Value-based pricing can make your bookkeeping business appear easier

To understand value-based pricing take a look at the fees charged for bookkeeping using Xero at National Bookkeeping. These fixed rates are offered to small to medium businesses to give them a clearly defined outcome for a fixed price that they can budget on.

Although the bookkeeping service is offered for a fixed price each week the bookkeeping tasks can include lots of different steps that can be quite time consuming and varied, including:

• finding source documents (like receipts)
• coding transactions
• entering automatic deductions not entered during the week
• corresponding with debtors and creditors.

It has always been easier to pay an hourly rate for accounting staff because they can perform lots of different tasks while they are in the office. Working remotely and using online accounting software like Xero AND some of the apps or integrations that connect with it enables bookkeepers to better define the work they do. It also enables them to get a whole lot more productive performing that work.

If a business is paying an hourly rate for a bookkeeper working remotely they will probably also need to have the bookkeeper setup on their CloudPBX Phone system AND on their website chat system. This way they can see when they are logged in and actively working AND they can perform customer service tasks alongside their bookkeeping.

Smaller businesses who just want to be compliant and up-to-date love the idea of paying a fixed price.

Junior Bookkeepers to BAS Agents

Accounting work can also touch many hands from the daily bookkeeping, data entry and credit management to GST coding, Payroll, BAS and financial reporting. Many junior bookkeepers charge an hourly rate because they are happy to be working at a customers site for a certain number of hours per day/week and then go home and leave it all behind.

The biggest issue in this scenario for more advanced bookkeeper and Registered BAS Agents who work as contractors is called “Scope Creep” where you end up doing a lot more of the high value work at the low junior bookkeeper rate. This is why it can be very important to clearly define the services you provide in your Bookkeeping Professional Services Agreement.

Some bookkeepers however try to take the focus away from an hourly rate and to a fixed price for an end result (like balanced cashbook at the end of each month).

Bookkeeping Service Packages

Bookkeepers who package their services into fixed price packages provide clients with a known monthly or weekly fee for their bookkeeping and accounting costs. This can be very appealing for

• smaller businesses who need to manage their costs carefully as well as
• larger businesses who may be very strapped for time and want to be guaranteed that their bookkeeping costs don’t blow out – which sometimes happens when they don’t hire the right bookkeeper and need to micro manage their work.

Here are a couple ways that bookkeeping services can be packaged based on skill level or the number of transactions:

• Fee per employee for payroll services
• Monthly fee based on the number of transactions that need to be reconciled
• Quarterly fee based on reconciling and lodging the BAS

Learn more about other ways to package your bookkeeping services.

Pricing for Accounting Course Tutors

How to price your services is always complicated and there is a pricing module within the EzyStartup Business Training Course which goes through it.

Even if you are applying for some managerial jobs through Seek, you need to get your wage expectations right or you’ll be automatically filtered out of the potential candidates!

I recently made an announcement about our Accounting Course Tutor Initiative and as part of that process we’ll be going through how to price tutoring services for accounting courses. If you are a past student of EzyLearn you’re welcome to register for this initiative for free – this offer will end soon so please register now.

Bookkeeping Academy MYOB & Xero Training Course Packages

When you enrol into a MYOB & Xero Training Course package as part of our Bookkeeping Academy you’ll be eligible to join the National Bookkeeping talent pool.

This gives you a digital profile and can help you get discovered locally for bookkeeping work.