Unfortunately, there are still accounting firm owners who are stuck in constant overwork.
Why?
Their approach to managing their firm just cannot support the lifestyle they want.
Their firm structure might look something like this:
In other words, they’re the bottleneck.
But Ryan, can’t I just work more hours?
See, the problem isn’t that you’re not working hard enough…
(You’re probably working too hard!)
The problem isn’t effort.
The problem is that this “traditional” way of managing firms creates bottlenecks that stress out you and your team while preventing freedom and growth.
In this article, I’ll show you how to fix it.
But before that, we first need to understand how traditional firms are managed and where they fall short.
How Are Traditional Firms Managed?
In most firms, the firm owner is constantly over capacity, too reactive, and tight against deadlines.
These things happen because of multiple management decisions that traditional firms make repeatedly.
And no, your experience isn’t just bad luck or “part of running a firm.”
These are predictable patterns that create overwork and chaos.
Everything Runs Through the Firm Owner
Here’s how it plays out in traditional firms:
Your team does the work, but you have to check it.
(Every time!)
You are reviewing every single tax return, financial statement, and perhaps even your team’s responses to client questions.
Your role becomes “approver-in-chief” instead of business owner.
The root cause?
Most firm owners prefer things done their way.
Their exact, specific process.
But like I shared on LinkedIn, this creates a predictable trap:
Your team will keep coming to you for approval on everything…
Because they know you’ll just redo it anyway.
So you become the bottleneck you swore you’d never be.
And that creates a ceiling, because your firm can only grow as much as you can personally handle.
There Are Too Many Clients
Pull up your client list right now.
How many names are there?
Now, ask yourself:
How many of those clients would you actually want to keep if you could start over?
If there’s a big gap between those two numbers, you’ve got a volume problem.
Here’s what that looks like:
| Scenario A: High Volume | Scenario B: Right-Sized |
| 100 clients @ $1,000 each | 40 clients @ $2,500 each |
| $100,000 revenue | $100,000 revenue |
| Constant firefighting | Time to think strategically |
| Team always overwhelmed | Manageable workload |
| Quality suffers | High-quality service |
Same revenue, completely different experience.
Typically, traditional firms chase volume instead of value.
And when they realize they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, they try to fix it with technology.
More automations, more processes, “better” practice management software, etc.
But regardless how many apps you implement or how many processes you optimize…
It won’t create the headspace you need when you’re fundamentally overcommitted.
The real issue is that you’re saying yes to everyone without thinking about capacity.
No filter for profitability, no consideration for whether you can actually serve these people well.
Firms Price Based on the Hour
Hourly billing isn’t a great approach because it ties your revenue to the number of hours you spend at your desk.
(Not to mention that it can lead to bad clients questioning every billable hour.)
Now, there are a lot of firms that have moved away from this model, which is good.
However, the problem is that when they set their fixed rates, they’re still thinking of it in terms of hours.
Here’s the mental math most firm owners do:
“This tax return takes me about 5 hours. My hourly rate is $60. So I’ll charge $300.”
Boom, fixed price.
But your pricing is still tied to your time!
And there’s only so many hours you can work.
Even if you get faster at the work, you don’t increase your prices.
You just fit more clients into the same hours.
The problem with either hourly billing or this approach to fixed pricing is that you’re selling time instead of outcomes.
But like I talked about in my podcast, your clients don’t care how you do your work or how many hours it takes you.
They care about maximizing how much they take home and getting peace of mind.
They Undercharge (Often by a Lot)
Before I tell you what most firms get wrong with pricing, let me show you what I got wrong.
This is what I charged when I was just starting out with Xen Accounting back in 2013:
(Terrible pricing, I know.)
And before you say “Well, that was 2013″…
Even for 2013, those prices were way too low!
I was leaving massive amounts of money on the table.
That said, pricing can get much, much worse.
Here’s a real-word example:
Two blocks from my old apartment in downtown Montreal, right next to the grocery store, was an accounting firm with a big green sign (in French).
Every time I walked by, I’d see their advertised prices:
This sign says…
Individual tax returns…
Starting at…
$54!
Every time I’d go to the grocery store, that sign would scream at me.
My wife would hear me grumble about it.
Because here’s what happens when you advertise rock-bottom prices: you attract rock-bottom clients.
The ones who give you headaches are more likely to be never satisfied, cause you to lose sleep, and you probably won’t even turn a profit on them.
This is what most many firm owners do wrong:
They price their services based on what competitors charge or what clients expect, not on the actual value they provide.
This underpricing forces you to take on too many clients just to hit revenue targets.
And this is exactly what creates that volume problem I just covered.
Remember that table showing 100 clients at $1,000 versus 40 clients at $2,500?
Underpricing is what forces you into Scenario A.
You need high volume just to hit revenue targets, which means you’re constantly overwhelmed with clients who aren’t worth the problems they create.
Teams Constantly Work Overtime
For a lot of firms, teams work late most nights (and even weekends).
(And that’s outside busy season!)
Everyone’s exhausted, but the work just keeps piling up.
And you keep thinking, “Once we get through this busy period, things will calm down.”
Spoiler: They never do.
Because the problem isn’t the season…
It’s that you’ve bitten off way more than you can chew.
And since you probably have no idea if your team is at 60% capacity or 120% capacity…
Every time a new opportunity comes in, you think, “Yeah, we can probably fit that in.”
(But can you?)
Most firm owners operate on feel instead of data.
They don’t track how much time each client actually requires.
They don’t know how many hours their team realistically has available.
They just keep stacking work until someone breaks.
And then they’re surprised when:
- Someone quits during busy season
- Quality starts slipping
- Deadlines get missed
- Your best people burn out
If you have 100 hours of work and 80 hours of capacity, no amount of “working smarter” fixes that math.
How to Manage an Accounting Firm (The Profitable Way)
These problems are fixable because they’re management decisions.
Which means you can make different decisions.
The solution isn’t grinding harder but creating a foundation that supports growth.
Here’s a three-part process to manage your firm, starting with your foundation.
Part 1: Foundational Changes
Before you hire more team members, pursue more tools, or create more processes, you need to get your pricing and client base right.
If these aren’t solid, nothing else you do will have the impact you’re looking for.
Step 1: Price Based on Value
Like I mentioned earlier, setting your prices based on the hours you work limits your profitability.
The solution?
Shift from pricing based on time or tasks to pricing based on outcomes you deliver.
This is called value pricing, a technique I learned from Ron Baker’s book:
Value pricing is simple:
Different clients pay different amounts based on what results are worth to them.
Your goal is to find the maximum amount they are willing to pay based on those results.
Below is my 4-Step value pricing process, which is one of the first things I shared in my Future Firm Accounting Podcast:
| Step | What To Do | The Key |
| 1. Value Conversation | Dig into pain points, not logistics | Ask: “What’s the real reason we’re talking?” |
| 2. Build 3 Options | Create Gold/Silver/Bronze packages | Play out exactly how you’ll deliver each |
| 3. Pick Prices | Choose numbers based on value to client | Use your gut, ignore your costs for now |
| 4. Check Margins | Verify profitability | If margins are thin, adjust the offer |
A lot of this boils down to the questions you ask:
❌ Don’t ask: How many transactions per month?
✅ Do ask: How does spending time on bookkeeping cost you in lost opportunities?
❌ Don’t ask: What’s your fiscal year-end?
✅ Do ask: How would you feel if you got audited?
❌ Don’t ask: What does your business do?
✅ Do ask: What’s the real reason we’re talking right now?
The more pain you uncover, the higher you can price.
This approach lets you charge what you’re truly worth and attracts clients who appreciate expertise over discounts.
If you’d like to learn how to find prices you’re happy with, check out my guide to pricing accounting services.
Step 2: Increase Your Prices
Once you’ve understood what’s valuable to your client, it’s time to match your pricing to that value.
In most cases, matching that pricing means setting way higher prices.
Now, I understand that many firm owners are reluctant to even consider this.
Because of the fear of losing clients.
And yes, it is true that you might lose clients when you do this.
However, think of it this way:
The clients who do stay are the ones who’ll pay more.
Follow these steps to get started with increasing your prices:
1. Build Outcome-Based Packages
Before you reprice anyone, stop listing tasks like “Monthly Bookkeeping” and “Tax Prep.”
Start selling transformations like “Improve Your Profits” or “Get Control of Your Cash Flow.”
The strength of your offer determines whether clients say yes and what they’re willing to pay.
2. Uncover Value Through Discovery
Don’t just send an email saying prices are going up.
Instead, reach out 2-3 months before renewal and schedule a conversation about how you can better support them.
On that call, your job is to uncover their pain points, not discuss scope of work.
You’re trying to understand three value drivers:
- Time saved
- Money made or saved
- Better feelings
The more pain you uncover, the higher you can price.
3. Tailor Packages to What You Learned
After the discovery call, adjust your base packages for that specific client.
If they mentioned specific frustrations or goals, build packages that address those directly.
If you’ve identified big opportunities, you can price aggressively.
If the call was lukewarm, you might need to be more conservative but still increase prices.
4. Present Value, Not Features
When you present the new pricing, tie everything back to what they told you.
If they said they spend 5 hours a month on something that could generate $10K in revenue, show them how your package creates that return.
State your prices confidently.
Never justify price based on how long something takes!
Focus on results.
5. Handle Objections by Reinforcing Outcomes
If someone says the price feels high, it usually means you haven’t articulated the value clearly enough.
Re-anchor on the transformation, not the tasks.
If price is still a sticking point, modify the package by removing elements.
But never discount your minimum tier.
So…
How much higher can you reprice?
There’s no exact number.
But based on the hundreds of firm owners I’ve coached, it isn’t just a few dozen or hundred dollars more per month.
Think 2x…
Or even 3x.
Or more, like one of my Future Firm Accelerate members below:
If you want to get the system that will allow you to charge multiple amounts what you’re charging now…
You’ll want to check out Future Firm Accelerate. 🙂
Step 3: Let Go of Bad Clients
I mentioned in Step 2 that some clients might leave when they find out you’re increasing your prices.
But while this might sound harsh…
You might need to fire more clients than that.
Because you may have bad clients in the bunch.
Not all of them.
(Maybe not even most of them.)
But enough that it’s affecting your business, your team, and your sanity.
Not all bad clients are the same, but there are usually obvious signs:
- Chronic late payments
- Scope creep
- Paying rates from five years ago
They’re all costing you more than they’re worth.
Every problem client you keep takes time and energy away from serving your best clients and growing your firm.
And if you want to improve the work-life balance in your accounting firm, letting go of bad clients is one of the best ways to get there.
So how do you identify which ones need to go?
Check out if any of your clients fall into one or more of these categories:
| Type | What They Do | Warning Signs |
| The Unprofitable Client | Cost more to serve than they’re worth | • Still paying rates from 3+ years ago • Team spends excessive time on them • Hours invested exceed revenue (even at team’s cost rate) |
| The Disrespectful Client | Don’t value your time or team | • Disappear for weeks, then demand instant turnaround • Call/text at 9 PM expecting answers • Team visibly tenses when their name appears • Treat scope as a suggestion • Speak to your team in demoralizing ways |
| The Misaligned Client | Values don’t match yours | • Expect ethical shortcuts • How they treat their employees bothers you • You walk on eggshells in conversations • Your gut says something’s off |
Once you’ve identified your problem clients, you have two options:
Option 1: Try to Fix It (Repricing)
For clients who are simply underpriced, send them a price increase email similar to Step 2.
If they accept, great.
If they push back hard, you have your answer.
Option 2: Let Them Go
For clients who are disrespectful or misaligned, it’s time to part ways professionally.
I put together a guide to termination letters for accounting clients that offers more guidance if you’re looking for more help with this step.
Part 2: Team & Capacity
Now that you’ve set higher prices and let go of problem clients, you should have more breathing room.
But that breathing room disappears fast if you don’t know how much work you and your team can realistically handle.
Before you take on another client or say yes to another engagement, you need to understand and properly leverage your firm’s capacity.
Step 4: Implement Capacity Planning
When I ran Xen Accounting, we almost never had to work overtime.
Not during busy season, not when things got hectic, not ever.
How?
We planned capacity properly.
Many firms fail at this because they operate reactively.
A new client wants to sign on, so you say yes.
Another referral comes in, you take them too.
Before you know it, your team is drowning and you’re all working nights and weekends just to keep up.
The problem isn’t that you’re inefficient.
The problem is you’re overcommitted.
You can’t automate or optimize your way out of having fundamentally too much work for your team to handle.
So before you take on another client, you need to know exactly how much capacity you actually have.
Here’s your target: keep your team around 85% capacity.
This leaves room for unexpected work, prevents burnout, and gives your team breathing room to actually think instead of just reacting.
Here’s how to figure out where you stand:
1. Calculate Total Available Hours
Take your team’s total working hours per week and subtract time for meetings, admin work, and training.
2. Estimate Client Work Required
Look at your client list and estimate how many hours each one actually takes per week or month.
3. Compare the Numbers
If client work requires more hours than your team has available, you’re overcommitted.
No amount of efficiency will fix that gap.
Here’s what a basic capacity plan looks like:
| Team Member | Available Hours/Week | Current Client Load | Capacity Used | Status |
| Senior Accountant | 35 hours | 30 hours | 86% | ✅ Good |
| Bookkeeper 1 | 35 hours | 32 hours | 91% | ⚠️ Getting tight |
| Bookkeeper 2 | 35 hours | 38 hours | 109% | ❌ Overloaded |
When you see someone consistently over 85%, you have three choices:
- Hire someone
- Adjust what you’re offering
- Stop taking in new clients until there’s room
Track this monthly.
It takes only 30 minutes and prevents months of chaos.
Step 5: Hire Senior Team Members
If you’re bottlenecked, your first instinct might be to onboard more juniors.
Yes, they can do the work…
But who’ll review their work?
And every time a client issue comes up, who’s going to handle it?
Still you.
That’s why, when I was running Xen Accounting, I hired experienced CPAs first.
Was it expensive?
Absolutely.
It put serious pressure on my cash flow early on.
But it was one of the best decisions I made.
Senior team members cost more upfront, but they multiply your capacity almost immediately.
Here’s what one of my Future Firm Accelerate members experienced after hiring a Director of Tax:
Now, he can focus more on growing his firm instead of being buried in client work.
Senior hires own client relationships, make decisions independently, and keep work moving forward without your constant involvement.
You can look for a senior yourself via LinkedIn, post on job sites, or even use services like TeamUp (affiliate link) to find experienced talent.
However, before you consider any of this, a quick note:
You need to make sure the numbers actually work.
A senior hire is expensive.
If your cash flow can’t support it, you may need to hold off hiring one for now.
Here’s how to know if you’re ready:
Take your monthly revenue and break it down like this:
- About 30% will go to your senior hire’s salary
- About 40% covers your other expenses (tools, office, other staff)
- That leaves you with roughly 30% profit margin
If you’re bringing in at least $20k per month ($250k annually) and those percentages hold, you can afford the hire.
Below that?
Wait.
The financial pressure isn’t worth it.
At $250k, it’ll feel tight at first.
But senior hires create the capacity for growth that eventually pays for themselves.
Also, having someone who can take real work off your plate is one of the best strategies for overcoming accounting stress in your firm.
Step 6: Delegate Tasks That Other Team Members Can Do
As firm owners, we often think we’re the barometer of what’s acceptable.
We have this attitude that unless we do the work ourselves, it’s not good enough.
You always have that need to inject yourself into everything just so you’re confident the work is done correctly.
(Even when your team members are more than capable of doing the work well.)
But here’s the reality:
If you need everything done exactly your way, you’ll never step back.
If someone else can do a task 80% as well as you, get it off your plate.
Dan Martell puts it perfectly:
You don’t need perfection.
You need progress.
The key is creating clear accountability structures so team members know exactly what they own.
At Future Firm, we use Key Responsibility Areas (KRAs).
A KRA document is basically a contract between you and your team member that spells out:
- Role Purpose: Why this position exists
- Expected Outcomes: What success looks like
- Responsibilities: The specific tasks they own
Here’s a snapshot of a KRA we use.
You can use ChatGPT or another AI tool to create KRAs for your team. Here’s a simple prompt to get you started:
| Create a Key Responsibility Area (KRA) document for a [insert role, e.g., Senior Accountant] at an accounting firm. Include: • Role Purpose (2-3 sentences explaining why this position exists) • 3-4 Key Responsibility Areas, each with:Expected Outcomes (what success looks like) • Specific Responsibilities (the tasks they own) The firm specializes in [describe your services] and serves [describe your clients]. |
Customize the output based on your firm’s specific needs, then share it with your team so they know exactly what they own.
If you’re not sure where to begin, check out my guide to accounting tasks firm owners should delegate.
Part 3: Systematize Your Operations
You’ve got the right people in the right roles.
Now, it’s time to implement the systems and tools that make sure work gets done efficiently and consistently.
Step 7: Stick to Your Scope
Scope creep is profit’s worst enemy.
You agree to monthly bookkeeping, then the client asks for a quick financial forecast…
Then they need help with a loan application and want advisory on hiring decisions…
Before you know it, you’re doing triple the work for the same price.
The solution?
A rock-solid engagement letter that defines exactly what’s included and what’s not.
Your engagement letter is your scope defense.
It’s common to see accounting engagement letters being a bit vague.
They say things like “monthly bookkeeping services” or “tax preparation and planning.”
But these are not specific enough.
Your engagement letter needs to explicitly state what is and isn’t included.
Here’s an example:
| What’s included | What’s not included |
| Monthly bank reconciliation (up to 2 accounts) Transaction categorization Monthly financial statements (P&L and Balance Sheet) | Financial forecasting Loan application support Advisory calls beyond quarterly reviews Payroll processing |
The more specific you are, the easier it becomes to enforce boundaries.
Check out this template if you’re writing an accounting engagement letter that will help you better prevent scope creep.
Step 8: Use Only Tools That You Need
Accounting firm owners love tools.
(And there’s nothing wrong with that!)
But it’s easy to get excited about the latest tool with all the fancy features and keep adding more tools…
Even when you already have something that works.
At a certain point, adding tools stops creating efficiency and starts slowing your team down.
So before you add a new tool to your tech stack, think about how much it will really help your team.
If a new tool only improves your efficiency marginally, it’s probably not worth the disruption.
Switching things up can ironically slow down your team more than it helps.
Here are the three types of tools I would prioritize if I were building an accounting tech stack from scratch:
Practice Management Software
One tool to organize tasks, track client work, and manage your team.
Here are some popular choices:
- TaxDome
- Karbon
- Canopy
- Jetpack Workflow
Pick one and commit to it.
Don’t just chase the latest trend unless something is seriously inconvenient with the one you’re using.
To help you pick the right one for your firm, I wrote a guide to the best accounting practice management software.
AI Tools
Here at Future Firm, AI is part of our daily workflow.
I don’t just recommend it to my team — I require it.
If you’re still not using AI at this point in time, you’re leaving massive productivity gains on the table.
ChatGPT, Claude, and other similar tools can handle everything from drafting emails to creating SOPs to analyzing complex scenarios.
Plus, AI tools can do what grammar checking, transcription, and even basic design tools can.
Inbox Management
A shared inbox tool to reduce email chaos and improve team collaboration.Here at Future Firm, we use Missive (affiliate link).
It gives us visibility into all client communications and eliminates the “did you see that email?” problem.
And that’s it.
You can build a tech stack that does everything your firm needs with 4 to 5 tools.
Having fewer tools that your team uses beats having dozens that sit unused.
Step 9: Document Standard Operating Procedures
If there’s no clear process for how work gets done at your firm, you need to create one.
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are the backbone of a scalable firm.
They document exactly how tasks should be completed so anyone on your team can follow them.
Here’s an example of an SOP here at Future Firm:
When you have solid SOPs…
- New hires get up to speed faster
- Work quality becomes consistent
- You stop answering the same questions over and over
- Team members can solve problems without you
- You can actually take a vacation without everything falling apart
That said, creating SOPs takes time.
So start small.
Pick one repetitive task your team does regularly and follow these steps:
- Record yourself doing it: Use Loom to walk through the task while explaining each step.
- Have AI transcribe and organize it: Upload the transcript to a tool like ChatGPT and ask it to create a step-by-step checklist.
- Have someone test it – Give it to a team member, watch them follow it, then fix what’s unclear.
- Store it somewhere accessible – Put it in Notion, Google Drive, or wherever your team spends a lot of time.
Here’s how this looks like in action:
One more thing…
SOPs are never “done.”
They’re living documents that evolve as your processes improve.
Start with one process this week.
Record it, document it, test it.
You might have to do this yourself initially, but once you have a few examples, your team can start creating their own SOPs for tasks they own.
Pro Tip: Hire Someone Stay on Top of Processes
While it is completely possible to slowly build up a collection of SOPs by yourself over time…
I recommend having someone that specifically owns this role in your firm.
Without someone owning this stuff, your SOPs become outdated, your capacity plan gets ignored, and suddenly you’re back to being the bottleneck.
You may call them your Operations Manager, Process Lead, or Coordinator…
Doesn’t matter.
What matters is what they do:
| Area | What They Do | Example |
| Process Maintenance | Keep SOPs current and enforced | Update client onboarding workflow when you add a new tool |
| Bottleneck Detection | Spot where work piles up | Notice tax returns sitting in review for 5+ days |
| Team Accountability | Track KRA completion | Follow up when someone misses their quarterly goals |
| System Integration | Make sure tools work together | Ensure practice management syncs with your CRM |
Without this role, you can still find yourself constantly stepping back in to “save” things.
With it, the firm can run whether you’re involved or not.
Time to Manage Your Firm Differently
There you go!
These 9 steps are how you stop being the bottleneck and start building a firm that doesn’t require you in every decision.
I know it sounds like a lot.
But if you don’t fix these management issues, you’ll be stuck in the same place a year from now…
Still overworked, still reactive, still trapped.
Follow this guide starting from step 1, and you’ll see just how much smoother and more profitable your firm can be.
You don’t have to do everything all at once.
You can always come back to this article when you’re ready to proceed to the next step. 🙂
Now, I want to hear from you.
What’s the biggest management challenge you’re facing right now?
And which of these steps do you think will make the biggest difference for your firm?
Let me know in the comments!
