Professional services
Scope creep in an accounting firm is a wording problem before it is a billing problem.
The client who rings in August with a question that turns into four hours of work is not being unreasonable. They are reading an engagement letter that never said where the monthly fee stopped. Firms that hold their realisation rate write that boundary carefully, once, and reuse it. The Proposal Maker drafts from the engagement letters your firm has already issued, so the boundary is in the first draft.
Where this fits
You already run Cone, GoProposal, Ignition or Karbon. This is not that.
The gap
This is the one vertical with genuinely purpose-built rivals, and they are good at what they do: pricing calculators, engagement letters, signature and payment collection in one flow. Where they are weaker is the writing. Their output is assembled from a service catalogue, so two firms using the same tool produce near-identical proposals, and the paragraph explaining why this client's situation needs this particular scope is either absent or typed by the partner.
What this does not do
This does not price services from a catalogue, collect signatures, take payment, or manage engagement renewals. Ignition and GoProposal do those well. This writes the proposal narrative from your firm's own past engagements.
Scope
What a accounting firm's proposal actually has to itemise
- Services by line: tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll, controller or CFO advisory, assurance
- Entity and return schedule, naming each return and jurisdiction the fee covers
- Period covered and the recurring cycle, monthly, quarterly or annual
- Client-prepared-by list, stating what the client must deliver and by when for the fee to hold
- Software and systems the engagement assumes, and who pays for the subscriptions
- Out-of-scope work named in advance: notices, audits, amended returns, entity formation, catch-up bookkeeping
- Turnaround commitments and the cut-off date after which filing timeliness cannot be assured
Pricing
How accounting firms price the work
Fixed monthly fee
Recurring work at a set monthly amount with the service list defined, which is the model most firms move to once realisation on hourly work stops holding.
Annual fixed fee by return
Compliance work priced per return and entity, with the complexity assumptions that fee is based on stated explicitly.
Tiered service packages
Bronze, silver and gold style tiers where the differences are named services rather than vague levels of attention.
Hourly for advisory and out-of-scope
A published rate schedule by grade so anything outside the agreed scope has an agreed price before it happens.
The document
What comes out the other end
- 01Understanding of the client's situation and what they asked for
- 02Scope of services by line, with the frequency of each
- 03What the client is responsible for providing, and the deadline for providing it
- 04Out-of-scope services and how they are authorised and billed
- 05Fee, billing cycle, payment method, and any annual adjustment
- 06Term, renewal and termination provisions on both sides
- 07Limitation of liability and the professional standards the work is performed under
- 08Confidentiality, data handling, and who is authorised to give instructions
Compliance
The details that belong on the document, not in a follow-up email
- Independence considerations where the firm performs both assurance and non-attest services for the same client, which is where most peer review findings originate
- Engagement type stated precisely, since audit, review, compilation and preparation carry materially different responsibilities and report language
- Professional standards named, whether AICPA SSARS, GAAS or the relevant local equivalent, since the client's lender may rely on the distinction
- Section 7216 consent language where client tax information will be disclosed or used beyond preparing the return
- Records retention and the firm's policy on returning client records on termination, which several state boards regulate
- Where an engagement letter rather than a proposal is the operative document, the proposal should say so and not contradict it
General guidance, not legal advice. Requirements vary by state and jurisdiction — confirm yours with counsel or your licensing board.
Straight answers
The three things you are probably thinking
“We already use engagement letter software.”
Keep it. Those tools are good at getting a letter signed and countersigned. The proposal that persuades a prospect to become a client is a different document, and it is usually written from scratch.
“Our engagement letters were drafted by counsel.”
Then they should not change. Counsel-drafted terms go into the firm profile and are reproduced verbatim. What it drafts is the scope and the understanding, not the legal terms.
“Independence rules make me nervous about AI.”
Nothing here makes an independence determination. It reproduces the language your firm already uses and flags nothing on its own. The partner review that happens today still happens.
FAQ
Accounting proposals: common questions
How is this different from Ignition or GoProposal?
Those are pricing and engagement workflow tools, strongest from the moment a fee is agreed through to collection. This is upstream of that: the document that explains the scope and wins the engagement.
Does it produce a legally binding engagement letter?
It produces a proposal. If your engagement letter is a separate counsel-drafted document, keep it separate. It will reproduce terms you supply but it is not a substitute for legal review.
Can it handle assurance engagements?
It drafts from your library, so if you have issued review and compilation proposals it follows those. The responsibility language for each engagement type must be confirmed by the partner, as it is today.
We serve several industries. Will it tell a restaurant from a medical practice?
Yes, if your past proposals cover both. Matching is on the substance of the inquiry, so industry-specific scope carries through.
Is our client data used to train anything?
No. Firm data is isolated with row-level security and is never used for model training or surfaced to another account.
Related
Other trades we have written this up for
See what it writes from your last accounting proposal.
Upload three or four you were happy to send. The next one drafts in the same voice.