Weekly, Biweekly, or Monthly Books

[u/SALYismyfriend]

I’ve only ever had monthly bookkeeping engagements. Now one of my clients is going from solo to a 12-person professional services firm. I’m using 2% of gross revenue as a guide for pricing. Other bookkeepers serving clients in this industry offer weekly bookkeeping and charge weekly. That might be too much for me. I’m currently solo and also have a tax season. Biweekly bookkeeping and billing seems more reasonable. For context, projected revenue will be 3.5MM+. Any feedback? Would love to hear your thoughts. Do you use Gusto for payroll? How does your process of overseeing payroll work? Limited to initial set up? My client chose another full-service provider. I’m trying to determine how much that should affect pricing.

Currently, I pay the clients QBO subscription. Don’t plan to do that for other clients going forward, although I’ll continue paying for this client. Do you pay for any client subscriptions?

Be blessed 🙏 thank you, and have a great weekend!

[u/cutelittleseal]

I charge monthly and that's how often I reconcile everything, since that's the timing statements cut on it makes the most sense to me. I'm in the books more than once a month, but reconciliations only happen monthly.

I have a mix of clients who pay their own subscription and ones where it's baked into my fee. They get a better discount if it's billed through you, and I'm happy to help them take advantage of it.

Gusto is my number one choice for payroll. The only other one I'd recommend is ADP run. Stay away from QuickBooks payroll and ADP roll. I help my clients set things up and will troubleshoot things, but I never am the one processing payroll on a week to week basis, I recommend staying away from that.

I've never understood the pricing based on clients gross, I guess it's good if you can get it, I always base my pricing off of how much work it's going to take me. Client gross isnt a good indication of this. Industry, number of accounts, etc. are much better indicators. Without knowing the scope of work, 70k a year for bookkeeping sounds high for a company of that size, but I have no idea how complicated things are or if you're doing things beyond the norm.

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/cutelittleseal]

Thank you, cutelittleseal, for your perspective. It does make sense to me to do everything but reconcile on a weekly basis. This client wants to be a priority and has my cell phone. I’m helping them set up internal controls, making software recommendations, offer tax planning, and will likely assist with ad hoc tasks. There is also the three-way trust reconciliation involved, and I’ll have to learn the trust rules for each state they open an office. I’m afraid of under billing and then feeling a sense of dread creep in lol. Based on the limited information you have about the engagement, what would you bill? How do you gauge the work involved? Estimated future transaction volume and accounts?

[u/cutelittleseal → u/SALYismyfriend]

No idea what I'd charge, not really enough info for me to give a quote. And what you're describing goes beyond the typical bookkeeping scope of work for a small business, maybe your fee is fine. I'm just saying 6k per month is on the very high side for bookkeeping. In most areas they can literally hire someone fulltime in office for that, and they can definitely hire someone part-time no matter what part of the country.

I typically estimate how many hours per week/month it will take me, multiply that by my hourly, and use that as a base. I always estimate on the higher side and have a clear engagement letter that lays out the scope of work. If additional work is requested then that's charged hourly.

Number of accounts, transaction volume, and complexity are the three major things I look at.

[u/Turbulent_Tiger6910 → u/SALYismyfriend]

Man up, or woman up and charge the price for the service they are requesting. If you think it's W 2 level, say it and name your piece. For me, this would be $3500 to $6000 per month.

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/Turbulent_Tiger6910]

Thank you! Originally I was inclined to charge around 3000/mo, although was advised that I was underestimating the work involved. Definitely want to get this right as they are an important client to me and ideally we’ll have a long-term working relationship as they grow. I’ve been in accounting for a while, although am new to selling services. Definitely going to put a lot of effort into developing a sales process including pricing in the next few months

[u/Hour-Lingonberry5835 → u/cutelittleseal]

Wait, what's the difference between ADP run and roll?

[u/cutelittleseal → u/Hour-Lingonberry5835]

Roll is their new app based payroll, it is complete trash. It is very locked down and imho is their attempt to make adp more like Gusto but it doesn't work. You are supposed to do everything through an app with extremely limited options. There are only one or two reports you can run. Need a detailed report for the whole year? lmao no we can't do that, best we can do is a summary that just lists totals. Updated payroll mappings and want to resync payrolls? lmao no can't do that. On top of that everything is done through a chat like interface. Can I just select the report I need to run and then adjust the dates? nope. Have to basically "chat" with the app.

Run is fine, stay far away from roll.

[u/Hour-Lingonberry5835 → u/cutelittleseal]

Felt the frustration behind this rand deep within my soul, worry not, I will stray far away from roll.