget should go on.
• A specific software problem with the product named and what you already tried.
• A reflective question to peers, like what separates an average bookkeeper from a great one.

What gets removed or ignored

• Any version of how do I get started in bookkeeping. AutoModerator removes these and tells you to read the rules before posting again.
• For hire posts, job seeking and requests to find staff or contractors.
• Posts from low karma accounts and first-time posters, which are held for review and often never approved. Every moderator removal in our sample carried the getting started flair, including some that read like ordinary technical questions, so the likely explanation is that held posts from new accounts are being cleared out under that rule, not judged one by one.
• Market research dressed as a question, such as asking what would make people pay for a template, and how-to guides that read like content marketing.
• Replies asking people to message you so they can hire you.

The unwritten rules

• Comment first. Being new to posting here is itself a trigger for review, so a history of useful replies is the practical way in.
• Write like a bookkeeper. Name the software, the account types and the amounts. Generic questions with polished phrasing look like the research posts the mods remove.
• Comments are short, about 11 words, and rarely carry a link. Advice is given in a sentence or two.
• Discussing a commercial product in context is fine and common. Pointing to the same product repeatedly is what the rules call shilling.
• Tax law and accounting career questions are steered to the accounting subreddit by the sidebar.

Self-promotion

The rules are explicit. Soliciting business for your company or linking to pages that advertise a product or service gets you banned. Replies asking people to message you so they can hire you are not allowed. Naming a product in the course of a real discussion is fine. In practice the review queue does most of the enforcing, since promotional accounts tend to be new to the subreddit and never get out of it. Members are openly suspicious of anyone asking what tools or services bookkeepers would pay for. If you sell to bookkeepers, the only thing that works is answering software and workflow questions as a participant, over time, without a link.

How people write here

Typical post length

118 words

Typical title length

7 words

Titles phrased as a question

45%

Typical comment length

11 words

Comments that include a link

2%

Posts that carry a flair

100%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/Bookkeeping.

• bookkeeping 64 posts
• bookkeeper 37 posts
• bookkeepers 20 posts
• clients 41 posts
• client 41 posts
• quickbooks 20 posts
• qbo 14 posts
• accounting 26 posts
• payroll 19 posts
• books 21 posts
• bank 26 posts
• expense 16 posts
• expense account 7 posts
• business 37 posts
• accounts 21 posts
• reconcile 9 posts
• transactions 11 posts
• firm 13 posts
• tax 16 posts
• journal entry 5 posts
• cleanup 9 posts
• account 24 posts
• handle 20 posts
• deposits 8 posts
• bank statement 6 posts
• reconciliation 8 posts
• cpa 10 posts
• receipts 8 posts
• invoices 9 posts
• accountant 9 posts
• expenses 11 posts
• owner 13 posts
• statement 9 posts
• reconciling 6 posts
• accrual 5 posts
• monthly bookkeeping 3 posts
• clearing account 3 posts
• statements 7 posts
• entry 10 posts
• report 13 posts

Posts that did well

• How do you handle clients who pull cash to personal accounts and call it "business expenses" with no receipts?140 upvotes · 213 comments · Other
• 40 years of not paying taxes, is this recoverable?105 upvotes · 133 comments · Rant
• What separates an average bookkeeper from a great bookkeeper?82 upvotes · 73 comments · Other
• Bookkeeping Clean-Up Work70 upvotes · 127 comments · Practice Management
• Quit probably most toxic job I've had63 upvotes · 49 comments · Rant
• Bookkeeper with FT Job58 upvotes · 70 comments · Practice Management
• Firm owner group50 upvotes · 114 comments · Practice Management
• Title: What 50 hours of cleaning up livestock books taught me49 upvotes · 19 comments · Reconciliation

Common questions