Ask most business owners what their accountant costs and you'll get a shrug. Not because they don't care — because they genuinely don't know until the invoice lands. Hourly billing does that. It turns every phone call into a meter running in the background, and quietly teaches you to stop asking questions.
The problem with the clock
When advice is billed by the hour, the incentives point the wrong way. The accountant is rewarded for taking longer; you're penalised for needing help. A five-minute question about a VAT threshold becomes something you sit on for a week because you're not sure it's worth the line on the bill. That hesitation is exactly where small businesses get into trouble.
What fixed-fee changes
A fixed monthly fee flips it. You know the number before you commit, it doesn't move because you emailed twice, and the work — bookkeeping, VAT, year-end accounts, the filings HMRC expects — is simply covered. Our plans start at £89 a month plus VAT, with Xero included, and they're monthly rolling: no contract, no exit fee.
The quiet benefit is behavioural. When asking costs nothing, people ask early, and problems get solved while they're small. That's better for you and, honestly, easier for us.
"But what if I barely use it?"
Some months you'll send us a pile of receipts and a question about a company car. Some months, nothing. The fee stays the same because the value isn't the hours — it's the certainty that everything's handled, on time, whether or not you thought about it. Deadlines are our job to track, not yours to remember.
The honest trade-off
Fixed fees aren't magic. If your business is genuinely complex — multiple entities, international VAT, constant restructuring — a fixed plan needs to be scoped properly, and we'll tell you if you'd be better on a bespoke arrangement. But for the vast majority of sole traders, limited companies and contractors, the maths is simple: a predictable number you can budget around beats a surprise every quarter.