Playbook, accounting firm
Publishing accountancy fees so the assistant routes to the right package
A practice with three fee packages has three answers to what do you charge, and the prospect asking cannot tell which one they are. That is the whole problem. A sole trader, a landlord with a couple of properties and a limited company running payroll all type the same seven words, and an assistant that answers with the lowest number has cost the practice the difference. The fix is in how the packages are written, not in how the assistant is configured.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The price here attaches to a client profile rather than to a service, so the assistant's job is to establish which profile it is talking to before it says any number at all.
- Fixed monthly packages and hourly work coexist in the same practice, and clients do not know that compliance work is packaged while an authority enquiry is billed by the hour until somebody tells them.
- Demand is driven by a calendar, so the same question in the weeks before a filing deadline carries an unspoken second question about whether the practice can still take somebody on in time.
- What the fee excludes is more contested than what it includes, because the fee dispute in this trade is almost never about the price and almost always about the scope.
How it arrives
- how much do you charge for a self assessment
- do you do fixed monthly fees
- what is included in the monthly fee
- how much for annual accounts for a small limited company
- do you charge by the hour for anything
- is payroll extra or is it in the package
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Fee packages, each labelled with the client profile it is built for | Sole trader, landlord, contractor, small limited company, company with payroll. Publish the profile in the same document as the price, and the assistant can ask which one applies rather than reaching for the cheapest. |
|---|---|
| The exclusions list for every fixed fee | An enquiry from the tax authority, records arriving late or unreconciled, an extra return, a company formation, a catch up year. Index these as carefully as the inclusions, because the assistant needs to be able to say what triggers an additional fee before somebody signs up expecting it not to. |
| Where you bill by the hour, and at what rate | Advisory work, enquiry handling, one off projects, and the rates by grade if you publish them. Clients assume a monthly fee covers everything the practice does, and stating the boundary once is worth more than explaining it later. |
| What your onboarding window looks like in the busy season | How long it takes to take on a new client, the point in the calendar after which you cannot guarantee a deadline, and whether late arrivals are priced differently. The fee question in deadline season is really a capacity question, and this is the material that answers it. |
The reply
Our fees depend on which package fits you, so it helps to know whether you are a sole trader, a landlord or running a limited company. The monthly packages cover the compliance work listed against each profile on the fees page, and payroll is priced separately per pay run. Anything outside the package, such as handling an enquiry from the tax authority or bringing an earlier year up to date, is billed at our hourly rate. Tell me which describes you and I can point you at the right page.
It asks the profile question before quoting anything, which is the only way pricing in this trade answers correctly. Separating packaged compliance from hourly advisory work in the same reply heads off the scope argument that otherwise arrives six months later. The close offers to narrow the answer rather than to book a call, because at this stage the visitor still wants information rather than a person.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor supplies figures (turnover, income, a number of properties, a tax bill) in order to have a fee pinned to their own position.
I can give you the package prices and the profile each one assumes, but once your own figures are involved the fee needs an accountant to look at the position. Leave your name, email and a line about your setup and someone will come back with a fee.
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 quote the lowest package to somebody whose profile has not been established.
- Never say a monthly fee covers everything the practice does for a client.
- Never suggest the practice can take somebody on in time for a deadline without a person confirming capacity.
- Never state a rate, allowance or threshold set by an authority as though it were current.
Questions
- Our packages all have exceptions. Does that make this unworkable?
- It makes the exclusions the most important document to index. An assistant that can name what falls outside the fee is more useful than one reciting the price, because the price is on your website already and the exclusions usually are not.
- What happens when somebody asks about a rate or a threshold?
- Keep those on a page you maintain rather than in an uploaded document, and word the page so the assistant repeats that figures are revised and should be confirmed. Material of this kind goes stale silently, and in this trade a stale number reads as advice.
- Does it help during the deadline weeks specifically?
- That is where the volume is, and the questions are unusually repetitive: what does it cost, what do you need, can you still take me on. Answering the first two automatically while a person handles the third is the whole return.
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 pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- Why the package price is not the quote for the person askingCatch up years, records in a carrier bag and income from abroad all break the published package. How the assistant gives a range and stops.
- Fee queries from existing clients, answered from the engagement termsAdditional fee queries answered from the engagement terms: what triggered a charge, when the practice invoices, and where the query goes next.
- The onboarding steps that decide how fast a new client gets movingIdentity checks, agent authority and the professional clearance letter, explained at the enquiry stage rather than during the delay.
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.