Website for accountants, with enquiries that arrive with the numbers
A limited company with eleven employees and a shoebox of receipts is not the same job as a sole trader with forty invoices a year, and you cannot say what either one costs until you have seen inside. So every enquiry starts with the same nine questions, and half of them get asked in January, when you have the least time to ask anything.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.
Three things that happen in every practice
None of this is about the quality of the work. It is about pricing a job you have not seen yet, in the two stretches of the year when there is no room to look.
Nine questions before a price
Someone rings on a Tuesday and asks what you charge. Before you can answer you need the turnover, the number of employees, whether they are VAT registered, what software they are on, how many bank accounts there are, and whether the last accountant left the ledger in a state anyone can read.
By the time you have asked all of that you have spent twenty minutes on a caller who rang two other firms this morning.
The year has two walls
Accounts and the corporation tax return stand against one deadline. Self assessment stands at the end of January, and everybody in the country knows that date, including the clients who send their records in the last fortnight of it.
During those weeks nobody in the office is selling anything. The enquiries still arrive. They sit in the inbox until February, by which point the person has gone somewhere that answered.
The same question, in every meeting
Can I put the car through the company. What can I claim for working from home. Why is the payment on account that size, and when does it leave the bank.
You have answered each of these hundreds of times and you will answer them again on Thursday, one client at a time, at the start of a meeting that was booked for something else. None of it is billable and all of it has to be said.
Four parts a practice actually uses
There is more in the system than this. These are the pieces that change how a week in a practice goes.
Bookkeeping priced by volume, accounts priced flat
Every service on your list carries the pricing type that is honest for it. Bookkeeping is quoted, because it depends on the volume and on the state of the records. Annual accounts can sit at a fixed price. Payroll can be a fixed price per employee, and advisory work an hourly rate.
Services group into categories, so limited companies, sole traders and landlords each get their own list with their own prices.
A quote with the work set out line by line
One line for the bookkeeping, one for the VAT returns, one for the accounts, one for the return itself. The client opens it on its own page, reads what is in the scope and what is not, and approves it there rather than replying to an email with the word yes.
Where you take an engagement fee up front it goes through your own Stripe account, so the money arrives where it already arrives.
The questions you answer twice a week, answered once
Payments on account, mileage, dividends against salary, what a director has to file and by when. Written up once as an FAQ, they are on the site at eleven at night, which is when the person is actually worrying about them.
It also means a first meeting starts at the second question instead of the first, and the caller who only wanted a deadline confirmed does not need to ring at all.
The enquiry lands in a register, not in an inbox
Everyone who fills in the form is kept with what they asked for and the date they asked. The company that enquired in October and went quiet is still on the list in March, with its turnover band and its software still attached.
That is the difference between a follow-up list you can work through in an afternoon and a search back through six weeks of email.
What the service list can look like
You write the names and set the figures yourself. The shape is the point: each service carries the pricing type it can honestly carry.
Categories keep the list readable. Limited company, sole trader, landlord: three lists, three sets of prices, and a visitor only reads the one that describes them.
What practices ask before they commit
Yes. Mark a service as quoted and the visitor sees plainly that it is priced once you have looked at the books, rather than a figure you would have to walk back after the first month of bank statements.
The enquiry form asks for it. Turnover band, employees, VAT registration, the software they use and how tidy the records are, all collected before the call, so the first conversation starts with the figures in front of you.
The site carries on while the office cannot. Enquiries land in the register complete, the FAQ handles the deadline questions, and the follow-up list is waiting in February instead of being lost in an inbox.
No. The existing site can be imported, so your wording and your service list come across. The builder fills the gaps from a description of the practice, and after that you edit pages by clicking the pencil icons on them.
A quote is approved on its own page, and any payment taken there runs through your own Stripe account. Ongoing monthly fees stay where they are now, on direct debit or standing order.
Plans run from €49 to €199 a month plus VAT. Each one carries the site on your own domain, SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support in English. SMS reminders are a prepaid add-on.
More trades
- Law firmsAn advisory meeting with a stated price.
- IT consultantsThe first meeting booked, the agreement following the quote.
- Creative agenciesA meeting booked from the portfolio.
- PhotographersPackages booked outright, weddings quoted.
- Landscapers and gardenersSite visits in spring, maintenance all year.
- Tree surgeonsPhotos and details in the form before the drive.
- All trades
Get the practice's site started
Write a few sentences about the practice, or point at the site you have now, and the builder puts together a first version with your services, the pricing type on each of them and an enquiry form that asks for the numbers. Then you change whatever you want, on the page itself.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.