Just curious really.
I'm going through a big process of reviewing all fees at the moment and while some are changing due to the work I'm increasing the targeted "hourly" rate by 10% to cover increased costs. I'm terrible at increasing fees, it's a weakness.
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I did not learn this from my practice , it was a part time thing, but instead learned as treasurer of an after school club- increase costs by small amounts but regularly, whilst in reality the clients/customers benefit from delayed price uplifts they always seem to resent it when it comes at say 10% in one go after say 5 years, 2% per year usually not a murmur.
Not yet but I am going to. Most of my costs (both professional and personal) have gone up.
I'm going to tinker with the scope aspect: keep core service fees the same, but increase the rates for additional work related to overdrawn DLAs / profit extraction / going concern matters; as well as for unreconciled books caused by faulty bank feeds and other such mismanaged downloads.
That's the idea - with penal additional fee rate for clients who do that badly.
I'm also finding lately that BBLs / overdrawn DLAs and their various repercussions are taking as much time to deal with and advise on as the accounts & tax prep work. That's what I'll be looking at - not by increasing highest fee rates but by widening the scope for charging them.
I think you're underselling your approach - or at least only mentioning one half of it.
* You can keep core service fees the same (for now), because these are the services where you're least likely to be surprised by the unexpected AND where clients value your efforts the least (after all it's just the necessary evil of administration).
* But you can increase the rates for additional work "related to overdrawn DLAs / profit extraction / going concern matters", because there's perceived value-add (whether of what you do or merely that you 'unblock' their desired end-game).
My point is that, in addition to charging more for client error/incompetence (i.e. unreconciled books caused by faulty bank feeds and other such mismanaged downloads), you can separate your services into 'standard' and a higher-charged set of 'specialist' items ... IF the latter are seen as desirable rather than merely necessary.
Yes, we do every year usually between 2-3%, doesn't everyone?
Apparently not.
But I used to - assuming I was doing the same work, obviously.
I can't remember anyone ever complaining about their bill. Apart from a fella who complained that he was charged £20 more than I charged his mate.
Hadn't increased fees for 5 years then the Pandemic came and that stuffed that. This year I took the decision to increase fees by around 2% a year.
Reality is I should have done it years ago and now in a position where I can't really suddenly jump up 10% so lesson learned.
Ah but maybe you should have just gone for the 10% or somewhere close and mentioned, no, highlighted the fact to clients that you havent increased their fees for 5 years. Softens the blow.
Yes I had thought about that and to be honest only one client queried the 2% but I guess I kept in mind that for a lot of them it was 12 months after hardly working and I thought it may be a bit of a stretch to suddenly add a big fee increase.
I haven't gone down the 2% line, partly because most clients pay monthly and the existing fees are nice round numbers. But at least that allows me to present it to clients in terms of a relatively small monthly increase rather than the annual one.
Now seeing where inflation is heading, I'm looking to increase the fees I'm not that happy with by 4%. Where they are decent fees, then sometimes I'm keeping them the same...a bit inconsistent though, I know!
I increase c.3% every year although I haven't applied that to clients I know struggled for work during lockdown.
We always try to increase each year by 2 to 3% but depends on the job.
This year we are increasing by 5%.
We have in the past increased by 10% and no client complained ! .
I think accountants are too hesitant about increasing their fees and charging for all their time - unlike solicitors........
As HMRC, The Chancellor, lenders and clients have made our working lives more difficult and tedious each year it has never been a problem to justify annual increases.
Always the same ones who moan about the fees but i've decided it's 5% this year. That's what they reckon inflation will be soon. Haven't really increased the last couple of years.