What changes the fee
CPA El Paso Alternative on what the work costs.
A public price list would pretend every month has the same shape. The letter names the fee after someone has seen the shape of the month.
Describe the books
Why a public price would be a fiction.
A price quoted to everyone is a price that assumes a month we have not seen. Some months are already tied to the bank. Some have not been touched since spring. Some businesses are one entity with one sales address. Some are three entities and a provider who was switched in June. Those are different jobs. A single number on a web page would be advertising, not a quote.
What we can say is what moves the fee. The count of entities. Periods whose cash still disagrees with the bank. Whether payday is already running on a provider or still needs to be mapped. Whether sales addresses share one rate or several. Whether last year's return exists and can be read. Each of those is a fact you already know, and each of them belongs in the letter before a fee is agreed.
A free call can name a range once those facts are on the table. The call does not lock the fee. The signed letter does. A task the letter never listed gets a fresh price, and that price is agreed before the task begins. An invoice should not be the first time you learn a fee exists.
What you are buying when the fee is fair.
You are buying a month that matches the bank, a map of payday onto the provider you already use, and a return built from those months. You are buying a conversation while the year can still change. You are not buying an audit. You are not buying someone to run payday in our name. If a quote includes those, ask for them to be removed or go to a firm that can actually sign them.
Cheap and late is the expensive combination. A year of open months costs more to reconstruct than a year of ordinary closes. If the fee for a real close looks higher than a once-a-year filing, compare it with the cost of finding a missing quarter in March. Most owners who have lived through that March do not need the comparison explained twice.
Write five facts before you ask anyone for a number. How many companies. How many months are still open. Is a payday provider already the one paying people. Whether every sales address shares one rate. Whether last year's return can be read. A quote that arrives before those five facts is a quote about someone else's month. You can say the five facts in a form note, and the reply can then be about you.
An open month is the fact that moves the fee the furthest. Closing one ugly month can take longer than keeping three clean ones. A stack of untouched months belongs in the opening line of the note, ahead of any hope that the year was already clean. A practice that prices the year as if it were already closed will either skip the ugly parts or send a second invoice. You want the first number to include the reconstruction, or you want the letter to say the reconstruction is its own job.
Mapping payday is smaller than people fear and larger than a checkbox. If the provider is already running, the work is an account map and a check that the books do not invent a second payday beside it. If the provider is new, the map has to exist before the first close can be trusted. Those are different fees. A quote that uses one vague word for both has not said which one you are buying, and the letter should split them.
A fair fee is one you can reread in November without a surprise. The letter names what the number bought. A task outside that list gets a new quote before it starts. If you cannot find that sentence, wait to sign. The missing sentence costs more than a higher number that tells the truth. Compare the fee with the cost of hunting a missing quarter in March, not with the cheapest ad on a page you saw this week.
Tell us the shape, not a budget.
Entities, open months, and whether payday already runs. Those three set the conversation.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.