The Receipt Bank Blog

What do you want to achieve in your business? To grow or to sell might be the answer, but have you taken the time to plan it? If a clear direction is lacking, it’s time for a strategic look at the big questions.

In an industry typically built around hourly billing, momentum is gathering for conversations about practices bundling their services. Why?

Over the weekend I attended the Jim’s Bookkeeping Conference. Franchises from all over Australia met to discuss the Future of Bookkeeping. Discussions focussed on how to increase your gross profit margin, business improvement and development, and industry updates.

On the subject of analysing, Melanie Power, Head of Bookkeeping at Xero challenged the franchisees in the audience to look for their ‘why’ in business. What are the short term goals you want to achieve in order to fulfil your long term objective?

I once owned a bookkeeping business with the end goal to build it for sale. But the truth is, I didn’t have this outcome in mind whilst I developed the business. So I had two types of clients, my ideal - fixed monthly fees, offsite relationship and utilising technology, then I had the ‘traditional’ - hourly billing with an onsite relationship. When it came time to go our separate ways, the clients that were on a fixed fee were process-driven, had more structure and were therefore easily re-sellable. But the clients that had an emotional connection with me over business structure didn’t provide a workflow that could be passed on. Simply put, when they heard I was moving on, they weren’t a saleable commodity.

Utilising automation and the tools available with all of my clients would have solved this problem. No matter what your plan for your business is, bundling services and software provides a product that you can take to market.

If your aim is growth, look for how to structure it so that you can scale. Look for the correlation between the procedures that allow you to run the practice and the way you charge. Fixed price, value pricing or bundling your services gives you a product and a point of difference. Why is it important? Because what you offer defines your business.

Is bundling a challenge you face in your practice? We look forward to hearing your thoughts and stories!