Free for accounting and bookkeeping firm owners
5 Signs You're Leaking Profit
Pricing is the one part of running a firm that nobody trains you for. This short guide walks you through the five places firms most often lose margin without realising it, so you can see whether any of them are happening in yours.
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Why it's worth five minutes
Nobody teaches you how to price.
You pick it up along the way.
The number that tells you whether a job is working is gross profit. The five signs in this guide are where firms most often fall short of it without realising.
What usually happens
You learnt tax, accounting and compliance, and your fees came from somewhere else entirely. Maybe you kept what the previous accountant charged, quoted from experience or rolled last year's invoice forward. Because it feels close enough, nobody goes back to check. Meanwhile jobs run longer than planned, wages go up and the fee stays where it was, and none of that shows on the invoice your client pays.
Why it matters now
AI is changing how long work takes in every firm, and that changes what each job is really worth to you. Fee reviews for next year are coming up for most firms too. A few minutes looking at your pricing before those quotes go out could tell you more about your margin than a year of invoices.
What's inside
A clear look at where your margin goes
The five signs
Five everyday pricing habits that seem harmless and end up costing firms the most.
A quick check for each
One question per sign that you can answer with your own numbers in under a minute.
The number to measure against
The single target every job in your firm can be held up to.
Your score
A simple tally at the end that shows how much is slipping away, and what to do with that.
You quote from gut feel
When a new job comes in, you think back to something similar, settle on a number that feels right and send the quote. Nobody has worked out who will do the work or how many hours they'll spend on it, so the margin stays unknown until the job is finished and the fee is already locked in.
Your pricing score · 5 signs
Where your firm lands
At the end of the guide, tally your signs to see where your margin stands.
You have a handle on costs and your fee reviews happen on schedule.
A few silent habits are eroding profit across everyday jobs.
Quotes are going out blind and your team's time is being under-recovered.
Who this is for
The guide is for you if…
Whether you're running a solo practice or leading multiple teams, pricing is the single highest-leverage lever in your business.
Some jobs feel busy but you're never quite sure what they made
You can't remember the last time you properly reviewed your fees
Your team is getting faster with AI and your pricing hasn't caught up
You'd like to set next year's fees with more than a gut feel
A note from Jamie
"Most accountants are too cheap."
I'm Jamie Johns, co-founder and CEO of Wize Mentoring and owner of Sky Accountants, which runs seven teams at 60% gross profit. Every job we take on at Sky is costed before the quote goes out, and that habit has shaped the way we've grown.
Over the years, working with firm owners around the world, I've seen how rarely firms get the chance to look at their pricing that closely. We wrote this guide so you can take that look at your own firm in five minutes, and see where the margin is going while there's still time to do something about it.
Get the guide
Five minutes now could change the next quote you send.
Pop in your name and email, and the guide opens on the very next screen.