Bookgel Launches AI-Assisted Pricing & Closing App for Accountants

“Too many accountants are giving away their services and selling from the hip and this has got to stop.  There should not be any guesswork in this crucial phase of the practice,” said Marc Howard, co-founder of Bookgel.

“Underpricing and not getting paid for valuable advice is now a thing of the past with Bookgel. We’ve found that accountants can command five to 10 times their typical fees simply by better presenting their value to clients and having them pay for the relationship, not just the work. Accountants now have an easy-to-use technology for value-based selling, pricing, and closing without needing to change their services. Bookgel does the heavy-lifting and just works right out of the box. No more stressful computations and delays when procuring new clients or raising fees for existing ones.”

Bookgel was developed by Allan Ratafia and Marc Howard, the duo that brought the accounting profession BizPayO, a 3-in-1 web platform for online payments, proposals, and automated Google reviews. From the BizPayO platform, Ratafia and Howard, who started their careers at PwC and Gartner respectively, were able to gather an enormous amount of pricing data where they observed accountants weren’t closing as frequently and quickly as they could be. They wanted to make the sales process easier so they hatched Bookgel. After a year of beta testing accountants are already having success using the app – many having doubled or tripled their annual revenues – but a very aggressive road map is in place geared to unlock profit for the boutique and niche accounting firms.

“Our sister companies BizPayO and Build Your Firm produce a treasure trove of industry data related to fees that accountants charge based on service level and geography.  This big data is gold.  We can clearly see a disparity in the way firms charge.  Some firms charge $200 per month while others charge $800 per month for a client with the same needs in the same location.” said Allan Ratafia, co-founder of Bookgel.

“This problem needed a solution so we built Bookgel to harness our data and discreetly share it with accountants so firms can be confident when closing new business.  If a firm that is notoriously underpricing knows that others are charging more, they become inspired to charge more too. Effectively revolutionizing their practice.  But closing business is not just about showing a fee, it’s knowing what to say and when.  So we built a visual closing tool into Bookgel that walks the accountant through what to say and when including a transparent expression of value in actual dollars at the right stage in the process.  The results so far have been significantly higher fees with stronger closing rates.”

How it works

Bookgel is 100 percent cloud-based. Simply bring up the app and with a few clicks, the accountant can demonstrate to their prospect or existing client their services while prompting the right questions to ask. Over screen share, the client can see how much they can save by working with the accountant before seeing the engagement price. The accountant can then easily show the client their personalized fee – including projected savings – and send a proposal that, once signed, prompts payment straight to their bank account.  

The proprietary algorithm uses AI-based pricing and draws from 50 different factors automatically checking more than 100 data points such as niche, entity type, location, condition of books, the complexity of work, revenue and upsell opportunities.

Be a Bookgel early adopter

Bookgel was recently released from beta after over a year of testing and is now accepting a limited number of “early adopter” firms. Accountants can learn more about Bookgel and try today at www.bookgel.com.