This is going to sound biased, but I’m a big fan of advisory services.
Why?
Because it helped me grow two businesses.
First was my previous firm, Xen Accounting…
And now Future Firm, where I essentially provide advisory services to accounting firm owners who want to grow their business.
(Kinda. 😉)
Personal experience aside, offering advisory services in your accounting firm is a powerful way to increase your pricing and strengthen client relationships.
So if you’ve been thinking about offering these services…
You’ve found the right article.
Let’s go!
What Is Accounting Advisory?
You’ll find a lot of definitions of accounting advisory services, and some accountants even disagree amongst themselves regarding what it’s about.
I like to keep it simple.
Advisory is simply giving advice, whatever form that takes.
You’re giving clients strategic guidance to make better decisions about their business based on your expertise and their financial data.
Advisory isn’t some mystical service that requires a special certification or a complete transformation of your firm.
It’s about moving beyond historical number-crunching and helping clients understand what those numbers mean for their future.
A good advisory service is:
- Valuable to your client. The advice you give should help them make better decisions, avoid costly mistakes, or capitalize on opportunities they would’ve missed otherwise.
- Highly profitable for your firm. Advisory is knowledge work, not production work. You’re getting paid for insight and expertise, not for processing transactions or filling out forms.
- Scalable. With the right processes and team structure, you should be able to deliver quality services without working 50-hour weeks. You can deliver it consistently without burning out.
The beauty of advisory is that you’re probably already doing some version of it.
You’re answering client questions about whether they should hire someone or stay a sole proprietor, explaining why their cash is tight even though the P&L shows a profit, etc.
The difference between what you’re doing now and “official” advisory?
Packaging it properly, pricing it accordingly, and delivering it intentionally instead of an as-needed service squeezed in between deliverables.
What Types of Advisory Services Can Accounting Firms Offer?
Most firms already have the skills needed to deliver advisory services effectively.
You don’t need to become a strategy consultant or get an MBA to start offering this stuff.
You can do this whether you’re a traditional or cloud accounting firm.
Because you likely have more expertise than you’re giving yourself credit for.
Health Check-Up Calls
A health check-up call is a scheduled conversation where you review your client’s financial health and flag anything that needs attention.
This is one of the lighter advisory services you can offer, but it’s valuable precisely because it’s proactive.
Clients hate finding out at the end of the year that something went wrong that could’ve been avoided with a simple conversation six months earlier.
Think of it as a mid-year financial pulse check.
You look at their P&L, their cash position, any unusual spending patterns, and then you get on a call to discuss what you’re seeing.
This could be a 30-minute call, twice a year (at minimum), where you walk through their numbers and ask how things are going in the business.
Cash Flow and Financial Performance
This is about helping clients understand where their money is going.
A lot of business owners look at their financial reporting and see a profit, but they’re still scrambling to make payroll or cover expenses.
You can help them make sense of that gap.
The work here includes:
- Regular reviews of their financial performance
- Explaining what the numbers mean in plain language
- Offering strategic insights about where they might be leaking cash or where they could improve margins
Financial Systems Implementation
Most small businesses are running their finances on a patchwork of random tools.
Financial systems implementation means helping clients set up the right infrastructure, such as:
- Accounting software
- Payment processors
- Expense tracking
- Payroll systems
The overall goal is to understand their business goals and recommend systems that fit their size, complexity, and growth plans.
The value here is in saving clients from costly mistakes, like choosing software they’ll outgrow in six months or implementing tools that don’t integrate with what they already use.
You help them get set up, make sure data flows correctly, and train them (or their team) on how to use everything properly.
Financial Coaching
Financial coaching is about teaching clients how to think about money in their business.
This service works well for newer business owners or clients who didn’t come from a finance background.
You’re helping them understand concepts like profit margins, tax strategy, financial modeling, and how to read their financials without getting overwhelmed.
It’s less about “here’s what happened last month” and more about “here’s how to use this information to make better decisions.”
Some firms offer this as one-on-one sessions where they walk clients through their numbers and answer questions in real time.
Others build it into their regular service delivery by taking extra time to explain the “why” behind recommendations instead of just delivering the work.
Forecasting and Planning
Forecasting and planning is where you help clients think ahead instead of reacting to what already happened.
This involves:
- Cash flow forecasting
- Building projections for revenue and expenses
- Doing strategic planning around hiring, expansion, or major investments
Clients need this when they’re trying to make informed decisions about the future.
For instance, whether they can afford to hire someone, if they should open a second location, or how much runway they have if sales slow down.
You’re taking historical financial activity and business performance data, then modeling out different scenarios so they can see what’s realistic and what’s risky.
The added value to clients here is massive because you’re helping them avoid costly mistakes and identify growth opportunities they might not have considered.
This is a heavier service that requires solid financial planning skills and enough context about the client’s business to build projections that actually make sense.
This is not something you can phone in with generic templates.
You need to understand their goals, their market, and what levers they can actually pull.
Fundraising
Fundraising support means helping clients prepare for and navigate raising capital, whether that’s a bank loan, investor funding, or a line of credit.
This is where industry experience really matters because different types of businesses raise money in very different ways, and lenders or investors have specific expectations depending on the sector.
You’re helping clients pull together the financials they need, build projections that show how they’ll use the funds, and frame their business performance in a way that makes sense to whoever’s writing the check.
The added value to clients is huge because most business owners have never raised capital before and don’t know what investors or lenders are actually looking for.
You do.
Or at least you’ve seen it enough times to guide them through it without the trial-and-error that costs them opportunities.
This is a high-value, high-touch service that works best when you already have a strong relationship with the client and understand their business goals deeply.
Profit Maximization
Profit maximization means helping clients increase what they keep, not just what they earn.
This means digging into their pricing, cost structure, and operations to find places where they’re leaving money on the table or spending more than they need to.
You’re looking at margins by product or service, identifying unprofitable offerings, spotting inefficiencies in how they’re running the business, and suggesting changes that improve their bottom line.
Sometimes it’s as simple as raising prices.
Other times, it’s cutting costs that aren’t driving results or reallocating resources to higher-margin work.
This requires a solid understanding of their business performance, their industry experience, and what realistic benchmarks look like for their type of company.
Risk Analysis
Risk analysis (or risk management) is about identifying threats to the business before they become problems.
This could mean reviewing their insurance coverage, flagging cash flow vulnerabilities, assessing customer concentration risk, or identifying compliance gaps that could lead to penalties.
For example, if 70% of their revenue comes from one client, that’s a risk worth discussing.
If they’re holding too much inventory or have inconsistent cash reserves, that’s another.
The goal is to help them make informed decisions about where to invest in protection and where they can afford to take calculated risks.
How Can Accounting Firms Offer Advisory Services?
Knowing what advisory is and deciding to offer it are two different things.
The gap between the two is usually execution.
How do you actually package, price, and deliver advisory without it turning into unprofitable scope creep or burning out your team?
Here’s how:
1. Package Your Advisory Services Properly
You can’t just wake up one day, decide you’re offering advisory, and start pitching it to clients as an informal add-on.
That’s a recipe for chaos.
Advisory needs to be clearly packaged so delivery is consistent, expectations are clear, and the service can actually be profitable at scale.
If you’re treating advisory as a “We’ll figure it out as we go” arrangement…
You’ll end up with different deliverables for every client, no standardization, and a nightmare when it comes to tracking capacity or training your team.
It also makes pricing nearly impossible because you have no consistent scope to base it on.
Here’s a real example:
When I ran my previous firm, we initially offered virtual CFO services without requiring bookkeeping.
Seemed like a good idea at the time…
The problem was that we couldn’t properly deliver the service.
Why?
Because we were working off books that were inaccurate or months behind.
So I made bookkeeping mandatory for all clients.
This ensured that we could deliver the advisory work — which clients were paying premium prices for — well.
My preferred approach to offering advisory services on top of existing compliance services?
A tiered service model where advisory sits at the premium level:
- Your Bronze tier includes bookkeeping or tax prep.
- Your Silver tier adds things like regular financial reviews.
- Your Gold tier includes advisory services like health check-up calls, cash flow forecasting, or strategic planning.
Here’s an example of a three-tiered bookkeeping plan with advisory services baked in:
This gives clients options and makes it clear what they’re getting at each level.
Start by testing this with existing clients.
Have a short discovery conversation to understand what challenges they’re facing or what decisions they’re trying to make.
Then, show them how advisory fits into solving those problems.
Not as a vague add-on, but as a specific solution to a real need.
The key is defining what’s included, what’s not, and how often deliverables happen so both you and the client know exactly what to expect.
2. Price Based on Value
Advisory pricing should reflect the value of insight and decision support, not what it costs you to deliver it.
A lot of firms mess this up.
I know I did when I used to offer accounting advisory services for a painful $275/month…
The problem with one-size-fits-all pricing is that some clients will think it’s too expensive and pass, even though they need the help.
Others will say yes immediately, which usually means you’re leaving money on the table.
The right price depends on the value you’re creating for each specific client.
That’s why you can’t just send an email saying “Advisory is now available for $500/month.”
You need to have a conversation.
Get on a call.
Ask about their goals, their challenges, what decisions they’re facing.
Understand what solving those problems is actually worth to them.
If you help a client avoid a $50,000 mistake or identify an opportunity that adds $100,000 to their bottom line…
Your advisory price should reflect a portion of that value.
Pro tip: Unless you are very, very close with a client, do not bring up this conversation via email.
You can’t read the room or gauge their reaction.
More importantly, it’s difficult to adjust your framing based on what matters most to them.
A live conversation lets you convey value in real time and help the client feel the impact of what you’re offering before they see the price.
In terms of how much you should charge…
There’s no formula for this, but to help you find a number you’re happy with, here’s what accounting firms charge for CFO/advisory services:
(Taken from Ignition’s U.S. Accounting and Tax Pricing Benchmark, which I helped them create.)
3. Plan Your Team’s Capacity
Capacity planning is one of the most important parts of managing an accounting firm, whether or not you’re offering advisory services.
Many firms get excited about adding advisory, start signing clients, only to realize their team is already stretched thin with existing work.
Layering advisory on top of an already maxed-out schedule usually leads to one of two outcomes: burnout or poor delivery.
If you’re going to offer advisory, you need to look at your current capacity honestly.
Do you have the bandwidth to take on these conversations and deliverables without sacrificing quality on your core services?
If not, you have a few options:
- Hire someone
- Reallocate responsibilities within your team
- Phase advisory in slowly with a small number of clients first
Here’s an example of a capacity plan for your team:
Don’t sell advisory until you’re confident you can deliver it consistently without overwhelming your team.
Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for problems that undermine the whole point of offering the service in the first place.
4. Frame Services Around Client Benefits
When you’re positioning advisory services, don’t talk about what you do.
Talk about what the client gets.
Like I discussed in my podcast, clients don’t care what you do.
They don’t care that you have great accountants or years of experience working with big businesses.
They care about saving money, feeling confident in their decisions, and not getting blindsided by problems they could’ve avoided.
Think about it:
No one wakes up and says “I need advisory services.”
They wake up and say “I don’t know if I can afford to hire someone” or “I’m not sure why my cash flow is so tight” or “I need to figure out if this expansion makes sense.”
Advisory is the solution to those problems, but if you lead with “We offer strategic advisory and financial dashboards,” you’ve already lost them.
Instead, frame it around outcomes they care about:
- Understanding where their business stands
- Confidence in the decisions they’re making
- Peace of mind that someone’s looking ahead for their business
Doing this makes it easier to charge high prices.
Remember, clients don’t mind paying for premium prices as long as they are getting that value.
(This was one of the sales and pricing lessons I learned the hard way.)
5. Start With Your Favorite Clients
When you’re ready to introduce advisory, don’t blast your entire client list.
Start with your A+ clients:
The ones who already trust you, value your guidance, and don’t push back on every recommendation.
These are the clients who are most likely to say yes, even at premium prices, because they already see the value in working with you.
Starting here gives you a lower-risk way to refine your delivery before rolling advisory out more broadly.
You’ll learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to communicate value in a way that resonates.
On the flip side…
You’re probably going to lose some clients.
That’s okay.
When you start charging higher prices for higher-value work, some clients won’t follow.
The clients who nickel-and-dime you or balk at investing in their own business success are probably not the ones you want to build your firm around anyway.
(If you are letting go of these clients, you might need an accounting client termination letter.)
Losing those clients is actually one of the real levers to unlocking growth and freedom in your firm.
Fewer clients at higher price points means more time back, more freedom, and ultimately a stronger, more scalable business model.
If you want to build a high-profit firm without overworking yourself and take weekends off and stop living in busy season mode year-round…
This is how you get there.
This shift doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s not always easy to navigate on your own.
That’s why I built Future Firm Accelerate.
To help accounting firm owners build the systems, pricing, and positioning they need to grow without burning out.
You’ll get:
- Coaching and workshops
- A community of like-minded firm owners you can turn to for advice on specific situations
- A self-paced system that walks you through the same framework I used to grow my previous firm from scratch to seven figures in five years
…So you can build a profitable firm that runs without you, like Mike below. 🙂
6. Update Your Messaging and Marketing
If advisory is part of your firm’s offer, it needs to show up in your messaging.
That means updating your website, your proposals, and how you talk about your services in sales conversations.
A lot of firms add advisory services but never actually tell anyone about it.
Or they bury it on a services page with vague language like “strategic guidance” that doesn’t mean anything to prospective clients.
If you want to attract clients who value advisory, you need to be clear about what you offer and what problems it solves.
Here are some ways to do that:
- On your website: Lead with outcomes, not services. Instead of “We offer advisory services,” say something like “We help you make confident financial decisions so your numbers don’t surprise you.”
- In your proposals: Include advisory as a defined offering with clear deliverables—health check-up calls, cash flow forecasting, strategic planning sessions. Show clients exactly what they’re getting and why it matters.
- In sales conversations: Ask discovery questions that uncover whether the prospect needs more than just compliance work. If they mention cash flow stress, hiring decisions, or growth plans, that’s your opening to position advisory as the solution.
As an example, Ascend Consulting, an advisory-focused accounting firm, makes it very clear on their homepage what their specialty is:
(Ascend made our list of the Top 50 Modern Accounting Firms of 2025.)
Clear messaging attracts the right clients and sets expectations from the start.
Sales conversations are easier when clients know what you offer before they even reach out.
You also spend less time convincing people who were never a fit in the first place.
How to Deliver Advisory Services
Delivering advisory services is the easier part once you have the right systems in place.
Here’s a simple step-by-step guide for structuring advisory delivery from start to finish.
Step 1: Assess Your Clients’ Needs
The first step in delivering advisory is figuring out whether your client would even benefit from it.
The best way to do that is through a conversation, not a sales pitch.
Get on a discovery call and ask questions about their situation.
Don’t lead with “We offer advisory services.”
Instead, use combinations of situation and value questions to guide them to see the gap between where they are and where they want to be:
| Situation Questions | Value Questions |
| “How do you currently make big financial decisions, like whether to invest in new equipment or bring on another person?” “When was the last time you looked at your numbers and felt completely confident about where your business stands financially?” “Are there financial surprises that tend to catch you off guard, like unexpected tax bills or cash getting tight at certain times of the year?” | “What would it mean for you if you had a clearer framework for making those calls instead of relying on gut feel?” “How much easier would it be to plan for the future if you had that clarity on a regular basis?” “What would change for you if you could see those issues coming months in advance and be able to do something about them?” |
The goal isn’t to force advisory on them, but to help them recognize where they need support and come to the conclusion themselves that advisory would help.
When clients realize the value on their own, the sale becomes a lot easier, and the engagement starts on stronger footing.
Step 2: Identify Your Deliverables
Once you know what the client needs, the next step is defining what you’re going to deliver.
Your deliverables will vary depending on which advisory service you’re offering, but the key is making them clear and tangible so both you and the client know what to expect.
For instance, if you’re offering health check-up calls, your deliverables might look like:
- A 30-minute call twice a year
- A summary email after each call highlighting key findings and action items
- A simple report showing where their financials stand compared to the previous period
On the other hand, if you’re offering cash flow forecasting, your deliverables could include:
- A 12-month cash flow projection updated quarterly
- A review call to walk through the forecast and discuss scenarios
- Recommendations for managing cash gaps or capitalizing on surplus periods
And if you’re delivering financial coaching, it might be:
- Monthly one-on-one sessions to review their numbers and answer questions
- Educational materials or resources tailored to their specific knowledge gaps
- Follow-up emails summarizing what was discussed and next steps
The point is to define what “done” looks like for each service.
Step 3: Define Service Terms
Once you’ve identified your deliverables, you need to make the scope crystal clear.
Clients assume advisory includes things it doesn’t, or they keep asking for “just one more thing” because the boundaries were never set.
The fix is simple: spell it out upfront.
Doing so is the best way to eliminate scope creep.
Your service terms should include what’s covered in the engagement and what falls outside of it.
For example, if you’re offering quarterly health check-up reports, your service terms might look like this:
This level of clarity protects both you and the client.
It sets expectations from the start, prevents misunderstandings, and makes it easier to upsell additional work when clients ask for something outside the scope.
Step 4: Deliver the Service
The key to successful advisory service delivery is doing it systematically so you’re not reinventing the process for every client.
If you want advisory to be scalable and profitable, you need frameworks and processes that support consistent delivery across your entire client base.
That means documenting things like:
- How the work gets done
- What tools you use
- How you structure your reports or calls
- What the timeline looks like from start to finish
In my previous firm, I handled a lot of the health check-up advisory work early on because I was still figuring out what worked.
But as the team grew and we refined the process, I was able to delegate that work to team members who could deliver it just as well.
The reason that worked was because we had clear processes they could follow.
You can do the same in your firm.
Build checklists, templates, and standard operating procedures for each advisory service you offer.
Train your team on how to use them.
Then, step back and let them execute while you focus on higher-level decisions or growing the service further.
Ready to Start Offering Advisory Services in Your Firm?
You don’t need to overhaul your accounting firm to offer good advisory services.
You already have the expertise your clients need.
The only question is whether you’re going to position it, price it, and deliver it in a way that reflects the value you’re providing.
If you’ve been thinking about offering advisory, stop waiting for the perfect moment and just take the first step.
Pick one or two services from this guide that align with what you’re already good at and what your best clients actually need.
If you want more guidance like this…
I share free, practical strategies around advisory, pricing, and building a firm that gives you more control over your time in my Future Firm newsletter. 🙂
Now, I’d like to hear from you.
What advisory services are you already doing informally that you could package and charge for?
And what’s the biggest challenge holding you back from offering advisory right now?
Share them in the comments below!
