Why do you charge fixed prices instead of hourly?

The short answer is that hourly billing gets in the way of actual planning.

When every question costs money, clients stop asking questions. They hesitate before picking up the phone. They wait until April to mention something that could have been handled better in October. The meter running in the background changes the relationship from advisor and client into vendor and customer.

That’s the opposite of what planning requires. Tax planning and advisory services depend on knowing what’s happening in the business throughout the year, not just at filing time. If a client is thinking about buying equipment, hiring, expanding, or changing how the business is structured, we need to hear about it while there’s still time to make smart decisions. Hourly billing punishes exactly the kind of communication that makes planning work.

Fixed pricing means advice is included. When you call with a question, we answer it. When something comes up mid-year that affects your tax situation, we talk through it. There’s no charge for the conversation because the conversation is the whole point.

It also means no surprises on the bill. Before any engagement starts, you know what you’re paying. If the scope changes during the year because something unexpected comes up, we discuss it and agree on the additional work before it begins. You never open an invoice that’s larger than expected because we spent more time than we estimated.

Hourly billing also creates an incentive problem that most clients don’t think about. A firm billing by the hour has no financial reason to work efficiently. Taking longer means billing more. Fixed pricing flips that around. Our incentive is to do the work well and efficiently because the scope is already set.

This applies to everything we do, from tax preparation through monthly bookkeeping and advisory work. The goal is an ongoing relationship where questions are welcome and communication happens naturally, not a transactional arrangement where every minute gets tracked.

If you want to talk about how we would work together, book a consultation and we’ll walk through what an engagement would look like and what it would cost.