Last updated 2026-10-03

This page covers what shapes an accounts receivable specialist's hourly rate, the median the Bureau of Labor Statistics lists for the nearest occupation, what an in-house specialist costs once benefits are added, what Honest Taskers charges per hour, how a part-time or full-time schedule changes the monthly bill, how collections experience changes what a specialist is worth, whether to pay by the hour or by results, which warning signs mark a weak offer, what to verify before hiring, and which sources back these figures.

What shapes an accounts receivable specialist's hourly rate?

Scope of the work, payer experience, schedule and who sets the rate shape an accounts receivable specialist's hourly rate, and the last of those is the one most comparisons skip. An employer sets an in-house wage, while a staffing rate is a price for hours. The two numbers don't measure the same thing.

Scope comes first. A specialist who posts payments and reconciles remittances does different work from one who calls payers about claims that have gone quiet, reworks denials and writes appeals. Experience with the payers a practice bills most also counts for more than a general billing background, because each payer has its own portal, appeal form and filing window.

Several inputs sit behind the Honest Taskers hourly rate: candidate experience, education, location, role, specialty, language, schedule and full-time or part-time status. No national table splits those inputs out for this role, so the closest published wage is a reference point, not a quote.

Schedule counts too. Professionals work the client's US time zone and approved schedule, so the hours a practice asks for are a real input into the quote.

What does the BLS list as the median for bill and account collectors?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists a median of $22.61 an hour, or $47,030 a year, for bill and account collectors, occupation code 43-3011. That figure comes from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program release for May 2025, and it's a national median.

Treat it as a proxy. It's the nearest code in the verified wage set this page draws on, and it isn't an exact match for a healthcare accounts receivable specialist. The code is titled for bill and account collectors in general, and the data holds no breakdown of how many work on payer follow-up. A practice's own specialist may be paid above or below it.

A median splits the occupation in half. Half the workers earned more, and half earned less. Only the median is stated here, with no range or percentile, because only the median was retrieved. It describes employees on US payrolls, and it isn't a pay promise to any individual.

Payment posting is a different seat with a different code, and it's covered on its own pages.

What does an in-house accounts receivable specialist cost after benefits?

An in-house accounts receivable specialist paid the national median of $47,030 would cost a practice about $69,886 a year once five benefit components are added. That's the cost of the seat, because the wage is only part of what an employer carries.

Those percentages come from the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release. They describe the office and administrative support series, not collections work specifically. Applying them to a collections-type role is an estimate, so a practice should use its own benefits records. Equipment, workspace and software seats sit outside the table, as does the manager time spent reviewing the aging report. The wage line alone understates what the seat costs a practice.

What does Honest Taskers charge per hour for an accounts receivable specialist?

Honest Taskers charges $10.00 to $12.65 an hour for an accounts receivable specialist, billed by the hour, with the rate set by the candidate and the role. Experience, education, location, specialty, language, schedule and full-time or part-time status all move where a quote lands inside that band.

That's the rate clients pay Honest Taskers. The rate carries no employer payroll load, benefits line or paid-leave line, and it isn't a wage Honest Taskers pays a professional. Honest Taskers doesn't guarantee any individual an income or a placement. A quote names one point inside the band for a given candidate and role, so ask for that figure rather than assuming every role carries the same rate.

Most Honest Taskers placements complete within one to three weeks of a signed agreement, and new clients may receive a two-week working trial with their first selected professional, subject to current service terms. For the fuller breakdown of a quote, see what a virtual accounts receivable specialist costs.

How does a part-time or full-time schedule change an accounts receivable specialist's monthly bill?

Weekly hours move the monthly bill as much as the hourly rate does, so 10 hours a week costs a quarter of what 40 hours costs at the same rate. The table runs the arithmetic at both ends of the band.

A month with a fifth working week costs more than four weeks of hours, so treat the monthly columns as planning figures. An in-house seat is a fixed annual cost whatever the volume of aged claims, while hourly cover only costs what the practice buys. Any saving applies only to the hours that move off the practice's own desk. Payer phone work is slow, so a 20-hour week is mostly hold time and portal lookups, and the first month's results are the best guide to how many hours to buy.

How does collections experience change what an accounts receivable specialist is worth?

Collections experience raises what a specialist is worth when it's payer follow-up experience, and it counts for much less when it comes from consumer debt. Medical accounts receivable turns on a payer contract, a remittance advice and an appeal deadline, and retail credit collections has none of those.

Payer follow-up experience is specific. It covers working an aging report by priority rather than row order, reading why a payer adjusted a claim, reworking a denial and assembling an appeal inside the payer's window. Logging every call in a payer portal such as Availity matters too, so the next person sees the history. What to test for is laid out in our guide to virtual accounts receivable specialist skills.

No sourced figure exists here for how much each of those skills adds to a rate, so none is stated. What a practice can do is ask a candidate to work a de-identified page of its own aging report, then price the seat against the accounts they cleared.

Should a practice pay an accounts receivable specialist by the hour or by results?

A practice should pay by the hour when it wants to keep the aging report and the write-off decisions, and it should look hard at a results-based quote before agreeing to one. Honest Taskers bills by the hour.

An hourly seat gives a practice a known monthly cost and puts the specialist inside its own system. The trade-off is that the practice still owns payer strategy and the billing outcome. An hourly bill holds still while collections move, so the better fit depends on where the practice expects its revenue to go. How hourly staffing and results-based outsourcing split that responsibility is set out in our accounts receivable specialist guide.

No figure for what results-based pricing takes appears here, because none is sourced. Before agreeing to one, ask what the percentage is a percentage of, what counts as collected, which claims are in scope, who decides on write-offs, and what happens to the fee on balances the practice would have collected anyway.

Which warning signs mark a weak accounts receivable specialist offer?

A weak offer hides the basis of the number, so the warning signs are quotes that won't say what they cover. Each of these can be checked in writing before anyone starts.

• A rate quoted without saying whether it's hourly or monthly.
• Hours that aren't fixed, so the monthly bill can't be worked out in advance.
• No answer on who carries replacement and downtime when the person is out or leaves.
• No statement on whether there's an hourly minimum.
• A promise to recover a set amount, when the outcome depends on the practice's payers, filing windows and write-off decisions.
• No signed Business Associate Agreement before the person touches protected health information.

For comparison, Honest Taskers offers unlimited replacement support, and performance-related replacements may qualify for a credit covering the replacement professional's first two weeks, subject to the current service agreement. A posting built from a written job description should state its scope and boundaries, and our accounts receivable specialist job description shows what those look like.

What should a practice verify before it hires an accounts receivable specialist?

A practice should verify the rate basis, the weekly hours, the system access, the write-off limit and the signed agreements before it hires an accounts receivable specialist. Every item below is answerable in writing.

• Whether the quoted rate is hourly or monthly, and which hours it covers.
• Which practice management and clearinghouse access the specialist will get, since the practice grants it, in a system such as Athenahealth, Tebra or eClinicalWorks.
• A written write-off limit, so nobody has to guess which adjustments the specialist can enter.
• A signed Business Associate Agreement, with HIPAA training on record.
• Your own aging report by payer and age bucket, so the scope matches the work that's aging.

Pay figures belong at the end of that list, because a wage reference can't fix a bad scope, and a practice that skips the first five checks will pay for the gap in rework. The steps for finding and testing a candidate sit in our guide on how to hire a virtual accounts receivable specialist.

Which sources back these accounts receivable specialist figures?

Wage data comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics "Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics" release for May 2025, occupation code 43-3011, read from the public API in September 2026. Only the national median hourly and annual wage were retrieved, so no range, mean, percentile or state figure appears.

Benefit percentages come from the BLS "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation" release, office and administrative support series, and each row is rounded to the dollar so the table adds up. Rates, trial terms, placement timing and replacement support for Honest Taskers come from its published service terms. Every monthly and yearly figure is arithmetic on the $10.00 to $12.65 hourly band, not a quote, and no figure is stated for what any practice or professional is paid. The scope descriptions draw on Honest Taskers' own accounts receivable articles.

Schedule a discovery call with Honest Taskers about an accounts receivable specialist for your practice.