Summer is officially here, and if you’re running a traditional accounting practice, you know the rhythm of how the rest of the year will go. Because compliance work dominated the first four months, everything else got pushed to the side and is now staring you down, waiting to be taken care of.
What you’ll learn
What you’ll learn
Key takeaways
- Standardizing your cloud accounting platform and payroll ecosystem eliminates disconnected systems, allowing your team to spend more time on strategic advisory work.
- Transitioning to tiered, flat monthly fees shifts the client focus toward proactive financial outcomes and generates reliable, year-round revenue streams.
- Implementing consistent standard operating procedures across your book of business reduces operational friction and guarantees accurate, real-time data delivery.
- Separating your compliance staff from a dedicated advisory team structure protects firm capacity and maintains continuous client relationships.
But you’re exhausted, your team nears a breather, and you’re grateful for the slower time, so you tell yourself you’ll get to it later. Before you know it, the extension deadline is looming, and the cycle repeats.
Another avenue
Seasonal swings hit harder than just capacity overload. You rely on that January income surge, then stress as it dries up by summer. You have clients you talked with during tax season who need ongoing support, but you’re too burned out to offer it. Your workload swings wildly between feast and famine, and you’ve made peace with it as “this is just how the accounting industry is.”
I’m here to tell you that the accounting industry is changing, and there’s another path forward, should you choose to take it. Making the decision to build a practice focused on Client Accounting Services is the first step, followed by rethinking your firm’s operations from the ground up.
By standardizing technology, restructuring your billing, and building repeatable workflows, your team can work with your clients year-round to manage their books, continuously interpret their numbers, and solve pain points in real time. This protects your team’s capacity in ways your current model doesn’t, and even though it might push you outside your comfort zone,, you can change the habits keeping you stuck in this never-ending cycle. Which is exactly what we’ll walk through in this article.
Standardize and consolidate your technology stack
In today’s world, every business owner is bombarded with the latest accounting software claiming to solve their operational problems. Finding ourselves excited at the prospect of organization and freedom, we say yes to all of it, and before we know it, we have a wobbly tech stack built on hopes, dreams, and digital duct tape. Can anyone say Frankenstack?
Here’s the unforeseen issue: our tech stack and our clients’ tech stack often differ greatly.
“Because traditional accounting generally conformed to what the client was already using, we trained our teams to become fluent in their systems instead of teaching clients to be fluent in ours. This approach creates more work on our end and frustration from the client when delivery slows down or mistakes happen.”
— Marit Burmood, CPA, EA, and OnPay contributor
CAS changes this. Your firm decides which technology stack it runs, and your clients adapt to it. When you standardize your core accounting platform (such as Xero or QuickBooks Online), your payroll and HR processing (for example, keeping this all in the OnPay ecosystem), and your daily practice management tools (everyone has to communicate via the same channels), the busy work starts to dissipate. Finally, you’re able to spend more time on advisory work and less on simply trying to make everyone’s systems mesh together.
But getting your firm’s internal software under control is only half the battle — next, you have to completely rethink how you charge for it.
Transition your billing model to flat monthly fees
One of the first things you need to adjust when you decide to offer CAS is your billing model. You’re no longer simply selling hours; you’re selling intangible value and proactive outcomes that your client desperately needs.
When you build out your packages based on flat monthly fees, it forces you to think about your value differently. You’re still bundling the baseline compliance work like bookkeeping, payroll, and tax filing, but you’re also adding the higher-value advisory services, such as:
- Interpreting numbers
- Spotting trends
- Tax planning
- Helping the business owner make better financial decisions.
And because clients pay one monthly fee for all of it, they don’t ask (or generally care) how many hours you worked.
One thing I’ve noticed is that tiering your packages makes this easier to sell to clients in different stages of business ownership. Controller-level services, such as continuous financial analysis and deeper planning, appeal to growing businesses, while earlier-stage owners receive a less in-depth level of support that fits their budget and needs.
Here’s a table to see where the pieces fit together.
| Service tier | Target client | Compliance work | Strategic advisory value |
| Baseline compliance | Early-stage owners needing predictable, baseline financial visibility | Core compliance: Bookkeeping, payroll processing, and annual tax filing | Identifying basic data trends and offering standard performance reviews |
| Controller services | Growing businesses requiring active, continuous financial analysis | Core compliance plus additional tasks such as accounts payable and sales tax management | Cash flow forecasting, budget vs. actual mapping, and quarterly planning meetings |
| Virtual CFO advisory | Scaling organizations needing a year-round strategic financial partner | Full back-office ownership and total tech stack integration | Advanced strategic planning, industry benchmarking, and monthly advisory oversight |
Once you have this all worked out, the next big shift you’ll need to make is how you explain your value rather than your fees. Clients need to understand that flat fees mean consistent, reliable support without worrying about surprise invoices.
The takeaway is you’re their financial partner, thinking about their business year-round. Many business owners realize this is exactly what they need around tax time, so summer is the perfect season to help them make the switch.
Once your flat monthly fees are locked in, you need to make sure your day-to-day operations can actually deliver on that year-round advisory promise.
Develop standard operating procedures for consistency
Scaling a CAS practice requires repeatable internal workflows. Every client needs the same monthly close process, the same report generation schedule, and the same communication cadence. When your SOPs are consistent across your book of business, data inefficiencies are reduced because your team moves faster, makes fewer mistakes, and delivers accurate, real-time data.
Whether or not a prospective client will be a good fit can generally be determined during your initial discovery call. While talking with them, take note of what their operational friction points are, so you know what they need solved and if your team can do it.
- Financial visibility: Look for hidden delays and unclear areas that you can fix for them. Determine if they are working with disconnected systems and losing time trying to make it all work.
- Strategic business goals: Pinpoint where they want their cash flow margins to stand over the next 12 months. Identify their specific benchmarks for growth.
Asking these questions indicates whether they’ll be a fit for your firm’s standard offering, and gives you the intel you need to understand their business deeply. Because you’re not building custom workflows for every client, you simply need to understand their needs and determine whether your approach will deliver value.
Build a dedicated CAS team to protect capacity
Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room. How in the heck do you provide CAS and keep up with the tax season chaos during the peak filing months? The truth is that you can’t be a trusted financial partner to your CAS clients if you disappear every January through April, and September through October.
The key is in building a team structure that can help keep the advisory work moving year-round. Ideally, there should be a practice leader who spearheads the maintenance of your CAS book of business including:
- Nurturing client relationships
- Managing the quarterly meetings
- Assisting with estimates
- Working with the staff that is dedicated to the transactional side of the business, such as bookkeeping, closings, etc.
This is separate from the tax team, which remains focused on compliance work without advisory interruptions. Even in a small firm, this could look like three people; it doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be systematic, efficient, and defined.
“Most of the time, moving to a CAS model means moving away from the one-man-band approach and building a team structure that actually supports all aspects of your practice.”
— Marit Burmood, CPA, EA, and subject matter expert
If you’re sitting there thinking that finding the right people to fill these slots is easier said than done, you’re not alone. There’s clear data to support the fact that getting the right team in place is heavily on the minds of accounting firms right now. In a 2025 OnPay survey of over 1,000 practitioners, more than one in five respondents noted that hiring employees was a top focus for their practice.
We’re all feeling the exact same capacity strain — which makes standardizing your organizational structure early on even more important.
Roll out your advisory services gradually
A word of caution: don’t flip a switch and change your entire business model overnight. Instead, take small, measurable steps; otherwise, you risk leaving your team confused and your clients frustrated.
A helpful place to start is by auditing your current client list and identifying your top three favorites—the ones who are low-maintenance, pay on time, and respect your work. These clients are your “sandbox”. Offer them your new packages with the tiered pricing, and test your new workflows on them. Ask them for feedback and use it to improve your processes.
This approach protects your existing revenue while you build a new arm of your practice. Instead of firing the clients who don’t fit into the new model, gradually transition the ones who are the best fit. By the time you’re ready to market CAS to prospective clients, you’ve already established what works inside your firm.
Where execution meets strategy
Eventually, that never-ending cycle you’ve been stuck in starts to loosen up. Revenue evens out, the team is happier, and you’re not trading your sanity for your business. Because client accounting services don’t just give you a new service offering — they give you a fundamentally different way of running your firm and living your life.
Choosing to evolve is the first step, but the execution can feel like putting together a puzzle that’s missing some pieces. In the next article, we’ll demystify how to price, package, and future-proof your firm’s offerings. We’ll look at how to structure predictable monthly subscriptions, charge for upfront onboarding, and handle out-of-scope work without creating client friction. The quiet summer months are the perfect time to build a practice that actually supports your life, so let’s make it happen!
See how easy it is to offer payroll services your way.
Marit Burmood is a tax advisor, small business coach, and financial educator dedicated to helping entrepreneurs achieve financial success. She holds a Master’s Degree in Taxation and is a CPA and EA with over a decade of experience guiding small business owners and tax professionals through the complex landscape of entrepreneurship.