Hi. Founder here. In 2012 $20B was billed by the top 100 audit firms. $14B+ on accounting consulting services. Another $14B+ on tax advisory.

We're headed in that direction and consulting services as well.

Really all time-based billing suffers from an inherent conflict of interest. The supplier controls the inventory. They control the amount, price, and quality of inventory consumed while the buyer has little if any data.

For your own situation, when you ask your CPA for a budget follow up with a request for a fixed fee proposal. If the two numbers differ significantly, ask for an explanation of why costs might exceed budget. That at least gives you a starting point. You could ask for time sheets, but if it's a one-person show, there may not be any time sheets. Fixed fee is the answer.

I own an S-corp and even single person, my accounting/tax bills are over $2500 per year. That may not seem like a lot because that is considered the average cost in my area but i just want to know how they got that number. All I get is an invoice with a list of things he did but no way to connect those things with the amount. Solve this problem and you might get a paying customer!!

How is a third party going to divine data that isn't included in the bill?

If you want an hourly breakdown and your current service isn't providing one, you need to demand it, or simply find a new service.

Anyone billing hourly, one-man-shop or otherwise, ought to be able to provide an hourly breakdown.

I charge consulting rates, and if you'd ask me to specify by the hour what I do I'd tell you to stuff it. People routinely asking for hourly breakdowns, for work that priced entirely reasonable and who are kept in the loop on what is done and at what rate, are pathological customers you don't want in the first place.

(lawyers are used to billing in 6 minute increments, and while I think it's interesting to go over their bills, I'd pay them (at least my current firm) the amounts they ask too if they wouldn't provide me with a specified bill. I sometimes feel sorry for them, what kind of life is that, having to write down the time for every 2 minute email you write?)

If you don't trust your professional services suppliers enough to pay their bills without knowing what they did hour-by-hour, you need to find other people who work for you, because that's not a healthy relationship you have.

It's not about trusting what they did, it's about being able to forecast and budget for what you might like them to do in the future. If it was "services, 20 hours" you have no idea what part of a project/task/matter might have been a cost-effective use of your budget.

Your accountant is probably billing you for total time spent, not itemizing for specific tasks. Alternatively, you may have a fixed fee arrangement (check your contract!) in which case you are being invoiced $2500 regardless of the time actually spent.

Our CPA works at a fixed cost which we agreed to after a lengthy discussion and initial upfront investigation fee for his time. We're really happy with this arrangement, and we use Xero (included with the CPA, not an extra) to make sure the work is being done and with no surprises.

We (SimpleLegal) just quietly rolled out an integration with Xero. Curious to know what you think of Xero.

I've been using it for years and never used a competing product except at a glance so I will be biased, but the clean interface makes me happy and for developers it's fantastic, being able to write integrations. Plus very simple to use after not much training, and Xero are serious about rolling out updates that are meaningful. That, for us is the best I think. Sure, still some ways to go as things like U.S. sales tax is tricky (and getting trickier) but at least having an interface like Xero let's you quickly see where you are at at any moment. Would recommend it to any size of business.

Well in the UK, thanks to some new regulations (RDR), they have to justify every charge and itemise.

The number of IFA's is now dropping rapidly. They're moving into real estate and selling cars where they can continue to rip people off.