If you’re considering working with Patrick Accounting, you’ve probably heard about our one-time onboarding fee and want to know, “What’s this for, and why do I need to pay it upfront?”
You’re a small business owner, and it’s completely fair to ask where your money is going. We respect that. At Patrick Accounting, when we start working with a new client, we don’t just jump into your monthly bookkeeping. That’s like slapping a new coat of paint on a car with a broken engine. You’d still end up stranded on the side of the road.
How Much Is the One-Time Fee?
The onboarding process is thorough because we take the time to address everything in your accounting back office.
The one-time fee covers two critical components that get your accounting back office cleaned up, organized, and working the way it should:
- The Initial Strategy Sessions (ISS)
- Back Work
How Much Is the Fee for the Initial Strategy Sessions?
We typically price the one-time onboarding fee at about two times your monthly accounting fee.
For example, if your monthly fee is $1,500, the one-time investment would be roughly $3,000.
The first thing we do is sit down with you (virtually or in person!) to figure out where your business stands and what needs to happen to make things better. This is what we call the Initial Strategy Session (ISS), or ISS.
This is when we:
- dig into the details of your current financial systems
- assess your bookkeeping, tax accounts, and reporting practices
- identify gaps, inefficiencies, and areas that need immediate attention
We also use this time to address your questions about your accounting setup, such as whether your tax structure is optimized, how to handle sales taxes, or what steps you can take now to prepare for year-end.
As part of the process, we’ll request access to the essential systems we’ll be working with—like your QuickBooks account, bank accounts, or point-of-sale systems—so we can start building a plan for improvement.
How Is Back Work Priced?
Sometimes, we discover additional back work during onboarding—like months (or even years) of unfiled taxes or incomplete books. It happens.
The cost of back work depends on the amount of cleanup required, and is calculated based on the number of months it takes to get your books current, but will be lumped into your one-time onboarding fee.
If it’s October and you have nine months of back work to catch up on, that cleanup cost will reflect the amount of work to fix those nine months. We understand that every business’s situation is different, and our team will walk you through the specifics to make sure you’re comfortable with the plan.
Why Is This One-Time Investment Necessary?
At first, that might feel like a big ask—but it’s important to understand what you’re getting for that investment.
This is not a “quick setup” fee. It’s the cost of a full reset of your financial systems. It’s about fixing years of disorganization, cleaning up your numbers, and making sure your business is set up for clarity and success moving forward.
How Do Payments Work?
We get that cash flow is a big deal, especially for small businesses. That’s why we’re flexible with payment plans. Most clients pay the fee in one to three installments over the first three months. If there’s a lot of back work to handle, we can stretch the payments out a little longer to make it easier.
What’s Behind the One-Time Fee?
Once the ISS is complete, we get to work on setting up your back office for success. Here’s what’s included:
1. We Evaluate Your Chart of Accounts
Your chart of accounts organizes every financial transaction in your business. But if it’s cluttered, outdated, or just plain wrong, it’s impossible to get a clear picture of your business’s health.
So as part of this process, we evaluate your chart of accounts to clean it up so it works for you, not against you. After this step, you’ll have clean, easier-to-understand data to rely on.
2. We Set Targets and Key Metrics
Do you know how well your business is really performing? Not just “I think I’m doing okay,” but actual, measurable progress?
We’ll establish targets, metrics, and KPIs (key performance indicators) that are critical for your business to help us measure where you’re at today and where you want to be going forward.
For a restaurant, that might be food and labor costs. For a medical practice, it could be collections or overhead ratios.
We make sure you’re tracking the right numbers—the ones that help you run a better business, not just “have a hunch” about how things are going.
3. We Review Your Past Tax Returns
Nobody likes surprises from the IRS. As part of this process, we go back and review your past tax returns to make sure everything checks out. This allows us to spot:
- Opportunities: Are there tax deductions or credits you missed?
- Risks: Are there errors that might create problems down the road?
By doing this upfront, we ensure you’re compliant, aware of any past issues, and positioned to save money wherever possible in the future.
4. We Build a Strong Foundation for Success
This process isn’t just about looking back—it’s also about fixing what’s broken today. The strategy sessions allow us to overhaul both your financial data and your workflows.
This is the foundation we’ll build on—so you can trust your numbers and start making better decisions.
We clean up the mess, organize your information, and set up routines and processes to keep everything running smoothly moving forward.
For example:
- Moving you to QuickBooks Online or Restaurant365 for streamlined reporting
- Automating repetitive processes so you get time back in your day
- Creating clear routines for you and your team so nothing slips through the cracks
Once this foundation is set, everything else we do—monthly accounting, advisory services, tax planning—will be far more effective.
You Deserve a Back Office That Works for You
We charge a one-time fee because this initial work is critical to setting you up for success. Without it, we’d be stuck trying to build on a broken or disorganized foundation. That’s not how we work, and it’s not what you deserve.
This one-time investment is about creating a back office that works for you, not against you.
By the time we finish this process, you’ll have:
- A chart of accounts that’s clean, organized, and accurate.
- Confidence that your tax history has been reviewed and any risks addressed.
- Clear metrics that show you how your business is performing.
- Efficient workflows and systems that make your life easier.
This investment is about cleaning up the past, organizing the present, and building a clear path for the future. You’ll get better data, better processes, and better decisions—because you’ll finally have numbers you can trust.
We know it’s an investment, but it’s one that pays off month after month. If you’re ready to take the first step toward a back office that actually helps you run your business, let’s chat.
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