It may come as a surprise to many struggling bookkeeping firm owners that accounting and bookkeeping are the top money-money makers when compared to legal services and many other service firms. This is true in the USA where research firm Sageworks annual ranking of industries found that accounting-related firms (accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll service firms) are the most profitable. There’s a simple reason for this, most SMBs owners gladly outsource all of their accounting and bookkeeping work, provided it was costs—effective to do so.
The challenge for the typical bookkeeping firm owner is that they continue to operate as technical experts, beavering away for their client’s interest and not achieving the bounty of profits that are potentially available to them. Top-performing bookkeeping firms lock into profitable trading because the cloud has provided the means to make bookkeeping services highly profitable. It’s a simple business case: your staff can do what small business owners can’t do: they operate faster and more accurate and, when priced properly, offer healthy margins for the bookkeeping firm.
The ‘right’ fee structure
There is no such thing as a market price for bookkeeping. It is a myth (see The Myth of a Market Price). But, if you want to grow and boost your firm’s profitability, it’s imperative that you switch to a fixed fee model with two or three options. That’s the only way you can monetize the increase in profitability and efficiency you’ll realize.
No need to increase your cost base
Expansion of a service business usually requires increasing the head count of professional or para-professional staff numbers. Thanks to the cloud, your firm’s bottom line can grow without increasing head count. It’s about performing existing services more efficiently using the many cloud-based tools and add-ons. Increased productivity means you pathe the way for capacity to deliver additional services, while ensuring that most of these services need little of your scarce professional time.