I was able to quickly scale my firm from scratch to sale in just 5 years…
I attribute a good chunk of that to client accounting services (CAS).
And in this post, I’ll talk about client accounting services, its benefits, and how to launch this offering in your own firm.
What Are Client Accounting Services?
You’ll find a whole slew of definitions of CAS on the internet, but let’s keep it simple.
CAS is simply where you act as an outsourced accounting services department for your client.
Think about what an internal accounting department handles:
- Bookkeeping
- Bill pay
- Collecting receivables
- Processing payroll
- Managing cash flow
- Preparing financial statements
- Tax planning
The above work is usually performed by an accounting technician and controller on a weekly or monthly recurring basis (rather than annually).
In other words, you’re embedded in their financial operations, assisting clients with the day-to-day financial processes that keep their business running.
Some would also say that CFO-level work should be included in a CAS offering, but I believe it fits more within the client advisory services offering.
(Some people have also taken to calling this client accounting advisory services, or CAAS.)
While that argument can be made, for the purposes of this article, I’m sticking more with technician and controller work.
There was a time when accounting firms didn’t want to offer this kind of service.
It was viewed as low-margin, inefficient, and a distraction from the core audit, tax & advisory offerings.
But the tides are turning, as CAS has become a solid accounting niche in its own right.
Why?
Because it transforms your business model from occasional touchpoints to becoming a trusted partner.
Instead of just showing up once a year for annual financial statements, you’re building a deep understanding of your clients’ businesses through regular, ongoing work.
Many accounting professionals have realized that this recurring revenue model, when done right, can be both profitable and scalable.
What Are the Benefits of Cloud Accounting Services?
Cloud accounting services has strong benefits, and it changes the nature of your relationship with a client.
Here’s what that looks like:
Greater Efficiencies in Compliance Work
Doing the books yourself is a heck of a lot faster than untangling someone else’s mess once a year.
When you’re the one handling bookkeeping and payroll all year long, there’s no reconstruction work when tax time arrives.
Less time spent per client means better margins on the exact same fee.
Standardizing Your Firm Is Easier
You can’t scale what you can’t standardize, and you can’t standardize what you don’t control.
When you’re just doing the annual tax return, you’re at the mercy of your client’s books, their software, and their habits.
But when you own the workflow and the data with CAS, you control the variables.
Fewer variables lets you repeat a process the same way, every time.
Increased Client Stickiness
The more important you are in a client’s business operations, the stronger your relationship becomes.
A client who only sees you once a year for a tax return can easily exit.
But a client whose payroll, bill pay, and books run through you likely will not.
Improved Customer Experience
Good clients don’t want a firm that shows up once a year and disappears.
They want to feel like someone’s paying attention to their business and looking after their back, not just filing paperwork on a deadline.
With CAS, you can set regular touchpoints, which means you catch problems early while building trust along the way.
Easy Upsell into Advisory
Let’s be honest…
This one might just be everyone’s favorite benefit. 😛
Once you’re acting as your client’s outsourced accounting department, you’ve got a front-row seat to everything happening in their business.
You’ll spot the cash flow issue, the pricing problem, or the growth opportunity long before they’d ever think to bring it to you.
And because they see that you have that deep understanding and provide that big value…
Upselling advisory becomes natural instead of awkward.
How to Get Started with Client Accounting Services
Before you start selling CAS, you need to build the foundations for a profitable and scalable model.
Here’s a step-by-step process you can start right away.
Step 1: Standardize Your CAS Packages With Strong Margins
CAS is valuable work, and your pricing needs to reflect that.
Many firms let clients pick and choose services a la carte (e.g., bookkeeping here, payroll there, etc.)
Instead of doing that, standardize your CAS offering into a small number of defined packages instead.
This does two things at once:
- It makes the value clear to the client
- It makes the delivery predictable for your team
I’m a big fan of three-tiered pricing for building service packages.
It gives clients an easy way to self-select into the level of support that fits them, and it naturally upsells the ones who want more.
When you’re building these packages, make sure to frame your services around the outcome instead of the task.
For example…
| Instead of… | Say… |
| Monthly Financial Statements | Monthly Growth Reports |
| Quarterly Check-In Calls | Peace of Mind Check-Ins |
Nobody gets excited about what you do.
But when you lead with the outcome or the transformation, the value is more visible.
Now, about margins…
There’s no formula for this.
What you do is pick a price based on the value you believe you’re delivering to the client.
This is called value-based pricing, and it’s the single biggest lever you have to make CAS profitable.
If you can’t decide which figure to start with, Ignition’s Accounting and Tax Pricing Benchmark is worth a look.
The theory behind profitable pricing and packaging is straightforward, but it’s easier said than done.
So if you want to learn how to charge prices multiple times what you are charging now…
And have clients happily pay for these prices…
There’s no better place to go than Future Firm Accelerate. 🙂
Step 2: Define Your Scope and Service Terms Tightly
Profitable doesn’t just mean charging a good price.
It also means you’re not quietly working yourself (and your team) into the ground.
Because even if you price Gold at $3,000/month, if you say “yes” to every extra request that comes your way, your effective hourly rate is dropping with each one.
This is where a clearly defined scope and service terms come in.
Inside your engagement letter (or accounting services agreement, whatever you want to call it), spell out exactly what’s included in each package.
And just as important: what’s not included.
This is also called an “Unanticipated Services” clause, which could look like this:
Why does this matter so much?
Because the moment a client asks for something outside the package, you now have something to point to.
You either say it’s outside scope and price it as an add-on, or you say no.
What you don’t do is absorb it for free, because “free” isn’t really free.
It’s time stolen from another client or overtime hours for your team members.
If you want to go deeper on this, I wrote a guide to stopping scope creep in your firm.
Step 3: Build Standardized Delivery Processes
You know what you’re delivering and you know what it costs.
Now, you need to know exactly how it gets done.
Document the process, step by step, for every recurring task in your CAS offering.
Why?
Because you can’t delegate what isn’t written down!
And you definitely can’t scale what isn’t written down.
At Future Firm, we have every process documented, and we have a library that connects all of them:
Every client should flow through the same process, the same way, every time.
That’s what makes the work fast, consistent, and easy to hand off to your team instead of it all running through you.
That said, every client has their own quirks on top of standard processes.
Maybe their CFO needs to approve payroll.
Or maybe it’s something else.
Small stuff, but if you don’t document it, your team gets it wrong, and the client gets annoyed, over and over, for the same reason.
So build your standard process first.
Then, layer in a short client-specific addendum for anything that deviates from it.
Step 4: Plan Your Capacity
CAS isn’t like tax season, where the pain is intense but temporary.
It’s recurring, and every new client you sign adds permanent weight to your team’s plate, week after week, month after month.
If you don’t plan for that, where do you think the extra work goes?
Before you go out and sign a wave of new CAS clients, get a real handle on your numbers:
- How many hours does your team have available?
- How many hours does your current client base already require?
- What’s left over?
Here’s an example of a basic capacity plan:
If you identify a shortage in capacity, that’s a sign you need to add more capacity (i.e., hire more people), stop taking on new clients, or even let go of clients.
Once you know that number, you know how many clients you can take on before you’re back in overworked territory.
Step 5: Build the Right Team
Once you’ve planned your capacity, you might realize you don’t have the team you need…
Yet.
Here’s where I’d focus first: hire senior people.
Why seniors?
Because:
- They can own the client relationship end to end
- They can review work
- They can oversee juniors without you needing to be looped in on every decision
This gets you out of the weeds.
Yes, seniors cost more, but the alternative is staying the bottleneck forever.
This costs you a lot more in the long run.
Like I shared on LinkedIn, this is what I did.
And while it made finances a bit challenging for a while, I know it was the right move.
I’d also recommend bringing in someone dedicated to operations.
And no, they don’t need to be a CPA.
CAS runs on process, workflow, and consistency.
That’s an operations skill set, not necessarily an accounting one.
Having someone whose whole job is keeping the machine running smoothly frees up your accounting talent to do accounting.
Last thing: as you build out your CAS team, don’t just hire your way there.
Reskill the people you already have.
CAS runs on a completely different rhythm than annual compliance work.
Tighter deadlines, more moving pieces every single week, and a much closer relationship with the client.
That means your team needs sharper time management, deeper comfort with your core tech stack, and stronger customer service instincts than a typical once-a-year engagement demands.
Hire where you need to, and reskill where you can.
Step 6: Adjust Your Sales Process and Start Bringing in Deals
With everything we discussed so far…
You’re ready to sell!
Start with a discovery call where you understand their current workflows, what’s broken, and what CAS would fix for them.
Then walk them through your three tiers, letting them self-select into the level that fits.
Once they’ve chosen the tier that they like, formalize your agreement with a clearly defined engagement letter, the same one where you locked in your scope back in Step #2.
That’s the whole process.
If you need more help here, check out my guide to selling your accounting services.
Ready to Be Profitable With Client Accounting Services?
There you have it.
6 steps to build a CAS offering that’s profitable.
Follow them in order, and you’ll find that CAS can be one of the best growth levers in your firm.
If you liked this guide and want more free actionable strategies on building a profitable firm…
You should check out my Future Firm newsletter!
Excellent article Ryan!
Thank you sir!
Thanks Ryan this is great. I’m glad to see that we followed most of the steps when developing our CAS practice. Step #4 and #5 both need some work on our end.
You’re very welcome.
When you use a payroll service like Gusto, is that built into your pricing or does the client pay for that themselves?
Personally, any time there’s a variable cost, I let the client pay for it (too hard to manage)
Thanks for the clear and complete article. I agree completely with your thoughts. We have built our business around delivering high quality CAS to clients at a higher value and better service level than others in the space and clients have responded well.
What are your through around scaling this model and the structure of the team for this.
Secondly any ideas on metrics for determining capacity should you want to avoid the timesheet mgmt approach.
Thanks
You’re welcome Simon.
1) I think it’s a very scalable model. Hard to comment on the structure of the team in a brief answer unfortunately though 🙂
2) It comes down to forecasting time (hours) on tasks and then assigning those to individuals to compare available capacity to assigned capacity
Very good article. Thank you. Please send me your articles to my email id. Thanks.
Thank you!
Spot on Ryan. Every word counts in your article. Thank you so much.
🙂
Thanks for pulling this this together. A very clear overview of CAS with some useful tips to get started. Appreciate your work.