Playbook, accounting firm
The client who wants to stop paying with the accounts half drafted
The monthly fee is not a subscription that stops cleanly. It is usually a year of compliance work split into twelve payments, and somebody stopping part way through has already had a share of that work, sometimes nearly all of it if the accounts are drafted. Whether anything is owed is a question about the engagement letter, and the person asking is very often really asking whether leaving now is going to cost them.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for cancellations holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The monthly amount funds an annual cycle rather than a month of service, so a client who stops in the second half of the year has usually taken more of the work than they have paid for, and that is the arithmetic nobody raises and everybody is asking about.
- Ending the engagement does not end the authority for the practice to act as the client's agent, and somebody who has stopped paying while the practice is still authorised is a problem for both sides.
- There is almost always a piece of work in progress at the moment somebody wants to stop, a draft set of accounts or a part prepared return, and what happens to it is settled by the engagement letter rather than by the notice.
- A departure triggers a professional clearance request from whichever firm is taking over, so the practice hears about it twice, and a client who has told only the chat window has in fact told nobody.
How it arrives
- how do i cancel my monthly accountancy fee
- what notice do i have to give to leave
- do i have to pay the rest of the year if i leave now
- i have found a cheaper accountant how do i switch
- can i pause the monthly payments for a few months
- what happens to the work you have already started
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The notice period, and who notice has to be given to | In what form, to which address, and when it takes effect. A client who cancels the standing order and tells nobody is the commonest version of this, and it finishes with a balance and bad feeling on both sides. |
|---|---|
| What the monthly fee is actually buying across the year | Which pieces of work sit inside it and roughly where in the cycle each one falls. This is what makes the position on leaving part way explicable rather than punitive. |
| Your position on work in progress at the point of leaving | Whether a part prepared return is finished, handed over or billed, and on what terms. Write it down before you need it, because the conversation happens when somebody is already annoyed. |
| The disengagement and handover process | What you send the incoming firm, what you release to the client, how long it takes and whether the handover itself is chargeable. Clients comparing firms are comparing this even when they never mention it. |
The reply
The engagement letter sets out the notice period and where notice has to be sent, and stopping the payment at your bank is not notice on its own [1]. The monthly amount covers a year of work paid in twelve instalments rather than a month at a time, so where the accounts are already drafted there may be a balance for what has been done [2]. I cannot see your engagement or your payments, and nothing here ends anything. Leave me your name and an email and the practice will confirm the position in writing.
It puts the notice route first because the client's next move is usually to cancel a payment, which is the one action that makes things worse. The sentence about instalments explains a possible balance before anybody has to defend it. And it separates what can be described, the terms, from what cannot be seen, this client's account.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor gives a leaving date, says they have already stopped a payment, or names the firm they are moving to.
Nothing here ends the engagement, and the payments do not stop because this conversation did. Leave me your name and an email and somebody will confirm the notice, anything outstanding, and what happens to work already under way.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say an engagement has been ended, or that payments will stop, because nothing here reaches either.
- Never say what a leaving client will owe for work in progress, since that turns on how far the work got.
- Never offer a reduced fee, a pause or a retention discount, which is a decision for a principal of the practice.
- Never suggest cancelling the payment first and sorting the notice out afterwards.
Questions
- Should we publish the notice period at all?
- Yes, with the reason behind it. A client who understands that the fee funds an annual cycle argues about it far less than one who discovers a balance after they thought they had already left.
- Can it tell somebody how many payments they have made?
- No. It cannot look up an account, a payment or an engagement. It answers from the terms you publish and takes a message, and that is the whole of what it does here.
- What about somebody who has already moved to another firm?
- Route it at once. A clearance request is probably already on its way to you, and the useful thing the assistant can do is make sure the client's own notice arrives at the right address rather than sitting in a chat log.
Keep reading
- Everything for a accounting firmDeadlines drive the volume. What an accountancy practice can automate, and why no answer may touch a caller's own numbers.
- Handling cancellations in generalCancellation content is hard to find on purpose. What it costs to answer plainly, how notice periods work, and what happens to data on the way out.
- A client wants their fees back after the work has startedThere is nothing to send back and the work is partly done. Why a fee refund at a practice is a scope conversation, not a returns one.
- Publishing hours when the working week changes with the calendarReception hours are the easy half. What to publish about the weeks nobody can come to the phone and the payroll cut off that never moves.
- The arrival question at a practice is usually about carrying somethingWhere to park to carry a year of paperwork in, whether anything can be posted, and what happens to originals left at a door.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.