The last time you raised your prices, did you worry about the response you’d get? Talking about money is always a little difficult, isn’t it?
We love that we have personal relationships with our clients. We know a good deal about the ups and downs in your lives, and we’re there to celebrate the successes with you. But even for us, the money talk can be tough! Feeling nervous about a price increase is quite natural.
That being said, it’s most important for us to be open and honest with you when it comes to our pricing. If your pricing has increased recently, this blog will help you understand why. This is a post to explain to you why, at times, we may need to raise the price for the services we provide to you.
We hope this will be informative for you as a valued client of ours, and even inspire you to communicate your own price increase when it’s needed.
We practice what we preach when it comes to charging for value
You’ll know from conversations we’ve had with you along your journey just how important it can be to raise your prices. We want to see your business grow in line with your goals – which means we want to see your prices increase in line with that growth.
We hate to see clients underselling themselves, or experiencing the feeling of being under-valued by their own clients. It’s hard when your clients take issue with a raise in prices – and we’re on your side! You should 100% be able to recognise the value of your time and expertise, and be rewarded for that.
We’re well placed to advise you on these business and financial strategies because we’ve been through them ourselves. As long as we’re communicating the change, we don’t apologise about a price increase, because it means:
- OUR business is growing and we have the capacity to provide a better quality service to you
- YOUR business is growing and your accounting needs are getting more complex
Both of these things are for celebrating!
As your needs increase and decrease, so does our workload for you
Think back to when you went through your onboarding process with Pink Pig Financials…
At the beginning of your relationship with us, we provided a ‘proposal’, which outlines exactly what services we will provide for you. We include the cost of each service alone, and a total of all combined services we recommend. You may have had a meeting with Cheryl to walk through how prices change based on changing factors within your business.
We’re going to look at those changing factors again, so you can see why costs might be going up as your business grows.
Each quarter (every 3 months), we create for you a Quarterly Summary, where we show you how your business compares to where you were 3 months previously. This covers all kinds of areas, including:
- Your turnover
- Your profitability
- The amount of transactions you have going on i.e your invoices, bank transactions etc.
Whilst some of those areas (your turnover for example) don’t have a big effect on the service we provide you, others really do!
Let’s give an example. If during Q1, you are uploading 30 invoices to Dext per month, and in Q3 that number increases to 100, the time it takes us to process things will also increase.
The same is true of the amount of sales invoices you’re raising, which has a ripple effect.
The invoices will need reconciling --> so will the total number of bank transactions --> each of those bank transactions will need looking at --> We’ll either be reconciling them to a document if possible OR otherwise coding them correctly.
This all means you have a clear picture of where your expenses are.
We use a pricing tool called GoProposal to keep pricing fair for each individual client – making sure prices are adjusted as your business needs change
Using GoProposal ensures that our pricing is standard, business-wide, for all of our clients. You won’t find that just because we see your revenue is higher you are charged more than someone else, even though we have less work to do for you.
No, we are COMMITTED to fair pricing. And that’s fair for everyone – ourselves included.
And so, every quarter, along with the summary that we prepare for you, we go back to GoProposal, and we pop in your new numbers.
There are ‘brackets’, for example 1-10, 11-25 etc, and if you have gone up or down a bracket, then your fees will be adjusted accordingly. This also means sometimes clients receive an email to say their fees have decreased.
No one wants to be spending more money if they don’t have to, but many will if they can see the value you provide.
An important thing to remember as a business owner when it comes to raising prices: good clients tend not to complain about minor price increases when they know you provide a level of service that reflects the amount they’re paying.
We specialise in helping our clients run successful businesses, and one way to NOT run a successful business is by undercharging for what you provide.
Let’s say you’re a beautician, and you charge £20 for a manicure. If you have a client who then wants not only the manicure, but a special design on each nail, are you still going to charge them the £20? Or will you raise the price according to the extra time it takes you?
What if you’re a lawyer and you quote a client for a single will? When they come back and want other family members’ doing as well, will you not charge for the extra workload?
If you’re out for a meal, and you add a starter on top of your main meal, will you be surprised to pay a little extra?
In many businesses, a price increase is no brainer, and very few customers would bat an eyelid.
Unfortunately, for accountancy, this is often not the case. Many people will be looking for the services to be carried as cheaply as possible, without taking into account how much support they really need (and request) for their business. You may be experiencing the same issue in your industry. You’ll also probably know cheaper isn’t better. Here’s a great blog from Cheryl on how we’re not the cheapest accountants and why that’s a good thing.
If we are unable to spend the right amount of time on your business, due to being pressed on costs, ultimately, your business may suffer
Please believe us – we do not look for any opportunity to raise fees. We’re not looking to extract money from the clients we love for nothing.
What we love is helping your businesses to grow and seeing the success stories that come from motivated, hard-working people who receive the right support. The services we provide can be crucial for the successful running of a business, and includes legal requirements.
For that reason, we’re committed to being the best support for you by ensuring we price ourselves fairly and can dedicate the appropriate time to each and every one of our clients.
We are always happy to discuss why we have changed our prices, and to take into account everyone’s personal circumstances.
You can view your proposal at any time, and see exactly what you are being charged for. We are transparent with our fees, and decrease just as often as we increase!
We hope this has enlightened things a little. We are always happy to chat and we hope you value our time, knowledge, training and expertise as you do your own.
Thankyou,
The PPF Team
