Fees & billing
Most practice software picks a side: it is an hourly product with fixed fees bolted on, or a fixed-fee product that cannot handle time. Both are wrong for the same reason — how your firm prices its work is your business model, and a tool that argues with it gets replaced by a spreadsheet.
So you write the price list. SBB only does the arithmetic.
Open Fees in the practice workspace.
The six ways to price a client
There are exactly six, because there are exactly six sums.
| Basis | The sum | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed | A set amount for the period | Annual compliance, a monthly retainer |
| Hourly | Rate × hours recorded | Advisory, clean-up work |
| Per unit | Rate × what the books already count | The client's volume drives your effort |
| Percent of turnover | A share of money in | You price to the size of the business |
| Per job | An amount each time a job completes | A VAT return, a payroll run |
| Manual | You type the number | Everything that does not fit a formula |
The two nobody else can offer
Per unit and percent of turnover work here because SBB holds the books.
Every other practice tool has to ask you how many transactions a client had last quarter — so you count them, in a spreadsheet, and hope. SBB already knows. It works the fee out and shows you the count it used, so you can see the number rather than trust it.
Per unit counts either transactions or invoices.
This is the pricing conversation you cannot otherwise have
"Your fee went up because you went from 200 transactions a month to 900" is a defensible conversation. "Your fee went up" is not.
Setting it up
1. Write your schedules. A schedule is a named price, not a client — Annual compliance — small, Monthly bookkeeping — 500 txns, Payroll per run. Most firms need five or six and then stop.
2. Assign one to each client. A client can carry more than one: a fixed annual fee plus a per-run payroll fee is normal.
3. Read the fee book. Every client, what they are on, what it comes to.
One rule that will not bend
Fees are never added across currencies.
A schedule is priced in one currency. Totals come back grouped by currency. There is no line anywhere that adds UGX to CAD, because 100 UGX plus 100 CAD is 200 of nothing — and that mistake has already caused real bugs in this codebase.
If your firm charges in two currencies you will see two totals. That is correct, not a limitation.
Practice billing is a different thing
Two words that sound alike and must not be confused:
| What it is | |
|---|---|
| Fees | What your firm charges its clients. Your revenue. |
| Billing | What you pay us for the clients on your practice. Your cost. |
They live on separate screens for that reason. See For accounting firms for the wholesale arrangement — the short version is that running the practice is free, you pay below list per client, and a client is never cut off because of your billing.
Related
- Time, WIP and recovery — whether the fee covered the work
- For accounting firms — the manual
- Subscriptions & payment — what clients pay for SBB itself