This article first appeared in the CPA Practice Advisor’s Special Report: Spend Management Advisory: A Growing Opportunity for Accounting Firms in January 2025.
One of the fastest-growing practice areas for accounting firms is client advisory services (CAS), which runs the gamut from outsourced business management services and transactional accounting to strategic consulting and virtual CFO and controller services. Another area that could provide CAS practices with a major opportunity for growth is spend management advisory.
When you start exploring how to venture into the CAS space, there are core elements that you must understand and define for your firm, including how to price, position, and productize the offering.
Grow your technology stack to become more efficient
High-performing CAS practices often use the same technology they recommend to clients. These firms look to gain the same types of efficiencies in-house using a spend management solution and then share their firsthand experience with their clients to show the value of the technology.
For example, Chaney & Associates, a CPA firm specializing in outsourced accounting services, went from being bogged down by manual processes to a fully automated operation after implementing BILL Spend & Expense (formerly Divvy), an all-in-one spend and expense management solution.
As an example, when a client requests financials for a board meeting, the Chaney & Associates team would try to aggregate 45-day-old financial statements. The current process put the client and the firm in a bad position. The client couldn’t provide receipts, credit card reconciliations, or coding. As a result, Chaney & Associates team members had to log into disparate client credit card accounts to find the necessary information. However, with BILL Spend & Expense, staff have an organized dashboard where all clients are listed and credit cards are managed. The firm’s CEO and owner, Steve Chaney, said they would never have reached this point without BILL Spend & Expense.
“Instead of a staff person trying to go to all of these different platforms and go through all of these different usernames, passwords, and people to get something done, now they get it on one dashboard, and it’s incredible the amount of stress that reduces,” he said.
How to position spend management advisory and identify the right clients
When it comes to identifying clients who would be a good fit, Megan Bronson, a partner in the technology and business advisory department at accounting firm Squire & Company, recommends perusing your client roster to find the ones that could benefit not only from more advice and insights but are looking to find new efficiencies and improve their cash flow.
“We’ve looked at clients that have matured a little more, have experienced some of the pain points of not having spend management in place, and have well-established credit and sales histories. They would be able to see a major impact in their business, in their accounting team, and their employee engagement by adopting a spend management solution,” said Bronson.
Jody Grunden, partner and virtual CFO practice leader at Anders CPAs + Advisors, believes a solution like BILL Spend & Expense can benefit clients of any size and niche because the technology provides enforceable spend controls and pre-defined budgets, greatly reducing non-compliant spending for any organization.
“Spend management software also decreases time spent on tracking employee spend by automating receipt matching, expense categorization, and reporting. No more asking your clients to track down receipts or track down who spent what if cards are shared among employees,” he added.
Spend management is a newer service area within CAS and, at times, requires firms to position it in a way where clients see the full value. According to the CPA.com spend management survey report, a communication gap exists between SMBs and accounting firms. The survey found that 72% of SMBs indicated an interest in spend management services. However, only 34% of accounting firm participants surveyed say they offer expense management as a service, with the majority stating they are not offering those services because their clients are not asking for it. So, how can this communication gap be closed?
Grunden believes the gap can be closed by the firms utilizing the benefits of spend management software and by truly understanding clients’ pain points and how to talk to them about a solution.
“One of the big benefits for accounting firms is they can help clients close the month out much quicker,” he said. “We’ve all experienced an employee or business owner forgetting to submit an expense report on time or forgetting to add receipts to expenses in the report. Spend management systems allow for a quicker month-end close because receipts are gathered in real-time and matched to expenses.”
Matt Gardner, co-founder and CEO of Hiline, a company that offers tech-enabled accounting services to startups and growing businesses, said the communication gap statistic in the survey shows that there may be some confirmation bias on the accounting firm side.
“Your clients may not know what spend management means for them, so you’re missing an opportunity to educate them on what good looks like,” he said. “Your clients are coming to expect operational chops if they are outsourcing their finance function to you. Own the technology procurement, implementation, and management of the spend management solution for your client. Optimize their spend management controls for them. They’ll thank you. And if you’re not doing that, you’re missing an opportunity to offer a more premium customer experience.”
Determine your pricing structure
The CPA.com survey revealed the following ways that firms are approaching pricing and packaging:
- Some firms do not charge for spend management as a standalone service. However, it is there in the background, making their advisory services better and saving them time and money.
- Some firms charge for it as part of a broader offering, like technology consulting.
- Other firms charge for it as a standalone service.
It’s important to recognize the value of the service you’re providing. The majority of CAS practices that offer spend management advisory services opt to either charge clients as part of an existing subscription for services or a flat-rate monthly fee (60%) instead of by the hour (34%), according to the survey.
Anders CPAs + Advisors provides clients with a tiered subscription services model, offering three levels that range from transactional to strategic. A subscription services model brings year-round recurring revenue from their clients, higher margins, and the ability to offer real-time client insights, given its visibility into company financial data. In addition, Grunden and his team customize pricing to a client’s needs, where the firm identifies the priorities and does a deep dive to determine how to help them best.
“We wanted to provide a service that the client could pick their own adventure,” Grunden said. “They can pick their price and what service we’re going to provide them.”
One of the line items the firm can add to any package as a flat weekly fee is expense and spend management services. The fee scales up or down based on the size of the business, taking into account revenue and the number of employees. For an average 50-person organization, Anders charges $80 per week for spend management and reconciliation, as well as advisory services.
“Every Monday, we zap the account for their weekly fee, kind of like what Netflix does,” Grunden said. “And then within that, they get a statement of work for what exactly was done within that model.”
Similar to a streaming service, clients can cancel a particular advisory service within that model at any time. This pricing structure seems to be working for Anders and its clients, as the CAS practice within the firm has a 92% client retention rate.
Chaney & Associates does not price spend management as a separate service but as part of a fixed fee for accounting and advisory services. Spend management and the solution is one part of the full-course meal of advisory opportunities that the firm offers its clients.
“When a client says they are interested in your outsourced accounting services, they already have a problem. They can’t find the right talent. They don’t have the right process. That’s what the CPA, the trusted business advisor, is there for. Not only do you have people who are trained, educated, and knowledgeable, but you also have the processes and the know-how. You are the experts. That’s why spend management is such an easy sell,” said Steve Chaney.
Once you have your pricing model in place, how do you approach clients, and what do those conversations look like? Our final article in the series addresses how to market spend management services and the importance of your role as a trusted advisor.
About the author: Kimberly K. Blascoe, CPA, leads CPA.com’s CAS 2.0 practice transformation programs, focusing on helping firms establish and grow optimized CAS practices through consulting, practice development and training offerings. Prior to joining CPA.com, Kim spent more than 30 years in public accounting, which included leading the CAS practice for a Top 20 firm.
