Accountants ready to stop the clock on timesheets

Lawyers, accountants and other professionals are facing a sea change in the way they price their work, says Southland accountant Brendon Harrex.

The youngest partner of accountancy firm Ward Wilson, Harrex is weaning accountants in the firm away from the traditional billing for time - often in six-minute segments.

He said placing emphasis on the value of a firm's services to clients was changing the way accountants thought about pricing.

"It's about aligning your remuneration with the gains you create for your customers, rather than trying to maximise the amount of time you spend on the job.

"We're finding people are lot happier to pay more up front and know they're not going to get nickel-and-dimed," Harrex said.

Some customers resented being billed for each phone call or inquiry undertaken on their behalf, and preferred the certainty of agreeing in advance on a set fee for the service.

Tom Davies of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Wellington said there was "fee friction" from time to time under the system of billing hours, often because clients did not realise how much work was necessary.

The concept of setting a fixed-fee price for specific often worked well with straightforward work.

"But it can be a disaster, or not achieve what was intended, where you have a dynamic sort of client who is doing all sorts of different things.

"The challenge is to ringfence exactly what's included in the fee."

- NZPA