Should I switch my bookkeeping clients from hourly billing to a fixed monthly fee?

Hourly billing punishes efficiency. Every improvement you make — bank feeds, rules, better software — reduces your invoice. A fixed fee lets you keep the gain, which is the only way a practice makes more money per client without raising prices.

The uplift above the historical average is not a price rise in disguise. It pays for the months that run long, year-end work and the client questions that currently go unbilled. Clients generally accept it because the fee becomes predictable, which they tend to value more than the hourly rate.

Define the scope in bands rather than tasks: up to a set number of transactions a month, one bank account or two, payroll or not. When the client moves into the next band the fee moves with it, which stops the scope creep that hollows out fixed fees over time.

Move the steadiest clients first. Their hours are the easiest to predict and their fees the least likely to be wrong, and a few months on those gives you real data to price the harder ones.