PRICING, FEES & BILLING RATES

How to Call the Right Plays for Your Clients

By

Understand their goals and their weaknesses.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

It’s up to you to recognize the client persona most suited for your firm, but you’ll want to start by defining your customers’ needs. So, what do people really want, and how can you figure it out?

MORE by Jody Padar

GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

Certainly, you can engage in expensive research, from questionnaires to focus groups. But, in reality, most of the clues you need will come from your knowledge of the people you work with within that group.
READ MORE →

Define Client Personas for Pricing

By

Which ones are you most drawn to?

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

One drawback of the hourly pricing model is its one-size-fits-all nature. Every client is charged the same rates per hour, with the only difference being the number of hours each uses.

But the world isn’t made up of identical people working in identical businesses and driving identical cars to and from their identical homes. Thank goodness!

MORE by Jody Padar
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

Clients are as different as you or me, but we can group them into buckets called personas based on shared values or traits. In a client-centric firm, it helps to understand these basic personas so you can more efficiently meet each client’s needs. You probably have a handful of personas in your firm right now. You just haven’t seen them as a grouping because, in your bill-by-the-hour model, it doesn’t matter who they are.

READ MORE →

Michelle River: The Hidden Data Behind CPA Firm Burnout and Profit Pressure | Gear Up for Growth

By

How savvy CPAs are unlocking powerful insights buried in their practice management systems. Plus: Download the slide deck.

Sponsored by True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

“What surprised me most isn’t what the data says,” says Michelle Golden River, CEO of Fore LLC, in a new episode of Gear Up for Growth, powered by CPA Trendlines. “It’s that almost every CPA already has it, and it rarely makes it into leadership conversations.” 

Download Michelle River’s slide deck here

MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here MORE Gear Up for Growth | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network here

River tells host Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing, that firms are overlooking powerful insights buried in their own practice management data. 

River challenges CPA firm leaders to rethink long-held assumptions about growth and sustainability. “There is no reason we should be taking a high volume of low spenders when it’s killing us. It’s ruining our sustainability chances,” she says

River leaves three top takeaways for CPA firms:

READ MORE →

Tax Season Leaves Accountants Drained, Disappointed

By

The 30-point swing: Accountants close the season feeling slightly negative, at minus 1.8, a collapse of more than 30 points.

The Busy Season Barometer Shows Exactly When—and Why.

By CPA Trendlines

After starting near historic highs, sentiment among tax professionals fell more than 30 points by April, as workload, client behavior and system failures overwhelmed expectations.

MORE Busy Season Barometer | Join the survey. Get the results

The 2026 tax season began with confidence.

By December, sentiment among tax professionals had climbed to a positive 29.8—the strongest reading in the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer cycle. A majority expected better conditions. Few anticipated what came next.

By April, that optimism had vanished.

Accountant attitudes closed the season slightly negative, around -1 to -1.8, marking a swing of more than 30 points in four months.

It was one of the sharpest same-season reversals in the Barometer’s 24-year history, and it followed a pattern practitioners have seen before: expectations rising in the fall, then breaking under the weight of the season itself.

The difference in 2026 was the speed—and the causes.

READ MORE →

Tax Prep Billing Rates Lift Busy Season 2026

By

Busy Season 2026 sets up a year of tough decisions about monumental transformations.

Busy Season 2026: Billing rates for tax prep and planning are increasing at a 10.8% year-over-year rate, rushing past the average tax and accounting fee increase of 4.5%.

By CPA Trendlines

Busy Season 2026: Tax professionals struggle to improve systems and metrics, with “much worse” beating “much better” by three to one.

As tax season 2026 comes to a close, new data show that price hikes for tax prep and planning are running at double-digit rates, even as billing rates for most other accounting services are flattening out, according to new CPA Trendlines research in conjunction with the annual Busy Season Barometer.

MORE Busy Season Barometer
Join the survey. Get the results

MORE Tax Season Trends & Insights

Tax practitioners are finishing the season as a divided profession, with fewer than 6% reporting a “much better” year, against almost three times that many reporting a “much worse” year.

Coming out of tax season, many firms are facing major decisions in the coming months driven by new artificial intelligence investments, a fundamental shift in staffing models, and private equity disruptions.

READ MORE →