The bookkeeper handles the recurring mechanical work: categorizing transactions, reconciling the bank account against your records, chasing what customers owe you, and closing each month so the numbers mean something. This is monthly and it is where accuracy is built. The accountant works at wider intervals on things requiring judgment: your entity structure, tax planning before the year ends rather than after, quarterly estimates, the annual return, and reading your statements to tell you what they actually indicate. One keeps the record correct, the other decides what the record means.
Doing it yourself is genuinely reasonable at the start, and the honest threshold has more to do with complexity than revenue. If you have one bank account, one income stream, few transactions, no inventory, and no employees, software connected to your bank will carry you. The point at which that stops working is recognizable: when you have employees or contractors receiving tax forms, when you hold inventory, when you sell across state lines, when you take on debt or investment, or when you find yourself reconstructing months of records at tax time rather than reviewing them. That last one is the real signal, because the cost is not the software subscription, it is the hours you spend and the deductions you cannot substantiate.
For most first year businesses the workable arrangement is all three in different proportions. Software connected to your bank doing the automatic capture. A bookkeeper monthly or quarterly, which for a small business is a few hours rather than a salary. And an accountant annually for the return plus one conversation before year end, because tax planning that happens in April is not planning, it is reporting. That combination usually costs less than people expect and far less than the alternative of an accountant reconstructing a year of unsorted transactions at their hourly rate.
Two things worth knowing when you hire. Not every accountant is a CPA, and the distinction matters for anything involving representation before tax authorities or audited statements, though plenty of excellent non certified accountants handle small business returns well. And ask any candidate whether they have clients in your industry and your state, because Nevada has its own filing requirements and somebody who works with businesses like yours will catch things a generalist will not.