Blog · Wallet share and penetration · Tax and accounting
How an accounting or tax practice measures which service lines each client uses against the norm for clients like them, values the advisory gap, and builds a season watch of clients with a filing deadline in the window and no engagement opened, reconciled to billed fees.
An accounting firm does the tax return for two hundred owner-managed businesses and has advised eleven of them. The eleven were the ones who asked. The other 189 are in the practice management system with their year ends, their filing dates and their fee history, and nobody has looked at them as a list. This guide sets out the two lists that come from that data: service-line gaps, and the season watch.
Per client:
Service-line share = lines used ÷ lines in the norm for the client's size and sector Gap value = Σ (missing lines × the firm's average fees per line for that band) Season watch = a filing deadline in the window and no engagement opened
Per partner:
Gap total, watch list ranked by last year's fees, and concentration in the top three clients
Client identifiers only.
billed fees = Σ offices = Σ partners = Σ clients = Σ service lines
The by-service-line equality catches a line re-coded after a software migration. The by-partner equality catches a client shared after a partner's retirement.
Owner-managed business band, norm of four lines. One client, year end in ten weeks.
| Service line | Used | Fees last year | In norm | Gap at rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compliance and returns | Yes | £4,200 | Yes | |
| Bookkeeping | Yes | £1,800 | Yes | |
| Payroll | No | Yes | £900 | |
| Advisory | No | Yes | £3,500 | |
| Audit | No | No |
Two of four, £4,400 of gap, most of it advisory. The year-end deadline is in ten weeks and no engagement has been opened. The partner's list opens here: the compliance conversation is due anyway, and the advisory gap is the second half of it.
Deadlines missing. Clients without a recorded year end fall out of the watch. Count them and get the date onto the client master.
Lines named by software. A migration renames "Accounts prep" to "Compliance" and the history splits. A mapping table from every historical name.
Group and family clients. A director and their company as two clients with partial lines each. Roll up to the relationship the partner manages.
Advisory sold under compliance. Advice billed within the compliance fee never appears as advisory. Either bill it separately or accept that the advisory gap is overstated and say so.
Mapped once, the billed fees export and the calendar produce the gap list and the season watch per partner at any point in the year, reconciled to billed fees. Covirage builds this from the export as it is, client identifiers only. The tax and accounting page describes the setup, and you can upload a sample fees export and see the roll-up on your own rows.
The lines the firm bills: compliance and tax returns, bookkeeping, payroll, audit, advisory, and whatever else appears on the fee note. The norm per client band is computed from your own clients, so a line the firm barely sells never enters a norm until it does.
Far enough to act. For a self-assessment or year-end deadline, ninety days before the filing date with no engagement opened is the point where a call still helps. Set the window per deadline type.
Only if the firm decides so. Each partner sees their own clients; the managing partner sees the roll-up. Client identifiers stand in for names.