11 Accounting Advisory Services Your Firm Can Offer

If you’re part of the 80% of global accounting firms planning to add or expand their advisory services soon, you may be weighing which specific services you want to include and how to price them appropriately. 

Expanding into a new service department like client advisory services (CAS) can be a win-win scenario for you and your clients. It can offer your firm stable, recurring revenue outside tax season. 

Plus, your clients can gain value-add services they don’t have the time or expertise to handle internally, establishing your firm as their trusted advisor.  

In this guide, we’ll explore some of the most common advisory services accounting firms offer and provide some guidance on profitable pricing models for these services. 

What Are Accounting Firm Advisory Services?

Accounting advisory services cover a broad category of specialized work firms can offer to help clients improve operational efficiency and performance. 

These services extend beyond standard offerings like bookkeeping and tax preparation. They’re often more strategic in scope and focused on complex accounting, business, and financial matters. 

Advisory services allow accounting professionals to leverage their unique expertise by providing insights and guidance to help clients make better, more informed business decisions.

Difference Between Advisory Services and Consulting

Advisory services may seem like another way of describing consulting services. However, there is a key difference between the two. 

In general, consultants are hired to handle one-off or temporary engagements where they tackle a specific project or problem the client has. 

Advisory services, on the other hand, often have a longer scope and focus on projects or subjects where the client needs ongoing support. 

Offering both consulting and advisory services can boost your CPA firm’s revenues. However, advisory services often provide more sustainable growth, while consulting revenues can be less consistent. 

11 Examples of Advisory Services Commonly Offered by Accounting Firms

Depending on your team’s experience and knowledge, you can start offering various types of advisory services. By doing so, you can tap into a steady stream of revenue throughout the year, creating more stability in both revenue and workload. 

The following are several examples of advisory services your accounting firm can provide. While these can be a good starting point as you expand your services, every firm must consider their team’s strengths, capacity, and client needs when deciding which to pursue. 

1. Fractional CFO Services

Budding startups and small businesses may not have the resources or need to hire a CFO full-time. However, they may require this support on a part-time basis. 

Providing these types of clients with a fractional CFO service is a much more accessible option for them. It allows them to benefit from your expertise without the financial commitment of bringing a full-time executive on board. 

As a fractional or part-time CFO, you can offer high-level advice and guidance to help businesses make strategic financial decisions and grow their operations.

2. Financial Statement Preparation

Businesses may need help preparing their financial statements to ensure accuracy and compliance with regulatory requirements. 

As one of the most common advisory services offered by accounting firms, this is a fairly seamless service to add, especially if you already handle bookkeeping or financial reporting for clients.  

3. Strategic Tax Planning

Taxes are a common pain point for both businesses and individuals. As a result, strategic tax planning services are something you can offer all your clients. 

You can help them structure their finances favorably and take advantage of the appropriate deductions and deferments to lower their tax liability at the end of the year. 

If you already offer tax preparation services, this can be a natural extension of your business. It’s also an easier service to promote to existing clients, especially if they’re seeking to lower their tax bills. 

4. Budgeting

Another advisory service you can offer business clients is for budgeting. Again, not all businesses have the internal resources or expertise to make these planning decisions and may be interested in ongoing budgetary support. 

By offering this service, you help businesses project income and expenses for a given period, helping provide them with a foundation to base their spending decisions on over the month, quarter, or year. 

5. Compliance Services

Your business clients can be subject to a complex regulatory environment, depending on their industry. 

Even within the accounting space, tax and financial reporting regulations continually evolve. Having an advisor who can track and interpret these changes and help them understand how they impact their operations can be useful to clients. 

6. Business Planning

Clients may also be interested in business planning services and looking for an experienced advisor to assist them with long-term growth. This service might include an in-depth market analysis, competitor analysis, and growth strategy ideation. 

Tenured accounting firms have worked with hundreds of business clients and can use their experience and observations to help companies create intentional plans to foster sustainable growth. 

7. Benchmarking and Analysis

Benchmarking services help business clients better understand how they stack up against their industry peers using key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics. 

This service can be easy to recommend to clients if you’re already performing other services like financial reporting since you’re familiar with their finances and have a solid understanding of their business. 

8. Risk Management

Risk management is an in-demand service for many businesses. In fact, a CPA.com report shows clients expressed a need for risk management services just as much as tax planning. 

Your accounting firm can assist clients in identifying and assessing their risk exposure. You can then create a strategy to mitigate it, including credit, supplier, financial, and market risks. 

9. Process Improvement Services 

Firms can offer services that involve auditing a client’s existing operations and processes, looking for potential inefficiencies and cost-saving opportunities. 

As an accountant, you are well-equipped to offer this service because you have a clear picture of where a client’s business cash is going and can provide a roadmap to optimizing spending. 

This service can be particularly useful for businesses struggling with profitability and looking for recommendations to strategically cut costs without sacrificing the quality of their operations. 

10. M&A Advisory

You may have business clients interested in potential mergers and acquisitions. That can be a large undertaking, both from a financial and legal standpoint, and these businesses often seek support from external advisors to guide them through the process. 

Accounting firms can offer support on both ends of the transaction. You can help buyers perform due diligence or work with sellers to prepare their finances and accounting records before a sale. 

11. Estate Planning

Estate planning is another worthwhile service to offer individual clients. Estate laws are often complicated, and CPAs can partner with attorneys to handle the financial strategy of asset transfers. That might include providing guidance on how to set up a trust, creating plans to minimize wealth taxes, and more. 

How Firms Typically Price Different Advisory Services

Offering advisory services only boosts your firm’s profits if you price your services appropriately. Your pricing can be hourly, fixed, or value-based. 

Given the nature of advisory services, many firms charge for them using the value-based pricing model. Your firm isn’t penalized for delivering work quickly and efficiently this way, as with hourly billing. Plus, you can price each client engagement individually based on the scope of work and value you offer rather than charging fixed fees for all clients. 

Ultimately, it’s up to each firm to determine how to charge for advisory services. Regardless of which pricing model you choose, consider how much it costs to deliver the service and your desired profit, and set your rates accordingly. 

How to Better Manage Your Advisory Services

Adding new advisory services can be a great way to create sustainable cash flows year-round and offer more value for your clients. 

However, if you don’t have the proper tools to manage these new services effectively, the workload could overwhelm your team, defeating the purpose of adding them in the first place. 

For this reason, Jetpack Workflow created a dedicated solution for CAS teams, helping firms like yours manage client advisory work easily. 

With Jetpack Workflow, firms can set up organized systems and processes for specific advisory services. Then, you can easily track your work progress, see which team member is working on what, and automate recurring tasks so you can spend more time on billable work. 

To see how Jetpack Workflow can help your firm, schedule a demo and discover why thousands of accountants rely on our platform to manage their daily client work.