“Most accountants undercharge for their services.”
We’ve all read this being discussed lately on LinkedIn, but something that no one is talking about (anywhere) is how to change this.
What if I told you that having higher fees and fewer clients could actually grow your business?
Wild concept, right? Like discovering that guacamole is extra, but paying for it is so worth it.
It took me years to fully embrace this idea, but once I did, my business transformed. My revenue has increased by over $50,000 every year since 2021, even though I serve fewer clients than ever before.
When I first started my business over 11 years ago, I thought the only way to build a successful firm was to charge lower rates and stack up clients like a game of accounting Jenga. More clients meant more money, right?
Wrong.
Instead, I found myself drowning in work, forgetting to reply to client emails, an insane amount of scope creep just to keep clients “happy”, constantly justifying my fees to clients who didn’t see the value, and slowly resenting the business I had built. The business that was supposed to give me more time with my family was sucking the life out of me. I was stuck in the grind of high-volume, low-value work, and something had to change before it all came toppling down.
One day, after a particularly exhausting week filled with client demands that far exceeded what they were paying for, I sat down with my books and a bottle of wine and did what accountants do best - math. I realized that if I just increased my fees and focused on working with the right clients, I could actually make more while doing less. I mean isn’t that what everybody wants?
The shift didn’t happen overnight. I had to rework my pricing structure at least three times, communicate changes to my clients, and stand firm in the belief that my expertise was worth it when I got push back.
But the results? They spoke for themselves.
Instead of pulling prices out of thin air or matching what I thought competitors were charging, I built my pricing model around the actual transformation that I provide.
And I’m going to tell you how.
I started by breaking down our three main categories of services into clear, high-value offerings.
Bookkeeping: This became a fixed-fee pricing based on a combination of revenue, transaction volume and complexity, ensuring that clients have clean financials year-round.
Tax Preparation & Strategy: Is bundled into an advisory-based model that eliminates the “once-a-year” tax scramble and shifts focus to proactive planning.
CFO & Advisory Services: These are high-touch, value-driven services tailored to business owners who need financial clarity, forecasting, and strategic guidance.
By restructuring my fees and focusing on value-based pricing, I stopped chasing low-dollar clients and started working with business owners who respect my expertise. (And best of all, my caffeine consumption has returned to semi-normal levels.)
You’re probably thinking - “I know this already, Jaime, I’ve read everywhere that I should switch to value-based pricing. How are you helping me figure it out for myself?”
Well… read on, my friend.
The key to pricing based on value starts with understanding what you actually offer. Not just in terms of deliverables, but in terms of transformation.
Now I’ve said this word twice, but what exactly is transformation?
Webster defines “transformation” as a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance.
How does that relate to accounting? It’s about fundamentally changing how a business owner understands and interacts with their finances. For many business owners, accounting is a necessary evil - something they do begrudgingly, often poorly, and usually at the last minute. But when done right, accounting transforms from a compliance task into a powerful decision-making tool.
And the best accountants don’t just record history; they help shape the future.
So I want you to consider a few questions: What pain points do you solve for your clients? What problems are you eliminating for them? How are you elevating your clients’ business and ultimately their life?
You may be saying, “Jaime, I’m not a therapist or a coach or a problem solver. I’m an accountant/tax preparer/bookkeeper/[insert your title here]”.
Ah, my friend - but you are all those things because for most people, finances are emotional. A study performed by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman showed that we make financial decisions based 90% on emotion and only 10% on logic. If you want to command higher prices, your services need to be designed for impact, not just completion.
So it’s time to sit down to redefine your offerings and ask yourself a few tough questions:
What do I love doing?
What am I actually great at (and also credentialed in - sometimes that helps)?
And more importantly—what will clients happily pay top dollar for?
It’s not about doing more; it is about doing the right things for the right people.
Since I’m all about sharing, here’s what that process looked like for me:
Bookkeeping – I stopped treating bookkeeping like a low-margin service and started packaging it as a business intelligence tool. Clean financials mean clients can make better decisions, so I positioned bookkeeping as the foundation for smart strategy, not just number-crunching.
I tell clients and prospects that their financials tell the story of their business’s financial health. Without a proper diagnosis (aka clean financials), their business will likely bleed out (ie. hemorrhage cash flow) in the next 1-3 years.
Harsh? Maybe.
But it’s also highly effective at getting the point across and sometimes, a little tough love is exactly what business owners need. When they feel that something they’d rather not do is necessary, they’re more likely to do it. Remember that emotional pull when it comes to finances.
Tax Strategy & Preparation – We’ve never been a Block-esk firm that takes in individual tax prep off the street, but we have almost always prepared taxes for businesses and their business owners. What I was finding is that these clients, who signed up for no other services during the year, were some of the ones I was spending the most time on during tax season.
Their DIY books were a mess, but they didn’t want to pay me to fix them. Or sometimes they did, but then they’d balk at the “doing this during tax season” pricing.
They waited until just before the deadline to book their tax appointment and refused to go on extension.
The only negative review I have is from a client who did BOTH of these things to me two years in a row and then on year three, she literally emailed me on the night of April 13th to tell me she was ready to have me do her taxes, but none of her accounts were reconciled and only half of her transactions had been recorded in her accounting software. Then she left me a bad review saying I was the unprofessional one.
My other “favorite” thing about these kinds of clients is that even though we only spoke once a year, they expected me to remember every single detail of everything they’d ever shared with me. I don’t even remember what I ate for breakfast today.
I’m probably one of the few accountants *ahem* nerds *ahem* that enjoys preparing tax returns. But I have realized that I only like preparing tax returns when I have clean financials to prepare them with and I wasn’t getting that from 95% of those one-off tax prep clients.
So instead of offering one-off tax prep, even for clients with businesses, last year I created tax advisory plans that helped clients reduce their tax burden year-round. And that’s also how I sold it.
Here’s what that service looks like for our business clients:
I meet with them 6 times a year (these are 45-60 minute meetings) -
4 quarterly estimated tax meetings with calculations
2 strategy planning meetings - one in the summer and one in November
They also get 3 “free” 20 minute calls to use with me during the year. I say “free” because really an extra hour of my time is built into the pricing whether they use those three calls or not.
This new service turned tax season from a panic-filled nightmare into a seamless, strategic process. And my clients were practically knocking down my “door” to sign up when I told them I was only taking 10 clients for this new service for last year.
I actually signed up 13 people, but that’s just between us.
CFO & Advisory Services – I started focusing on growth-minded business owners who needed more than reports - they needed a financial roadmap. But I didn’t just assume what I thought they needed; I listened. I paid attention to what my business clients were actually saying - what frustrated them, what held them back, and what kind of financial guidance they wished they had.
I realized that my role as an accountant was evolving. I wasn’t just preparing financial statements; I was helping business owners understand how to use their numbers to make better decisions. I took that insight and developed a comprehensive fractional CFO program that didn’t just hand clients reports, but gave them the strategic insights to grow their businesses confidently.
While we now focus on being small business advisors (our name is Nicholynn Advisors, after all), I still offer one-off consulting calls because some clients don’t need ongoing help. But I made one big change when it comes to these calls: I dramatically increased my prices. Practically overnight, I went from charging $150/hour to $450/hour for consulting calls.
Why? Because I realized people weren’t just calling to chat. They were calling because they needed my expertise. And you can give someone a lot of valuable information in 20 minutes or less.
For years, I was essentially giving away my knowledge. A 30-minute call at $150 meant I was only making $75 for high-level guidance - advice that had taken me years of education, experience, and continued learning to develop. And sometimes, clients would call for less than 10 minutes. How do you even bill for that? Charge them for 15 minutes at $37.50? It felt ridiculous. I was delivering serious value and getting shortchanged in the process.
So, I shifted gears. Instead of nickel-and-diming for short calls - or worse having to keep track of them for billing, I created structured, ongoing financial guidance through what we now call Unlimited Support Packages (USP).
Here’s how they work:
Remember, a one-hour consulting call with me is now $450.
An unlimited support package is $397 per month.
Wait—how can I charge less for unlimited access than I do for a single hour?
Simple. I changed the model.
How We Sell Unlimited Support Packages (Without Giving Away Unlimited Time)
Minimum Commitment: Clients must commit to at least three months. I tell them that most business owners have the most questions in the first 90 days of signing up. After that, the package converts to a month-to-month service, cancelable with 30 days’ notice. If they want out after the first three months, all they have to do is email us before the end of month two.
Framing the Value: Clients see a clear choice - pay $450 for a single hour or get unlimited 20-minute calls and emails for $397 per month. If they even think they’ll need more than one hour a month, they’re getting a deal. What they don’t realize is that I can provide significant value in far less than an hour, so for them, it feels like they’re getting a steal. What they're actually getting is very valuable. They're getting my undivided attention, a solution to their problem and I'm happy to give it to them because I know they're paying for the advice without that awkward conversation of "how much should I bill for this 10 minute phone call?"
Maybe you’re thinking, “But Jaime, won’t people abuse this if it’s truly unlimited?”
Great question. The short answer? No. Because I don’t sell it to the people who I suspect would abuse it. And even if I did, they wouldn’t really be able to.
See, "unlimited" doesn’t mean “call me every hour on the hour.” It’s structured in a way that ensures clients get the support they need without monopolizing my time.
Priority Access, But With Boundaries – My regular consulting calls (both 20-minute and one-hour sessions) require at least 7 days' notice to book. Even if I have open time, non-USP members have to wait. But USP clients? They can schedule a call as soon as 6 hours from now (within the working day, of course). I even extend my availability for them, taking calls earlier in the morning and later in the afternoon than I do for standard consulting sessions. And it’s still built around my regular schedule. If I have another meeting or need to block off time to focus on client work, no one can get to me then.
A Built-In Limit (That No One Has Hit Yet) – While USP clients can book whenever they need help, they can only schedule one 20-minute call per day, with a max of three per week. All thanks to the help of my scheduling app, Acuity.
You’re probably like - “But Jaime, that’s not actually unlimited!”
You caught me. But here’s the thing: Not a single USP client has ever maxed out their allowed calls. Not one has tried to book three calls a week. And not one has complained about access. Because at the end of the day, people don’t want to abuse my time. They just want to know someone is there when they need help. That’s it.
I didn’t reinvent the wheel here. I just gave people what they wanted in a way that also works for me.
Building the Right Skillset & Targeting the Right Clients
Of course, with high-value services comes the need for high-level expertise. If you’re looking to elevate your offerings, you have to ask yourself: Do I need to sharpen my skills? Do I need to niche down? Do I need to let go of outdated services that no longer serve me or my clients?
When I raised my prices, I also raised my standards. I no longer worked with clients who just wanted the cheapest option. Instead, I sought out business owners who valued expert guidance and people who wanted to invest in their financial success and their business’ success. These weren’t clients looking for a bargain; they were looking for results. It’s not easy and there’s no magic button to press to show you where to find these clients - you just have to keep looking.
To attract them, I refined my messaging. I stopped talking about what I do and started talking about what I deliver. I positioned myself as a strategic partner, not just another service provider. I even changed our company’s name from Bayside Accounting and Consulting to Nicholynn Advisors. (I’ll tell you later what a Nicholynn is.) And most importantly, I made sure my pricing reflected the value of what I was offering.
And that, my friend, is how you start transitioning into high-value pricing.
For years, I assumed price increases would drive clients away.
The reality? The right clients stayed.
The ones who constantly questioned my fees or pushed boundaries left - and I let them go. Because running a business isn’t just about making money; it’s about working with people who appreciate your expertise and respect the value you bring. Okay - that’s not entirely true - it’s also about making money.
How to Communicate Price Increases Without the Awkwardness
If you’re thinking about raising your prices but dread the conversation, you’re not alone. I used to feel the same way until I realized that pricing adjustments are necessary for sustainability and growth. I tell my clients the same thing all the time, so why was I not listening to my own advice?
Here’s how to make the process smooth and drama-free:
Plan Ahead – Don’t wait until you’re drowning in work to raise your prices. Evaluate pricing annually and determine the right type of increase, whether it’s a blanket increase across all services or a service-specific increase.
Know Your Numbers – Understanding your service profitability helps justify price adjustments. If your costs have increased, your pricing should, too. I know for a fact that accounting and tax software costs have increased significantly in the last three years so if you’re prices haven’t gone up, get on it ASAP.
Give Clients Notice – Ideally, notify clients 60-90 days before implementing a price increase. No one likes a last-minute surprise. I review all my pricing on April 16th and our increases start June 1.
Personalize Your Communication – A one-size-fits-all email is not going to cut it. You need to tailor your messaging to emphasize the value your client is receiving.
Offer Options – If a client pushes back, provide alternative service levels at different price points. This reinforces that pricing is based on deliverables, not just arbitrary numbers.
Be Confident in Your Value – If you’re nervous about explaining a price increase, remind yourself why it’s necessary. You’re not just raising rates - you’re ensuring the sustainability of your business and the quality of service your clients receive. Trust me - they will thank you for this, even if they’re not entirely happy about your new fee.
I remember the first time I sent out a price increase email, fully expecting half my client base to walk away. Instead, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Some clients even thanked me for clearly outlining what they were getting for their investment. One client even tipped me $800 on his tax prep that year! Crazy, right? That’s when I knew I had been underpricing myself all along.
If you’re struggling with pricing, ask yourself these three questions:
Are you pricing based on value, or just covering costs?
Do you have clients who don’t respect your expertise?
What would your business look like if you worked with fewer, higher-value clients*?
*I’m not talking about only working with five $5,000/month clients (though that might be nice). I’m talking about higher-value clients. That could mean your bookkeeping clients start at $750/month or your CFO clients start at $3,500/month. It just means higher-value.
It’s time to stop fearing price increases and start using pricing as a growth strategy. The right clients will recognize your worth.
The wrong ones? Let them go.
Your business should be working for you - not the other way around. (And if all else fails, at least charge enough to fund your coffee habit.)
Until next time,
