“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett
For many accountants making the shift to advisory, one of the biggest internal roadblocks isn’t the service itself, it’s pricing that service appropriately.
This is because pricing in our sector has historically been quite simple, you charge a fixed hourly rate for work or meetings and call it a day.
But advisory doesn’t operate this way. Instead offering highly specific amounts of value, entirely dependent on the individual circumstances of each client.
Think of it this way:
How do you price a conversation that leads to decision making?
How do you charge for giving someone confidence in their future?
How do you put a fee on helping someone sleep better at night?
Compliance creates mappable value against clear deliverables. But in advisory, where the power lies in guidance and clarity instead of compliance, a fixed pricing structure only serves to hold you back.
When you charge for time, you trap yourself in a model where effort equals income. In advisory, where effort is not the true measure of value, a pricing model that accounts for this change will make every stage of the process easier.
To understand why, we must start by discussing how time-based billing puts a ceiling on advisory work.
The hourly model was built for compliance.
It’s linear. Predictable. You do X hours of work; you bill for X hours of time. It makes sense when your output is measurable, fixed, and reactive.
But as we already discussed, advisory isn’t like that.
Advisory is about insight, not inputs. It’s about decisions and forward momentum. The most valuable conversation might happen in 15 minutes; but does that mean it’s worth less?
When you sell time, clients see you as a cost to manage.
When you sell outcomes, they see you as an investment to protect.
Pricing advisory is hard, not because it’s vague, but because it challenges how we’ve been taught to think about the very concept of value in our industry.
Most accountants were taught how to comply, not how to commercialise. Time-based billing emerged as a clear, predictable winner in compliance, and it stuck. Value pricing, on the other hand, feels abstract, until you learn how to properly frame what you’re already doing.
That’s why the training, frameworks and structured tools matter. Because the ability to see your value is what helps you charge for it.
Accountants are hardwired for fairness. Charging two clients different fees for what seems like the same time investment feels inconsistent.
But pricing for value means being fair to the outcome, not just the hours. Different clients face different pressures, risks and opportunities, and your service should meet them where they are.
True fairness isn’t about sameness. It’s about relevance. And relevance requires flexibility.
You’re not selling miracles. You’re guiding smarter decisions, reducing risk, and adding strategic clarity.
Value pricing doesn’t mean guaranteeing results. It means backing the process you’ve built and delivering it with confidence.
That’s what gets priced: Not the outcome, but the advantage.
When you charge for time, you’re paid to show up. When you charge for value, you’re paid to make a difference.
Your clients aren’t buying hours, they’re buying:
They’re not paying for 3.5 hours. They’re paying for transformation.
Let’s make this even more tangible with two examples:
Old model:
You meet bi-monthly to review reports and explain what’s already happened. It’s reactive, focused on historic figures, and charged by the hour.
New model:
You give strategic guidance using a structured framework and support a client in anticipating and navigating upcoming cashflow pressure and business challenges early. You help them make forward-looking decisions, reduce uncertainty, and avoid stress before it hits.
Old model:
You host a half-day session, do some prep, and bill for the time. It feels like “a big meeting” rather than a transformational moment befitting the shift it enables.
New model:
You lead the session as a strategic reset. Backed by a clear framework that aligns financial strategy with the client’s goals, clarifies their priorities, and maps out their next moves.
Now it’s not just time spent, it’s direction gained.
n personality. The same knowledge, used with different intent.
You don’t need to overhaul your entire pricing model overnight. You just need to start exploring what your advisory offering needs to be to allow you to price it for value:
This creates trust, positions you as a guide, and shifts the conversation from “how long will this take?” to “what will we get from this?”
SPricing is as much a confidence game as it is a commercial one.
The tools and techniques matter, but none of it works without mindset. Value pricing asks you to back yourself and stand behind the idea that your insight, judgment, and strategic guidance create real change.
Because they do.
You help clients make better, faster, smarter decisions with fewer regrets. That’s worth something. Often, it’s worth a lot more than the client realises until they experience it.
When you evidence that impact and price based on it, your firm stops running on volume and starts running on value.
