Pricing for Growth: Aligning Client Fees with Your Business Goals

In this episode, Alyssa Lang covers the common mistakes bookkeepers and accountants make when pricing their services and offers, providing insights on reevaluating pricing structures for optimized profitability.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How to reanalyze your current clients and service fees for profitability and growth
• How to determine your base rate and ideal price, and gradually increasing rates to align with your financial goals
• Identifying and mastering one core problem at a time to effectively scale your business

Resources mentioned in this episode:

🧡 Join our FREE The POWER to Breakthrough Bootcamp (8/19 - 8/23)

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Transcript

  Hey everyone. And welcome back. I am here from the win in the great outdoors today. I'm like unbelievably excited. I'm actually recording out in the middle of the forest with my lovely Starlink. So shout outs for Starlink are getting this episode live today and in your guys's ears, I'm so grateful and just very excited today. 

We're going to be deep diving into what I like to call optimize offers. And so what this is for is this really is all about. The opportunity for us to talk about the mistakes that I typically see a lot of bookkeepers and accountants making when it comes to their different pricing, the way that you have things set up, they're going to talk about the ways that you can analyze your clients to make sure are you ready for a price increase? 

We're going to deep dive into what your base price should be, or at least what it should be compared to one of our biggest competitors. And then we're going to deep dive into really going back to your why and what you want in your life. So that way you can align your finances and what you charge your clients with, what you desire to make, and also the team you want to afford.

So I hope you enjoy today's episode. 

And if you have any questions or you need anything, please feel free to reach out to us. And we're happy to answer for you. 

  Do you ever feel like if you had actionable systems in place that it can actually take your practice to the next level? Can you imagine the freedom you'd gain from finally getting everything out of your head and into a system that can help you move things on autopilot? Do you ever feel like you want to hire help for your practice, but you just don't know where to start?

Trust me, I get it, and you're not alone, but it doesn't have to be this way. You're kick ass at doing the bookkeeping and accounting work. There's no doubt about that, but you struggle to maintain the systems and operations of your business. Am I right? Don't worry. That's where I come in. The workflow queen.

I'm going to guide you on how to implement tech systems and automation in your practice so you can scale bigger, higher, better, and breakthrough to the next level. I can't wait to support you here on the conquering workflows and systems for bookkeepers and accountants podcast with your host, Alyssa Lange. 

  Here. We want to welcome back to the end of the episode. I'm so excited because today. I'm doing an extra special, a special episode, and I'm actually recording this in the middle of big bear, California. I'm actually currently camping right now. And thank God for Starlink. If you don't know what Starlink is it it's great. 

I'm absolutely obsessed with it. It's like where I can literally have internet from anywhere around the world, as long as I can hit a satellite. So it's pretty freaking cool. And so this podcast today is coming from out in the middle of the woods. So I want to preface that if you hear a little bit of wind or maybe you hear like a bird chirping, it's because I'm outside and I can't really control the weather. 

So anyways, I'm so excited. So let's go on and dive. Right in, this is so much fun because last week I recorded another episode, it was called powerful mindset. And it was all about just like setting the tone for yourself and getting yourself into that right mindset to really let go and move forward and scale in the business. 

And a lot of times we are the reasons why. We are stuck or stalled, or the reason why we won't hire or let things go or like truly grow. Like it's great. A lot of people have all these big goals, but at the end of the day, they're not really reeling to work on the mindset piece of it. So I really highly recommend to listen to this. Uh, five-part series. 

This is part two, which is all about optimize offers. So today we're going to talk about like value pricing, hourly pricing, like really reevaluating your pricing, not from like the very beginning stages. This is really in regards to those of you who have probably been in business, um, for maybe just a little bit, it could be even like, you know, this is your first year in business, or even beyond. And in, you know, the way that you price then is probably not what you should be pricing now, especially because inflation and everything that's been happening. 

We're so sorry. If you hear all that, when guys hope it's not too much of a distraction for you guys. Okay. Like the worst spot. To be recording this episode today. So anyways, I just want to like, kind of say that. Um, how you priced it then in the past and how you started your business. A lot of us thought that this was going to be some sort of a side hustle. 

No joke. If someone would have told me, I think he was either 20, 15 or 2018 at this point, I'm losing my own timeline of like, when I started my first business. I just remember being like, this is a side hustle. I literally just want to make some extra cash. I was a bartender. And it was just so normal for me to like, think.  In the perspective of just being like, you know what, I just want to make some extra cash. 

Everything's going to be fine. You know? Yeah. Anyways, so the reason why I say that is because like all of a sudden my business just turned into this big girl business, or now I have employees and I have people working for me and I have a lot of clients all over the U S we even had students all over the U S. At this point, the way I priced either my programs here at work flow queen and my services at my firm. Are wildly different than what I would have priced at the very beginning, because we had less overhead, no team members. 

There was just like, you know, I didn't have that many big goals for myself. I didn't know the possibilities of what I could have for myself and what I can create for myself. So I just want to preface that because today we're talking all about optimize offers and if you want to learn more about this and really deep dive into this, today's just going to be a little bit of a teaser of something that we're going to cover on our free bootcamp, which is going to be from August 19 to August 23rd. And that is going to be, you can go to workflow queen.com backslash bootcamp, or you'll find a link in the description below. If you want to join us, we're going to be talking about mindset, offers, systems, team building, and removing yourself from the day-to-day of your business. 

So if you're at a point in your business where you're truly scaling, but you're feeling like you're hitting a ceiling, then this bootcamp is for you. There are going to be replaced. So don't worry. And we are going to be talking about optimize offers. What we talk about here today. I'm going to be expanding. 

Even beyond that, I'm also going to be getting some great resources, like a profitability calculator, just so much awesomeness. So let's just go in and dive in today's episode. It's like I said, today is all about optimized offers. So really what I want for me for you is I want you to feel confident in and how you need to shift your offers to truly scale the business. 

And that means, like I said, going back to the whole concept of the way you price, then shouldn't be the way that you price it now. And like I said, that inflation has really, really changed and really changed the game for things, especially when it comes to. We're in elect an election year right now, it's the already changed. 

So changes so much, depending on who gets elected is really going to change our interest rates and are going to change, you know, uh, just the economy in general. So like right now is a weird sticky time, but it's really important to be reevaluating these types of things as you have the time to do so.  So one of the reasons why you might be here today is you might be feeling overwhelmed by the lack of organized pricing structure. 

And you're unsure of how to actually optimize your pricing. You might be frustrated that your pricing doesn't really reflect your value, which is leading you to, you know, miss revenue opportunities. Um, you might be feeling stuck in a cycle of underpricing and or misaligned services where you start to resent your own clients. 

I know that I've been there where like my lack of pricing correctly made me resent my clients when it's like, not their fault that I just didn't price correctly. You might be frustrated that you were attracting the wrong clients, who don't truly appreciate your expertise, and aren't really willing to pay for your value that you actually bring. 

So we're going to talk about how to like, leverage that value and you might be feeling anxious about conversations. You know, you need to have regarding price increases, but you fear the pushback. You fear the potential loss of clients. When in all reality, people I'm telling you that even if you lost one or two clients and use every, every other client, let's just say, do you have 10 clients? And two of those clients say, you know what? 

I don't want to work with you, but the other eight, except the price increase. A lot of the times you'll actually be on top with the eight clients that you have. And you'll now have two less clients, but actually be making more money. So like, it just works in a really beautiful way like that. So what this podcast episode is about today is. I want to deep dive into re reanalyzing your current clients and the service fees that you have in place. 

That way you can be really profitable with your clients and really how you can price to really support that team in growth. So a couple of common mistakes, I see bookkeepers and accountants making when it comes to creating their, their offers and their pricing is number one, they aren't pricing with growth in mind. 

This is so normal at one point some guru or some person out there. Told you. I price it this way. And so you've just, you've just trusted it. And you've just gone that route instead of truly pricing with what feels good and what you can afford. You guys, we are bookkeepers. If you know how to strategize with your clients, then you know how to strategize with yourself and you should really be considering taking a step back. And saying, what do I need to compensate for myself? 

So my profit for myself to pay myself. My overhead, plus all my direct costs plus the team. And so like how you price them. That's why I'm saying does not make sense for how you price now.  So in order to really grow and get to that next capacity, you need to be able to afford the right softwares, the right efficiencies, because there's a lot of people who are out there. And if this is you. I'm not judging you in any capacity, but I think I've gotten to a place in business where I really recognize how much I appreciate software tech. The efficiencies team. 

Um, I know a lot of people who were like, well, I just want to cut costs. I'm going to get rid of my Gmail or I'm going to cut costs and just get rid of my website. Where I'm going to cut costs and not pay for, you know, keeper or Xanax, like every single month for each of my clients. I understand that I absolutely do. 

And I respect and honor everyone's budget. But at the end of the day, It all comes back to, is this thing going to help me work smarter and not harder? And so for me, my tech, I have a pretty high. Hefty fee for tech, but we just make sure it's rolled into our pricing for our clients. And to be honest, it works out really well. 

The clients are happy. We're taking care of them and they're fully supported. So another mistake I see is you're always trying to accommodate your clients. So I see scope creep happening more often than I'd like to admit in this industry where a client will, you know, let's just say that you just do maintenance bookkeeping for them, which means you reconcile, you send reports and that's it. All of a sudden the clients, you know, emailing you and saying like, Hey, I just need to run a one-off. Bonus payroll inside of Gusto. 

And I just need some support, you know, can you help me do this? It's just this one time. And that's great, but for me, I've gone to a place in my business where I actually just send over the pricing info. To our clients. And I just say, yeah, we would be more than happy to do that, but here's our hourly rate. Um, and if you want to talk about our really rate and all that fun stuff, please feel free to join us in the bootcamp. 

And we're going to talk about all that fun stuff during the bootcamp. To deep dive into pricing. What does that actually look like? And so on and so forth.



 So the third mistakes that I see a lot of bookkeepers and accountants making when it comes to pricing is a price too low because they feel bad for their clients. So I always joke because if you've ever been a part of our boot camps or you've been in my space for a really long time, then you know, one of my really close best friends, her name is Brooke Swan. 

She's also a coach inside of my breakthrough program and she'll actually be one of the coaches inside the free bootcamp. I always joke because she'll call me sometimes and she'll totally admit this too. And she'll be like, yeah, but I feel bad. They're so nice. Like, they're just nice people. And I just have to remind her that like, everybody is good people. 

Most of the time. And that we have to really compensate ourselves for what we need for the business and the team and for the true growth. And like, you could still be compassionate for your clients. You can still feel bad. But one thing that blew my mind and I don't remember who I was talking to, that I randomly like gave him this tip or advice and it stayed with me forever to continue giving on to other people.  But imagine, like you think sit back and think about how you might not be pricing your clients correctly. Can you imagine that your clients are probably. We doing the same. 

So the reason I bring that up is because.  Your client's lack of not pricing themselves correctly, shouldn't affect what they can afford or not afford to pay you. So like, what I mean by that is. Yes, the clients really want to work with you, but just because they have not priced correctly and can't afford to work with you shouldn't mean that you should also lower your standards and lower your bar to match what they have decided to. Price their clients, their services, their stuff at right. 

Until the reason I say that is because that's really helpful for me as I'm thinking about like, I want to help my clients. I truly want to say to my clients, Hey, I would love to work with you. I think you have a lot of opportunity here. To increase your service rates to increase your product fees, whatever that looks like. 

But the only way that you can do that is if you invest in someone that can actually support you with that. Not only do we just do the books so we can actually financially strategize with you to help you with this. And that's when we sell them into a consulting package because I really do want to help them to up their fee. 

So that way, these types of purchases, aren't something that stresses them out. Right. And so those are a couple of the mistakes I typically see. And so one of the things I want you to do is I want you to sit back and just revisit what your current pricing structure is. I want you to ask yourself what is my base rate and what is my ideal price. And so what I mean by that is like, what are you currently charging your clients as your base? 

And so for us at my firm, it's nothing is less than $400 a month for just basic compliant bookkeeping. This is not for, you know, Us meeting with the client. This is not any strategy. This is just basic bookkeeping. And that's like at a bare minimum, like one bank account, like 50 transactions, like that's our base. 

It, a lot of people will be like, Alyssa, that's just crazy. Like. You know, what about the micro people who can't unlike going back to the whole, how my clients price. Is it my obligation to meet their standard and their level of what they decided to price for their clients. If someone wants to work with me, they will make it happen at the end of the day. And so I want you to identify what your base rate is. 

If right now your base rate is less than 400. I really recommend that you look at QuickBooks online live. If you just Google it.  Um, QuickBooks online live is like that, that live bookkeepers that do the QuickBooks online. And we all know no offense for anybody who works with them, but we all know that they do a crappy job and we all have to clean up the work. 

And so the reason why I say that is because if they're able to charge at least $400 a month for their clients for QuickBooks online live. Then you should also be. Uh, low, um, increasing that bar for yourself as well. So that you can actually be charging like almost as much as one of our biggest competitors is. 

And so for us, like, that's just what our standard is. I know that Serena super ambitious bookkeeper, hers is like six 50 is her starting base rate. And like it's okay. People, if people don't like it, they can leave. I think I'm at a place in my business where I don't want to be desperate for financials. 

Like I don't want to be desperate. I too, need to constantly make all this money and can need to constantly do all these things. I genuinely want like our clients to work with us because they want to work with us. Not because of the rate, not because of what, you know, all this other stuff I want it to be because they genuinely want to work with our firm and with my team. 

And not as what's the most important for me. So identify your, your, your, your biggest. Like, what is your base rate? And then your ideal rate. If right now your base rate is like $200 a month. I really recommend that every single time that you. Like every single time that you price someone out, just bump it $25, more, $25 more until you get yourself up to that safe space. 

Now, a lot of people always ask me the question. Well, Alyssa, what about all the people that. Are already on my client roster that I'm currently charging a specific way. How do I go back and increase that rate? Well, I'm going to tell you from the beginning, it's not always the easiest feet. I will recognize that to go back to clients that you already have. 

Pre-established if your, your scope of services has changed and they have added new accounts. I know a lot of times, a lot of people are like, why don't want to penny pinch them. And every time they add like a Stripe account or PayPal account or a brand new savings account, I don't want to increase our fee. What I recommend is that for us, we do every single quarter. 

We reevaluate all of our clients, but usually we're only doing the price increase once a once a year. And so the reason why we do the evaluations, because we still want to do a direct profitability costs, which we'll talk about at the bootcamp. So I do recommend if you want to talk through that kind of stuff, please join the bootcamp. Because I do. 

I really recommend that you look at how much your time tracking. So how much time your team is spending. On.  Doing the actual work for your clients, what clients are working on, how much you're charging those clients that we could see a direct profitability per client. And then that way you can actually see are you even making money on it. 

And so, like, I want you to also identify what is your percentage that you would like to strive for as far as your, your profitability percentage. And we're talking about direct cost. We're not talking about all your overhead and stuff. Um, so what that means is like how much are you charging your clients minus all the software and all the, the team costs. Um, and then whatever your leftover, what is that percent that your leftover? 

So is it 50%, 60%, 40%, 15%. If you're at the lower amount and you're, you're, you're barely profitable by just a little bit, then you might want to change your rates because remember you're not accounting for your overhead. In your direct cost. Um, but you will want to in your calculations. So my recommendation is to go back and kind of see, what are you doing right now with your pricing? 

How are you feeling misaligned with your clients? I really recommend that you go back and make a list of all, all of your clients and just see who do I love working with? Who do I not like working with and so on and so forth. And that will be really helpful for you to be able to get to that point in your business where you feel good about your pricing.



So the whole goal of today's podcast episode was really just to keep it short, sweet and to the point. And mostly that's the reason is. 'cause I really want you guys to just think about whether this is in a journal format. Whether this is an Excel spreadsheet or whatever makes the most sense for you. 

I really recommend just taking a list of all of your clients. I want you to write down how much you're actually charging them. Then I want you to look at what your direct costs that usually means like the software that you pay for, or the team that you pay for to work on that specific client. Look at your direct costs. Then I want to see how much you're actually. Profiting from that client. 

What's the actual profit margin on per client and then actually rating these clients because that's the biggest piece. A lot of times we just go for like, oh, I want to be paid. I want to be paid. It's all these things. For me, I care way more about working with people that actually want to work with me. 

Like I genuinely don't want to even work with people who just want compliance. Like I, I get it. I understand it. But like, it really just tells me that you don't value like really strategic, financial support. And that means like us strategizing with them to really support them. I understand that there's some people out there who just want compliance. 

If they're already working with a financial strategist and I will usually take them on as a client, because I know that they still value the numbers, they value the information. So like, I would love for you to take a step back and say like, what do I want to make? Like, what do I want to do? For example, like I said, at the very beginning of this episode, I'm literally in the middle of the woods and big bear is frigging hot. 

I was originally in a shaded spot. And the more I've been recording, it's just been getting hotter and hotter. And, but I love this. Like, this is the life that I want for myself. Like I love, you know, being able to afford the house that I bought to be able to have the car that I love that gets be. It gives me the ability to be able to go off-road and find a place in the middle of the freaking woods with my dog. 

Like that is so incredible. And so the reason I'm sharing that with you is because that's what I value. I don't plan to have kids. It's actually not something that I really want to have in my cards. Um, it is not something that entices me and it's okay if you're a mom and it's okay. If your dad it's okay. 

If you want kids. But for me, it's just not, it's just not something that I desire nor do I want. And really what I want is I've taken a step back and the reason why you can hear my passion and what I want is I want you to sit down and also ask yourself, what do you want? Take your family out of the equation, take the kids out of the equation, take everything else out of the equation. 

What do you want? The reason why this is important in your pricing is because it all goes back to, what is your, why? What are you doing this all for? So that way you can price things, to be able to give yourself what you want. I wanted to travel. That was something that was huge for me. I wanted to be able to camp wherever I wanted to, but also be able to go home. 

If I decide, you know, what, I don't want to camp anymore. And so because of that, I have to make sure that like one, my team also wants the same. I have a team member here at workflow queen actually. Who literally wants to go to every single national park in the United States. And it's so incredible that she knows these things and want to also has communicated that with me, because it helps me to know, like, what can I give her? 

And as far as like, helping her create more like, um, financials for herself in her own, like life's that way she can afford to go to national parks and be able to visit every single one of them. I want the same for my team, but in order to do that, in order to support them in myself, I have to make sure I price correctly. 

And so that means like if I've got someone who's going to hate me for pricing, whether it's a program here at workflow queen, I've heard it all. That they like, you know, get mad about a certain pricing it's because they don't understand or know me personally and know that I over deliver and give overvalue. 

And I give a lot of way things a lot for free. Like you're on this episode, our podcast, and also even. And our free bootcamp that we're doing August 19th to the August 23rd. And so I just really encourage you to just take a step back, understand your, why, what do you really want? So you can start pricing if you don't know how to do that. 

And if you want a calculator that we're going to be providing during our bootcamp, I highly recommend that you sign up for the bootcamp. We're going to be talking about pricing, the structures. You can come to the Q and a calls that are at 5:00 PM EST every day. If you miss him, don't worry. Capri submit your question and you can always catch the replay. But you're gonna be able to ask me our coach Brooks, Juan and Erica painter. 

Um, any questions that you guys have around your pricing, what you guys have going on, this is truly meant for those of you who are not at the beginning stages of this bootcamp is really for those of you that are scaling, because we're also going to be talking about systems, how to identify your biggest core problem right now in the business on day three, day four, we're also going to be talking about. Um, how to build your dream team and also making sure that you have in place quality control and KPIs. And then day five. 

We're going to talk about removing yourself from the day-to-day of the business. And so days one and two are going to be optimized offers and powerful mindset. So I really hope you can join us. You can go to workflow queen. queen.com backslash bootcamp. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And I'm so sorry if you heard it be a little bit windy and a lot of the birds in the background. I had a. Great time recording this and I can't wait for next week. 

Next week, you can look forward to an episode that's going to be all are all about world-class systems and all about identifying what your biggest problem in the businesses. Because a lot of the times I see a lot of you guys working on 10 problems at one time, instead of focusing on one core problem, mastering it, and then moving on to the next one. 

So we're going to talk about that strategic plan, how to get there, what core parts of the business that you should be focusing on and so on and so forth.



So, thank you so much for joining me today, and I hope you enjoyed today's episode.



  Thank you for tuning into yet another episode of our conquering workflows and systems for bookkeepers and accountants podcast with your host, Alyssa Lange, the founder and owner of Workflow Queen. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review on iTunes and share this episode with a fellow bookkeeper or accountant.

I'll On social media, and also tag me on Instagram at workflow queen, the more that we work together to get this out in front of other people, the better I can help to serve this industry, to create more solid systems and processes. Now go take what you learned from today's episode. Okay. And apply it into your practice so you can finally give yourself the brain space and freedom that you deserve.

I can't wait to see you unfold throughout your journey. And thank you so much for tuning into yet another episode. See you next time.