How pricing works with me

What moves the price

Two businesses with the same revenue can be wildly different amounts of work. So I size the base fee by what’s actually in your file, and anything extra you want me to handle gets priced on top of that.

What sizes the base fee

• Transactions in an average month. Not your busiest month, not your quietest. A hundred a month is a different job than a thousand.
• Bank and credit card accounts. Each one gets reconciled to the statement every month.
• Loans. Every loan needs its balance and interest tracked, or the Balance Sheet goes wrong.
• Payroll. Who runs it, how many people are on it, and how often. Your payroll provider runs payroll, and I record and reconcile every payroll transaction in your books.
• Industry structure. Per-property tracking for rentals, job costing for contractors, trust accounts for property managers. Each one adds detail to track.
• The software you run. A point of sale, a property system, a job app. What it hands off cleanly and what it doesn’t changes how much I do by hand.
• Months behind. For a file that’s behind, the backlog itself sets most of the price.

Before I put a range on anything I’ll ask for three to six months of your most recent bank and credit card statements. That’s what shows me an average month.

Additional services, priced separately

These sit outside the base fee. Tell me which ones you need and they’re quoted with everything else, in writing, before I start.

• Accounts payable. Bills paid through the books, with vendors and bills to keep straight.
• Accounts receivable. Invoices sent through the books, with payments and deposits to match up.
• State sales tax filings, monthly or quarterly.
• Inventory. Stock has to be counted, valued, and tied to cost of goods sold. If you carry it, that’s real work every month.
• 1099 prep and e-filing. Billed per form, and not part of the monthly work.

Whatever the mix, the quote is fixed and in writing before I start. You won’t open an invoice and find hours you didn’t expect.

How we get to a price

Nothing starts until you’ve agreed to the number.

• Statements first. Three to six months of recent bank and credit card statements, every account, not just the busy ones. Without them I can’t give you a range, because I won’t guess at a file I haven’t seen.
• A range on the free call. Thirty minutes on Zoom or the phone. I go through what you sent and give you an estimated price range right there.
• A proposal we go through together. If the range works for you, I write it up. We go through it on Zoom, or in person if you’re near Springfield. I’d rather look at the number with you than read it to you over the phone.
• You approve it by email. The proposal comes to you by email and you reply approving the price. That reply is what I work from.

How billing works

The paperwork is short, and it’s all in writing.

• Engagement letter next. A formal engagement letter goes out for signature, spelling out the scope, the fee, and what I need from you. Nothing starts until we’ve both signed it.
• Monthly fee billed on the 1st. Monthly bookkeeping is invoiced on the first of each month, the same flat amount we agreed to.
• Thirty days to end it. Either of us can end monthly service with 30 days’ written notice.
• Cleanup payment schedule. It’s set in the proposal and the engagement letter. On bigger projects I usually offer to split it, half at signing and the balance when the work is done.
• What I need from you. Read-only online access to every bank and credit card account, not just the busy ones, and accountant access to your QuickBooks Online file. That lets me see the statements while you keep control of the money.
• Inventory and your software. If you carry inventory, I need a count and a value to work from. And tell me what the business runs on, so I know what lands in the file on its own and what I’m entering by hand.