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We'll help you brother. Let's get you in the FB community and back on a call to show you how you can really crank the handle.
Hey Glennzy. Thank you. We genuinely had no idea this was happening and it was both a great surprise and very humbling to read.
We've worked very hard to develop our product to this level and to help our users to get maximum value from it.
Our success has come down to our great team, but also down to the accountancy firms who have believed in our product and supported us.
I've learned that accountants have a real desire to help and deeply generous. I've seen this in the value they want to give to their clients, the support they want to to give to each other and the ideas they've contributed to GoProposal.
Just so you know, the Dashboards are on their way and getting the pricing to suit every firm is always a challenge.
Our belief is that if we focus on helping you to get such value from our product by getting you to massively improve your profitability, then the price won't be such an issue :)
If you're still using GoProposal, dive into our FB group and let's help you really start flying with it.
Our goal now is to focus on earning that extra 1.5 to take us to 10/10.
Just glad you had a sip to find out what a 5 dollar shake tastes like, and moreover... that you thought it was a pretty flippin good. (edited for the AccountingWEB audience.)
Great article Glennzy. Was that 8.5 for Go Proposal even after taking into account the high price?
I see to get the Practice Ignition £39/month price, you have to sign up for a year. Otherwise it's £49/month.
Go Proposal is a Fantastic tool and if you cant make an extra £100 per month from it then i wouldn't want you advising my clients!
This may be just one more client converted a month through the fact your line by Line Pricing is transparent!
Give it a go the back up support is fantastic and first month is FREE! ;-)
Great article, I have used & looked at most of this software too and agree with the marks out of 10.
I like the article Glenn. I think one of the main benefits of GoProposal (or another) over spread sheets is how it helps demonstrate value to clients. When this becomes your key focus, the actual price becomes secondary, as the client has peace of mind that they are getting the best advice and experience that they can possibly hope for. We've used other pricing tools before but GoProposal is our favourite.
Hi guys. I've tried Mark Wickersham's pricing in the cloud and Goproposal.
I trialed GP around March this year and didn't feel at that time I could justify the £100 a month. When I cancelled I was impressed that I got a personal call from James asking how the trial went and I explained my reasons for not continuing at that stage.
A few months later thought I'd give Mark's software a go. Wow, what a faff!! Just setting up an account and understanding which version you need was a nightmare. There was a sense of arrogance about it in that you should have done your homework and spend hours learning it before you can even run through a quote. However, I bought into this idea of pricing.
I continued to receive GP's emails and felt that the private facebook group for accountants would go a long way to help justify the cost. We were taking longer and longer to get proposals and EL's signed and I could finally see how GP would benefit me with the cost no longer being an issue.
I'm not going to sound like one of these 'success stories' as it's still early days but what I will say is that the software (along with the FB group) has not only made my sign up process super slick but I am now charging how I should for our services.
The level of customisation and ease of use is a big factor also.
I looked at Practice Ignition but felt it was trying to be too many things. GP knows what it is and is not trying to be everything to everyone.
PS - Being able to pick James' brain in the FB group was also a big factor. A massive personal touch.
I might give it a go in February. People are going to be winding down for Christmas soon; then there'll be the busy season, so no point paying subs during those months.
Having been in practice for many years, this is the best piece of kit I have used for pricing AND signing up. I have used Times Up/Spreadsheets/Pricing in the Cloud/Practice Ignition, custom excel sheets.
The cost (Known as investment!) of £100 pcm is peanuts compared to the value any user will obtain from it. I would go so far as to say it created its own category.
Practice Ignition - which we used for hundreds of engagements is great at signing up the client BUT doesn't deal with the big question of what to charge.
Cloud Pricing is great at giving value pricing figures, but then you need to sign the client up separately.
GoProposal combines the 2 and speeds the whole process up. So in the category of pricing AND signing up, GoProposal is on its own and the clear winner.
"Practice Ignition - which we used for hundreds of engagements is great at signing up the client BUT doesn't deal with the big question of what to charge."
Yes it does.
I've been going over various tools for the past few years too (PI, Pricing in Cloud, excel based tool-kits).......
I was worried about £100 per month with GP too, but if I combined PI with Pricing in the Cloud then the cost would be similar.
Having started using GP, it is by far the best onboarding and pricing combo tool out there. The cost is easily covered by the extra fees generated by using the tool properly. James and his team are second to none for advice and support. And their development plans are a great fit for most firms........they do know the market and it's not all about just selling you their software or their methodology.
The FB group is great value too. For support, I had a query I sent through one Saturday morning at 7.30 am when I was up early configuring the system a bit to suit our needs, Amanda from GP logged in and resolved within 15 mins!
The "out of the box" set up makes it easier to get going and easy to get thinking about how to tweak GP to suit your own methods.
As a reasonably new sole practitioner trying to build a digital practice such software reviews are appreciated. I have tried most of these myself and must admit to doing what you said and building my own spreadsheet off the back of pricing in the cloud! I wasn't comfortable using the PITC software in front of clients as it was just too unpredictable. Can't fault the support from Sarah though.
On the other hand I used GP during my free trail to win my largest piece of work and move into the virtual FD area. It helped to give me confidence in my pricing and upped the quality of my presentation (the spreadsheet wasn't going to cut it for this one). I was put off by the £100 fee but the £50 p/m for 5 proposals as an 'army of one' is fine for my size of new practice. I would say that it didn't seem that easy to find the price for sole practitioners- it did seem a little hidden on the website!
It's still early days but I do feel more confident in my ability to set better prices, be clear on who is doing what and get the proposal out the same day. Now just to get the rest of the practice management sorted....
Enjoyed this article and pleased to be able to say that we are using the top scoring pricing software :-)
For anyone not yet using GoProposal then definitely take a look, it's not just a pricing tool but a full-blown onboarding system.
Just had a look at Practice Ignition. Their 'Mars' base pricing is £49 not £39. Really irritating that after about 10 seconds on the 'features' page it becomes illegible and a form appears with no obvious 'close' button that makes the page illegible and demands an email address to send reminder to try it letter. Final moan, the next tier (at 101 clients) shoots up to £149, so treble the price. We collect fees through our direct debit system. It looks like Practice Ignition wants to use its own payment system, and we use our own e-sign system but again it looks like PI want to use their own.
I'm surprised that pricingthecloud scores so low given Mark Wickersham's positioning as thepricing expert. I having looked at it so I'm not disputing your score, just surprised. Built in letter of engagement and T&C's are must-haves in any meaningful system system that produces 'ready to sign' proposals.
Great article, really appreciate so many different cloud softwares being reviewed by Accountingweb, has helped tremendously in my research of various solutions in recent months, such as workflow.
I agree with the ratings and conclusions albeit my only experience of Practice Ignition is the trial period I had. It just did not look nearly as user friendly / intuitive as GoProposal.
After visiting Accountex this year I was all gearing up to accepting the inevitable cost of Practice Ignition to start automating engagements. I also linked up with Mark Wickersham's Cloud Accounting software - the concept of pricing in the cloud alongside the client really appealed to me and I could see that there was a huge amount of value I could quickly gain...once I had mastered the setup, psychology and 2 hour presentation to clients of these numerous packaged 3-tier priced service modules together with additional optional rewards and upsells... A bit of a mouthful, yes and admittedly a bit of an effort as well. Overkill on the complication to try to obtain the best “psychological price”.
I admit I enjoyed the process of setting up the Cloud Pricing modules and calculations behind the fees, but the variability in resulting quotes is potentially significant and really you have to get a handle on the calculations and learn them well or you could end up equally as shocked as the client sitting next to you when hitting the "quote me now" button....
I do love the marketing collateral the MW has created to go along with the software and I still intend to use wording from some of his brochures to describe my services in more detail and to communicate the value of what I do. A big thumbs up to MW. The whole process of working through his software has helped me a lot, the time has not been wasted in any way.
I found GoProposal simply from a book recommendation from Amazon.co.uk "Selling to Serve" written by this guy who claims he's not an accountant but is great at digital marketing - I concur! His digital (and real life!) marketing expertise makes you feel special even apart from the software itself!
I trialed the GP software and it really was a WOW compared to the previous Cloud Pricing system. The output is really top quality and of course produces the full detailed proposal, the LoE and T&Cs for any number of types of entities / service lines you may choose to set up. It was a Big Win for me.
GP forces you to think of a price for each detailed line of service which means you do not give anything away for free - unless you choose to. I was finding with the Cloud Pricing software I was bundling too many "green ticks" in the premium price option to make the higher price more attractive - not realising I was actually giving far too much value away.
It took some time to move to a very different pricing mindset and when I first started with GP I was trying to replicate within GP the 10 to 20 pricing calculations that varied each service price in the Cloud Pricing system so that I could obtain similar pricing levels which I had become so attached to after my many hours setting up CP. This didn't work too well as GP enables 5 levels of price variation calculations within one service line, but GP works in a different way that I had to get my mind around. I am now safely there I think and feeling a lot more confident with the pricing structure and output than I was with CP.
The videos of Paul Barnes explaining the standard pricing templates in the system, which have been used by his firm My Accountancy Place, on the GoProposal website are invaluable, such a generous guy to share !
Admittedly I am still in the process of setting it all up as I want it looking great and thoroughly personalised. Yesterday evening I finished copying over my ACCA engagement letter schedules into all the different service lines and just need to now provide my own style descriptions for all my services. Hey, if I want, the system even allows you to add videos in service lines for the client to watch you explain your mastery of value add servicing !
This week I did print out one quote (just the numbers bit) from the system and placed in front of an existing client, increasing their fee from £400pm to £778pm without too much resistance - she said what I had done was really amazing and she really liked it.
It has given me great confidence to go out there now and requote all my existing clients using the system even before going out there for new prospective client quotes. I am expecting that this will equate to 4 figure numbers per month even before new clients get a look in, oh what was the cost again ? (Yes I am a One Man Army so appreciate the £50 for now....heh heh)
Apart from the software, the Facebook group is absolutely amazing. I have never known such a lively Fb group. So many top top top accountants willing to give their time to share and is a great place for learning, personal development and chipping in with a few ideas.
Well that's my journey to date in proposal and engagement software and I'm really excited about the future of my practice now having GoPropsal as a real part of my sales team !
Been using PI for a while and demoing GoProposal now. Looking forward to seeing if I agree with your assessment!
I trialled Go Proposal - liked it but not the price. I didn't see the small practice pricing option, but probably not suitable as I would initially use it with existing clients (starting with the longest periods since the last price review which is genuinely going to be about 8 years).
As far as I remember, it won't let me use Adobe Sign for electronic signatures although that won't be a deal killer if it's linked to another e-sign product at no extra cost. When I trialled a few of them Adobe Sign was the best in my opinion and our clients are now used to it because we use it for accounts, tax returns etc as well as LOE's. I also don't think I could just get a direct debit mandate authorised with GP to use with our DD system.
Also use Adobe Sign for onboarding and never had one problem with it plus at £44 a year, it's incredibly cost effective (and like you say, clients are used to it as well).
Not every practice needs pricing software especially at the cost of the leading ones, Facebook group or not. But good to see that those who are with GP do find it worthwhile, well done James.
Great article Glenzy :-)
Just reading through all of these comments, and I find it interesting to read about which one is best and who prefers what.
The competition between them is great and I’m sure there will be a lot more that develop and add on in the future. Over the past 6-7 years I’ve enjoyed watching the software products grow and in particular, add super exciting features to help with building in more efficiencies into the business.
What I have learnt over time is to work with products who genuinely listen on how to improve things.
Ultimately , you want to use the product as easily and possible. The main focus is the customer. You don’t want to worry about how something isn’t quite right. Isn’t that the point in why we bring them in? This is a great article and I enjoyed reading it. Choosing the software, I look to see how well a simple solution to a problem is fixed and not ignored.
When I set the practice up in 2015, I selected Practice Ignition. It was user friendly and super easy to set up. I didn’t need to call the team to do this. To me, this is really important. Since then, I have spoken to the developers, for example , with cool things that will help me... and they listened to that. Little things have been implemented that has made a difference. If they can’t develop and implement small changes ,it could be a product that could potentially end up failing. Which would concern me and I wouldnt want to invest time, then a few years down the road, have to select a different platform.Investment is important.
But choosing a product, you go with one that suits your business. I like mine to be simple and straight forward. Others may like it more detailed and various options. GP offers the detailed version with PDFs, where as PI, it’s contained within a link.
However. They are all fab and it’s great that they all want to help Accountants!
I feel humbled.
Humbled? That is the last thing I would feel if people told me I had written a great article.