Bookkeeping model and freee plans

According to a chat poll on how people work with an accountant: most keep the books entirely themselves, or themselves with periodic review by a zeirishi (monthly/quarterly/before the annual filing); a minority hands bookkeeping fully to a zeirishi or keeps an in-house accountant. Practitioners' view: bookkeeping and preparing a balance sheet is quite doable on your own (freee/MoneyForward can handle it), especially before hiring employees — complexity starts once you hire staff and combine multiple companies. A simple profit-and-loss statement (損益計算書/PL) is relatively easy to fill in yourself, while the balance sheet (貸借対照表/BS) and the tax calculation are better shown to a specialist for review. For the annual financial filing, it's recommended to hire an accountant at least once (for review and to file), even if day-to-day bookkeeping is self-managed in freee — errors are often found in self-entered transactions. freee.co.jp is a service for registering as a sole proprietor/company, doing bookkeeping, generating articles of incorporation (teikan) for free, and finding a visiting accountant (with an option to require conversational English). Pricing: the basic 会計 (accounting) plan can be taken on its own; 人事労務 (freee HR, payroll/HR) is often free for 1 employee bundled with an 会計 subscription (there's no free combo for a director plus an employee); 申告 (freee申告, filing) is a separate paid subscription. There's a plan around 50,000 yen/year and a free tier (with only one month of history). The free tier is enough for a freelancer/sole proprietor filing the blue form (青色申告) with no expenses and only regular income; it does not work for a company (法人), which needs a paid plan. At company registration, freee offers a paid document-preparation service (roughly 5,000-10,000 yen one-off) bundled with an accounting subscription. freee's sales staff actively upsell additional services — it's worth checking what's actually needed and trying the minimal package first. The basic paid freee HR tariff (スタータープラン, about 3,900 yen/month + 600 yen per additional employee, though the per-employee fee only kicks in above 5 employees) does NOT allow printing payslips (a more expensive tariff is needed), even though printing payslips is legally required unless the employee separately consents to an electronic format. When registering with freee, a Japanese staff member typically calls back with questions about the nature of the business — this is standard practice, not a sign of suspicion toward foreigners specifically. A list of business-activity categories for sole-proprietor registration is available on the freee site, along with a free (short) business-plan template that doesn't cover all the needs of a visa application. Source: https://www.freee.co.jp/ — Official freee website — business registration, accounting, HR. Source: https://www.freee.co.jp/kb/kb-kaigyou/occupation/ — List of business-activity categories for sole-proprietor registration on freee. Source: https://www.freee.co.jp/kb/template/business-plan/template-1/ — Free freee business-plan template.