TL;DR
Pricing is hard. I’ve shared my story of how excited I was to charge my very first client $20 per hour many times, including in my eBook. I charge much more than that now, but none of my subsequent (higher priced) engagements were quite as thrilling as that first dollar as a business owner.
I am not the expert at telling you how to determine your prices or how to raise your prices, BUT I do feel led to offer some commentary on what your price FLOOR should be.
A couple of days ago I shared a snip of an ad I received from a bookkeeping & Tax company called Collective. Collective is a VC-backed bookkeeping and tax firm. I’ve been following them on social media for a while and have even attended some of their free webinars to hear how they talk to clients because their target customer is not too dissimilar to my target customer.
So, this advertisement I saw was basically a chart comparing their prices to their competitors prices. Feel free to jump in on the conversation and see the graphic in the thread in the Facebook group (or you can just go to Collective.com and you will certainly start getting their ads after you visit their site).
How does your own pricing compare?
Here are some places to investigate to see the prices of very large shops. Surely you can offer bespoke services that are AT LEAST worth this much.
Collective - Their ad is what started this entire conversation off and I have NO IDEA how they stay in business with those prices.
Pilot - Fancy little slider that shows pricing changes based on the DOLLAR amount of monthly expenses (…and here I am over here thinking about pricing on transaction VOLUME not $$$ 🤯).
QuickBooks Live - The 800lb gorilla that every prospect using QBO sees an advertisement for IN APP.
Bench - They offer a significant discount for paying for the whole year. Read the “Kate Builds In Public” section below to see how I used Bench for my pricing floor and added it to my website this week.
Bookkeeper360 - They also have a fancy slider based on the dollar value of expenses AND the list their hourly support rate of $125/hour. 👀
You are invited by this week’s sponsor to join Gusto Connect. In that community you could learn things like how much Gusto’s partner company CorpNet charges for State Tax Registrations and use CorpNet’s pricing to be your floor for State Tax Registrations. I added pricing for this service to my website, too.
When you take time to participate in communities of other modern professionals, you find out all the good stuff.
Click the image to join 👇
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Holiday deals are going to start coming in - so I’m starting to update my Black Friday Deals to be ready to share. Some are already listed, but keep checking this article to see what discounts are being offered to the Bookkeeping Community.
Please reach out to me if you know of any deals so I can add them to the article.
💰 People are losing their marbles over Hector Garcia’s new app, Right Tool. And it is a DEAL because it is still FREE! His messaging about the benefits is that the app is supposed to save you “seconds”. And people are going nuts over an app that saves them seconds.
A digression: Any of y’all tech-heads with an idea for an app (MRR baby!) needs to WATCH Hector releasing this. Somethings I’m noticing:
His landing page is ugly as sin. Who cares! SHIP!
He is already asking for user feedback from the moment of signing up on the landing page.
He spent years building an audience and expertise. Definitely played the long game.
There is a very curious little line on the (ugly yet efficient) landing page mentioning an accounting app developer company called MonkBe. 👀
I see Hector repeating ONE LINE over and over “it is supposed to save you seconds”. He is really locking in on that sound bite.
He carved out a special sub-group of his main Facebook group to get users talking about it and implementing it. This subgroup feature is called a “feed channel” inside of a Facebook group. I personally need to investigate this feature more.
💰 Margie Remmers-Davis has her Basic ProAdvisor, Advanced ProAdvisor, AND QBO Payroll Cert bundled for a “Black November” deal*. Go get all 3 courses, study hard, and raise your profile in the QBO ProAdvisor Directory. This is the time of year where the calls from the directory come in.
Please always send me any news of deals that you hear of that others might benefit from.
Be There or Be Square
Items with a “+” are hosted by me. All these events can be viewed and registered for in the DESCRIPTIONS of each event on the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Calendar.
📅 +QuickBooks Live and Turbo Tax Live Schedule - We are 2 weeks in the Intuit Virtual Job Fair. Check out the first 4 videos HERE, but join us on the YouTube Channel next week for the last 2 interviews.
11/16 - Working at QuickBooks Live: What’s it like?
11/17 - Working at TurboTax Live: What’s it like?
📅 Latino Tax Pros and the MamáCounts Community have a free workshop to introduce bookkeepers to the idea of adding tax prep as a service line in their business.
📅 +Mondays in November: Office hours at 11am EST on zoom. Here is link, and the password is HUSTLE. Plan on doing whatever task you’ve been putting off. It is a little easier with friends.
📅 November 29-December: 1 QBO Certification Bootcamps with Tracks for Basic, Advanced, or Payroll Certs.
📅 November 30: Xero Hour: Crypto 101 for Accountants and Bookkeepers. Register HERE
📅 December 6: Prepare 1099s: Best Practices in Xero. Get more information and register HERE.
📅 December 13: Royalwise is have a Full Service Payroll in QBO class. Join them to learn Payroll Subscription options, settings, and even how to do a payroll run. Register HERE.*
📅 December 14: Intro to Xero. Looking to grow and scale your business further? Join us for a demo of the platform and discover the possible efficiency gains with the power of Xero. Register HERE.
📅 Throughout November and December Xero and FreshBooks are having free and in-person events. I’m so grumpy with myself that I didn’t share these sooner because most of these events have already occurred, BUT, not all. And let this serve as a mental note for you to FIND THESE NEXT YEAR. You need to go for the professional connections but also these companies also provide pretty cool swag. And y’all know one of my stated goals is to get accounting swag into your hands!
Featured Posts
🌶️ Do you ALWAYS answer calls from clients? Ashley DeWeedrt is wondering what is your process for unexpected calls? Share your thoughts on what you would do.
🌶️ Where do you work if you don’t have an office? Beth Hubert wants to know where/how/when you work if you need to get out of your house.
Help You Hustle
💪 Veronica Wasek is hosting a FREE webinar on November 22nd - “8 Highly Effective Ways to Raise Your Prices”. Only costs an email address to attend. She will address tackling some of the common challenges that hold bookkeepers back from raising the prices of their services. You'll learn effective strategies you can implement now to start getting paid what you are worth. I’ve learned how to raise MY prices from Veronica, and now you can, too. If you ever buy a course from her, I will not be sad if you ask for my affiliate link to her products.
💪 Does your local library offer free offices or meeting spaces? It probably does! My co-working space membership is set to be renewed in January and I’m thinking of downgrading. Things just aren’t what they once were because the owners have tried to make it fully automated and no staff to keep things running smoothly and no more social or professional development events are being scheduled. I am glad I have been a member, but think that it might be time to downgrade to a part-time membership or even just the mailbox service. My husband told me that our local library offers 5 hour reservations of office space with a key (!) to lock the door and TVs that can be second monitors. And the branch nearest my kids’ school even has a coffee shop inside. That is kind of all you need from an “office space” anyway.
💪 Newbies: The Sassy Accounting Coach, Kellie Parks, published a short but helpful article entitled Key Steps to Set Yourself Up In A Professional Cloud Bookkeeping Career. I especially liked point #5 where she talks about how to overcome the hurdle of not having industry experience.
💪 Watch the interviews with the program managers of the Intuit Bookkeeping Training and the Intuit Tax Training. These are FREE programs, y’all. Yes, they are the top of the funnel for bringing in new talent to the QuickBooks Live and TurboTax Live jobs, but they are also just simply valuable free training, even if you don’t want to work for Intuit. My hunch is Intuit is planning some pretty big things with the new Intuit Academy platform*. Their Bookkeeper Training will transfer from Coursera to the main Academy landing page this week.
For Fun
😹 Jessica Baird wants to know the most unique field you’ve done work for? Some hair-raisers up in this thread. For real.
Jobs
Note: Facebook changed the “Topic” concept and now if you click on the hashtag #jobopportunity on the left side of the screen and now it is just a dumpster fire of posts NOT from the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Group. Use the magnifying glass and search for the names listed below to find the posts.
Make sure you use “jobopportunity” on your posts so I can search and feature them here.
💼 Intuit is hiring, hiring, hiring for QuickBooks Live and TurboTax Live. Apply here. And please be sure to tell me if you get hired so I can sent you your “Accounting T-Account Cheat Sheet Mousepad” so I can celebrate with you (and track the hires from people who benefited the job fair).
💼 Three new opportunities on CloudAccountingJobs.com for a company called SystemSix. There is an “attention to detail” trick at the bottom of the application, so make sure you READ IT!
💼 I recently made a connection with the folks at CPAMoms (franchise model…you should investigate it if you want your own business). But they help their franchisees find staff and there are FOUR part time jobs listed here. WITH PAY RANGES LISTED. Bless’em.
💼 Rachel Barnett of Gentle Frog Bookkeeping is looking for a QuickBooks TRAINER. Who likes to teach?
💼 Angelica C. Maples shared a remote position (full-time) working for a non-profit sorority. Very rich vacation days as a part of the package.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I have put myself in the entrepreneur’s time-out corner. I will not be taking more client inquiries until I get my own books done. There is only 7 weeks left until the end of the year. I am so far behind on my own books it is embarrassing. As bookkeepers we see out-of-date books all the time, right? We constantly preach to our clients and prospects about the importance of timely and accurate numbers. Figured I’d take this opportunity to not be a hypocrite.
🎢 Well, I officially raised my prices. By officially, I just mean I kinda/sorta put them on my website.
I doubled my price for my Paid Diagnostic Review up to $250.
I put a “Starting at $349” for my monthly bookkeeping services.
This part is not so much a significant price increase for me, but more as a way to reduce the number of people who are bookkeeping me who are looking for inexpensive bookkeepers.
I shared the price increase journey here in this community post, but basically Veronica Wasek challenged me to raise my price for doing the Paid Diagnostic Review that she taught us about* last spring. That post is so encouraging to read because half the comments are “raise you prices” and the other half are folks chiming in saying “these comments are making me raise my prices!”.
I picked my “starting at $349” because that is what Bench Accounting charges per month. FreshBooks (the software I’m niching in) has some sort of sales arrangement with Bench monthly bookkeeping. Bench outsourced bookkeeping services are offered to FreshBooks subscribers with In-App ads and via onboarding. Any business that starts a FreshBooks account will have this outsourced bookkeeping service marketed to them, so they are a very clear direct competitor of mine. At this present moment, I’ve never sold ANY FreshBooks clients a monthly bookkeeping package for $349. As soon as I do, then I’ll raise my price higher than Bench’s monthly price of $349.
From The Vault
⚡Since we are in the middle of the Job Fair, I thought this might be relevant for anyone wanting to get hired with QuickBooks. Watch this video where Margie Remmers-Davis gives tips on how to pass your QBO test with ease.
Letters To The Editor
To submit a letter to the editor, please comment RIGHT ON SUBSTACK. You can also email bookkeepingsidehustle AT gmail DOT com (but I’d sure rather you comment directly on this platform).
✉️ D.S. writes in…
Kate, thank you for your community and all of the information on your website. It is truly amazing.
I have a big picture question. I am looking to grow a Bookkeeping / Consulting business for a specific industry. I have not found much on building a "Firm", as in having employees or W9 bookkeepers in any of the training sites.
I am starting off with the idea of myself being certified and working as the main bookkeeper, but I havent seen anyone speaking of growth. I am looking to have a $1M business, not a $100K business.
Any insight or direction on this? Or is it as simple as making sure my pricing is set up to withstand W9 or employee support? My wife and I run a $2M service industry business right now and I am looking to branch out into that industry to assist others in their business fundamentals and growth. I expect, I cannot handle all the work (bookkeeping) that I will find, so that is why I am thinking larger right from the start.
Thanks for any insight or thoughts you may be able to provide.
How would you answer this question, reader?
I have my own thoughts as to how to answer him. I realized my answer would be valuable to many more folks than just him, so I’m going to record a video response to him with my suggestions and share it on my YouTube Channel. But I thought I’d ask the readers how they would answer this question? Maybe your suggestion will be included in my reply to Mr. D.S.
Classified Ads
No actual classified ad section yet. But I plan to begin populating this bottom part of the newsletter with clickable advertisements in 2023. If you are interested in advertising in the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Pub, please reach out to me at bookkeepingsidehustle AT gmail DOT com.
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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I am down right rabid about transparency and full disclosure. If a link has a * beside it, it means it is either an affiliate link where I might receive compensation if you make a purchase, at no additional charge to you. Or it could be a tracking link that another business provided me to see how many readers click on that link.
Hector Garcia I love this tool! I purchased two seconds after I saw the email!!
Love RightTool!! I can’t imagine my life without this Chrome extension. Hector and Mark really listen to their core audience, the accounting and bookkeeping community, and what their wants and needs are. Their goal is to get the every QBO user (not just accountants and bookkeepers) on their free version whilst the Pro version is geared towards us professionals. Cannot wait to see what the future holds for RightTool.