PRICING, FEES & BILLING RATES

The Three-Step Formula for Setting Your Monthly Fee

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Hand moving triangle along beam to indicate balance between price and value

How to create price packages.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

Packages are the first step toward productizing your services. Your packages define your services as discrete offerings with defined parameters around what they include and what’s excluded.

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The secret sauce to creating a fixed price package with a value add consists of combining several variables:

Deliverables + Client Persona = Well-Priced Packages

Client-Specific Price Point + Market Price Point = Well-Priced Packages

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AI’s Already in Your Workflow…| It’s Not Just the Numbers

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The question is: Do you know what it’s doing?

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It’s Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines

Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

Artificial intelligence has arrived in accounting, but not in the way many expected. It’s not a single app or a single process. It’s everywhere, embedded in workflows, changing how firms scope engagements, price cleanup work, and train their people. 

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In the latest episode of It’s Not Just the Numbers, co-hosts Damien Greathead and Penny Breslin explore how AI reshapes the day-to-day work of accounting firms. Their conversation moves beyond theory to real-world examples of how AI is being used in client engagements, what it means for team development, and why critical thinking, not coding, is the skill every firm must cultivate next. 

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Leesley: Your Clients Will Pay More | Gear Up For Growth

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Here’s how to label, package, and price the value you already provide.

This is a preview. The complete episode is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!
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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

“With AI, we finally have the tools to free up time for advisory, and clients are asking for it,” says Megan Leesley, director of tax at Dark Horse CPAs, during her appearance on Gear Up for Growth, hosted by Jean Caragher of Capstone Marketing.

“They want more than a tax return. They want strategic guidance, and they’re willing to pay for it.” 

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

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Leesley, a member of the Intuit Tax Council, recently presented at DCPA25 on transitioning from compliance to advisory, sharing practical steps to transform a traditional tax practice while increasing revenue, improving client relationships, and enhancing work-life balance. 

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Some Clients Just Don’t Fit

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businesswoman smiling at two clients, man and woman

Your team has to talk to them every day.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

A friend who owned a business services firm in the marketing industry once told me he would rather face waterboarding than resign a hard-won client. However, even he cast a big one aside after his key employee returned from a client meeting in tears. Some things just can’t be tolerated. Your job is to determine where the line should be and to make the decision before a bad client has the chance to negatively affect your company.

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A client’s fit with your firm is every bit as important as their behavior and payment practices. After you adopt a new client-centric, value-based business model, some clients won’t fit in. Some will want to stick with the transactional model of the billable hour. They may not be comfortable with your new direction. Some clients may not even want to pay for your smallest service bundle despite the enhanced service levels it includes.
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Four Things to Learn When Assessing Clients

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Businesswoman using calculator while reviewing something on laptop screen

Seven steps to setting your price.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

How much would you pay for a bottle of water in the checkout line of a grocery store? Maybe $2 or $3, right? You know it costs more per unit than buying a case of water, but at that moment it’s worth it even though it’s the same bottle of water. Now, let’s assume you just made the long trek back to your hotel room in Las Vegas. They have the same bottle of water sitting there for $10. You’re thirsty and don’t want to walk to find a store, so you pay $10 for that bottle conveniently located in your room. The water isn’t different, but the value at that moment in time is subjective.

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When we think about price, we really need to think about worth. What actually are you bringing to the table? Lots of training. Many years of experience. Vision into similar businesses. It took you years to get here; don’t sell an answer to a question the client asks for the three minutes it took to answer.
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How to Ward Off Scope Creep

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Everyone must know exactly what does and does NOT fall within the lines of scoped services.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

There’s a time to increase scope and a time to let it slide. Let’s explore these two options.

It’s professional responsibility to inform a client when a request is out of scope. In this instance, you have two options: either make it a separate engagement or include it in the existing service package. It’s important to have everyone on the same page about what is within scope and what falls outside of it.

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It would be best if you always built into your pricing agreements a 20 percent buffer to protect you against pricing mistakes. This doesn’t mean you should do work outside the scope for free, but if a client asks for a service not included, you could decide to let it go if the amount is immaterial.

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When to Change Your Price

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Five issues to consider.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

What is the lowest monthly fee paid by any of your clients? You probably don’t want to bring on any new clients at a lower fee, so use this as your new business baseline. No one enters your firm without paying this baseline monthly service fee.

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However, the question remains whether the client will be billed on a fixed-price or value-priced basis. Here are five issues to consider as you make this decision:

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