How to make your clients happier with less work

How often do you find yourself doing unpaid work? This work sneaks in when you answer a client’s quick question or take 10 minutes to fill out some extra forms. Or maybe you look up information as a favor or help a good client get their paperwork in order.

These one-off things keep your clients happy and successful, but they eat up a lot of time. You don’t want to tell clients “no,” but you want payment for your time. So what’s the solution?

One option is to change your billing structure. Many accountants charge annual tax prep or monthly bookkeeping fees, and charge by the hour for miscellaneous items. But as we said earlier, you don’t usually want to charge clients for 10-15 minutes of work. It feels petty, and they don’t appreciate it either. It also makes clients less likely to contact you with questions or issues, leading to nasty surprises and rework down the road.

But what if instead of an hourly rate, you charged clients a monthly fee for tax planning? You’d explain that this fee covers access to your time throughout the year for questions, advice, and one-off work that comes up. You could also build audit protection into this monthly fee.

As a bonus, tax planning is much more lucrative than most tax prep activities. You can charge more because you save clients money. You assist with smart structuring year-round rather than just seeing which deductions they qualify for at year’s end. Clients will appreciate the extra value and service.

Finally, partnering with a designated tax planning firm could increase the scope of services you offer clients.

For example, our company partners with CPAs to provide sophisticated, customized tax reduction strategies to their best clients. Options like this give you the chance to increase your value exponentially. When it comes down to it, wouldn’t your best clients be happy to pay you more a bigger yearly tax reduction?

Put us to the test without cost or obligation. Contact us today to begin your tax advisory journey with the team Redwood Tax Specialist.

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