Services · Accounting & tax
Fixed-fee packages were scoped below the hours they consumed.
This marketing & margin audit surfaced $52k in recurring annual margin in a Services business — evidenced, senior-reviewed, and delivered in 6 days.
The business
An accounting and tax practice sold its work as fixed-fee packages, priced to be simple and predictable for clients. The packages had been set some years earlier and rolled forward largely unchanged, even as client complexity, compliance requirements and the hours each engagement genuinely consumed crept steadily upward across the book.
What triggered the audit
The practice was busy and revenue looked healthy, yet partner profit per hour was quietly falling — a classic sign fixed fees had drifted below the work. The audit reconciled the actual delivery hours logged against each fixed-fee package, testing whether the prices still matched what the engagements truly cost to serve.
What the audit found
The fixed fees had fallen well behind the work they were meant to cover. Timesheet reconciliation showed that client complexity and expanding compliance obligations had pushed the real hours on many engagements far past what the package prices assumed when they were set, so a large share of the book was being delivered below cost on a per-hour basis. Because the practice looked busy and top-line revenue held, the erosion was invisible — nobody had matched logged hours back to the fixed prices, so partners were effectively working harder each year for less. The gap between what engagements cost to deliver and what clients were charged amounted to roughly $52k a year of eroded engagement margin.
What we changed
Reconciled logged delivery hours against every fixed-fee package, exposing exactly which engagements had drifted below cost as client complexity grew.
Repriced or rescoped the packages that no longer matched the work, realigning each fee to the hours the engagement genuinely requires today.
Introduced a scope-change trigger, so rising client complexity prompts a fee review instead of the practice silently absorbing the extra hours.
Made engagement margin per hour a monitored metric, so fixed fees can’t quietly fall behind the work again across the book.
The result
$52k a year of engagement margin recovered by realigning fixed fees with the hours they actually consume — a 9× return on the $5,950 Audit + Sprint fee. For any professional-services firm, this is the silent squeeze: fixed prices set years ago drift below rising complexity while the practice looks busy. If you’ve never reconciled logged hours to your package prices, you may be working harder each year for less. A fixed-fee audit reconciles it in days and resets scope to protect partner margin.
From kickoff to signed-off findings: 6 days — inside our fixed 5–7 day window.