Pricing recurring services when every client is a special case

Ask a firm what it charges for quarterly bookkeeping and you will usually get a range, then a pause, then "it depends on the client". Both parts are true, and the pause is the problem.

How pricing drifts

A firm sets a price, then discounts for a client who was a favour, then holds a price for three years because raising it means a conversation, then quotes a new client from memory of the last quote rather than from the list.

After five years the book has no price structure — it has a history. Two similar clients pay materially different fees for reasons nobody can now reconstruct.

A catalogue with explicit overrides

The fix is not to eliminate per-client pricing; it is to make it explicit. Keep one catalogue price per service, and record each client's deviation as an override on their record.

The catalogue answers "what do we charge for this?" The override answers "and why is this client different?" — and because the override is a field rather than a memory, it survives the person who granted it.

Raising fees on a recurring book

With a catalogue, an increase is one change to the catalogue price plus a decision about which overrides to retire. Without one, it is a negotiation per client, which is why most firms do not do it.

The mechanical part matters more than it sounds: firms that can see the whole fee structure at once raise fees more regularly and by smaller increments, which clients tolerate far better than a 20% correction every five years.

• One catalogue price per service, visible to everyone quoting.
• Per-client overrides recorded as data, with a note on why.
• Recurring revenue computed from assignments, not maintained by hand.
• Smaller, more frequent increases beat rare corrections.