An accounting services proposal is the document a practice sends before the engagement letter, and it carries the same lines: the services in scope, bookkeeping, payroll, year-end, tax filings, advisory, the hours each is expected to take at the practice's rate, the phases the work falls into across the year, the third-party costs billed at cost, a contingency for the records that arrive in a shoebox, and the deposit due on signature. The free professional services proposal on this site prices those lines from the practice's own scoping; this page sets out how an accounting practice maps its services onto the inputs.
The scope: services, and what each one assumes
Name each service and the assumption its hours rest on: monthly bookkeeping assumes a volume of transactions and a bank feed; payroll assumes a headcount and a frequency; year-end assumes the books are current; tax filings assume the entities and the jurisdictions. Write the assumption beside the hours, because the assumption is what changes the fee when the client's business changes, and a proposal that states it is a proposal the practice can revise without an argument.
The fee lines: hours at the rate, phases by filing, deposit on signature
Enter the year's hours and the practice's rate into the free proposal, put software licences and filing fees in as expenses at cost, set the contingency for the unknowns in the client's records and a deposit on signature, and the page prints the fee, the contingency line, the deposit and the balance across the phases. The phases for a practice are the calendar: the monthly close, the quarter, the year-end and the filing deadline; the fee per phase is what the client will see invoiced at each.
The proposal is the method; the client record is the product
The lines on the page are free for every proposal. What Sowbird Pro adds is the record: the proposal kept against the client and the engagement year, the rate card that fills the rate, the signature or the decline recorded against the fee, and the reference written for the client's bookkeeper or the associate who moves on, from the record of the engagement. A practice that keeps that record prices next year's renewals on what the work actually took.
Questions people ask about accounting services proposal template
Is the proposal on this site free?
Yes, without an account. It prices the statement of work from the hours, the rate, the phases, the expenses, the contingency and the deposit you enter and prints the lines. Keeping the proposal against the client with the signature recorded is the paid product.
Is a proposal the same as an engagement letter?
No. The proposal prices and scopes the work and is what the client accepts; the engagement letter is the professional-standards document the practice issues after acceptance, and its content is the practice's professional body's subject, not this site's.
Should an accounting proposal be a fixed fee or hourly?
Price it from the hours either way, so the practice knows its margin; then present it as a fixed fee per phase if the client wants certainty, which the fee per phase line on the free proposal gives directly.