The client who quietly got bigger
When the café joined you, it had one bank account, a card terminal and about a hundred transactions a month. You agreed a monthly fee that made sense. Three years on it has a second site, an online shop, two card terminals, a delivery app paying in weekly and a business credit card. The fee has not moved.
Nobody decided to do more work for the same money. It just happened a few transactions at a time, and the bookkeeper absorbed it because raising it felt awkward.
Why growth goes unnoticed
The fee lives in your engagement letter and your billing system. The volume lives in the ledger. There is no moment where the two are compared, so the only signal is a bookkeeper saying a client feels heavy, and that is easy to put off.
Staff also tend not to raise it. They know the client, they like the client, and they worry it will sound like complaining. Meanwhile new bank accounts, new sales channels and new payment platforms get added without anyone going back to the pricing sheet.
What the drift costs
The file becomes unprofitable without anyone choosing that. Over a client base, a handful of these can soak up a bookkeeper's spare capacity, which then shows up as rushed work elsewhere. When the fee is finally raised, it is often a big jump after years of nothing, which is a harder conversation than a small, reasoned change would have been.
| Fee assumption at sign-up | What changes later |
|---|---|
| One bank account | Extra accounts, savings, loans, currency |
| Card terminal only | Online shop, marketplaces, delivery apps |
| Quarterly VAT, standard scheme | Scheme change or monthly returns |
| Owner does receipts | Staff expenses and cards added |
| Transactions per month | Steady growth with the business |
How we build a fee drift check
- We record the assumptions behind each client's fee in a structured way: expected transactions, accounts, sales channels, VAT frequency and any extras. Your pricing sheet or engagement letters are the starting point.
- Each month we read the actual figures from the client file in Xero or QuickBooks through their APIs, including new bank accounts and new contacts that look like payment platforms.
- The check compares actual against assumed and marks clients that have moved past the thresholds you set, with the specific reasons listed.
- A trend line per client shows whether it is a one-off busy month or steady growth, so you do not react to a seasonal spike.
- Flagged clients land in a short review list for the partner, with suggested wording for a fee conversation that explains what changed.
- Once you agree a new fee, the assumptions are updated so the check starts again from the new baseline.
The check never changes a fee or contacts a client itself. It gives you the facts and the timing, and the decision stays with you.
We also look for the signals that a ledger shows before volume does. A new bank account appearing, a first payment from a marketplace, a new card in the business name or a VAT scheme change are each picked up as an event, so you can talk to the client about scope at the moment their business changes rather than a year after.
Fee reviews that feel reasonable
Fee conversations get easier because they are specific: since you opened the second site and started selling online, your monthly transactions and accounts have grown like this, and here is what we suggest. Clients mostly accept a change that is explained and timely. You also stop discovering loss-making files at year end when it is too late to do anything about that year.
Is this happening in your firm?
- Some fees have not changed since the client joined.
- Staff describe certain clients as heavy but nobody reviews them.
- New bank accounts and sales channels are added without a pricing check.
- Fee rises, when they come, are large and uncomfortable.
- You could not list which clients cost more than they pay.