Accountant Proposal Template

Accounting service providers and accounting firms use an accounting services proposal to answer a proposal request (RFP) from an organization. The accounting proposal is a professional document used to recommend the need for a prospective client to hire the services of a third-party accounting company in running their day-to-day accounting. The idea of writing an accounting services proposal lies in presenting the cause of the accounting firm to potential clients, letting them (the clients) know what to expect and how their needs are to be met. 

When a request for proposal is sent, it indicates that the client is yet unsure about the kind of services he needs. Businesses that are not financially inclined sometimes struggle to cope with the tasks of reconciling figures and documents. The accounting proposal is a professional document that reveals your competence and ability in financial accounting and related services. You are expected to craft an accounting services proposal that shows the clients' exact needs, details how your firm can address them and shows your firm as an authority in the client's perception.

Firms regularly outsource their accounting needs to lower the internal cost of operations and employee size. Accounting is vast, covering bookkeeping, payrolls, taxes, regulatory compliance, and whatnot, and needs professional handling to ensure seamless operations. The task of hiring capable hands to handle a company's accounting needs internally is daunting. Additionally, the cost of employing a full-time in-house accounting department can be burdensome. Businesses mostly prefer to settle for relegating their financials to acclaimed professionals in accounting, while the organization focuses on innovations and general progress. Outsourcing accounting needs is a rather clever and less expensive way to hire an accounting team.

To win the accounting deals, you need to craft a detailed proposal that emphasizes all clients' needs and benefits from working with you. As it attempts to convince an organization to hire your services, an accounting proposal presents factual information that relates to the client, in particular. Accounting needs differ across different parameters. Smaller businesses have more minor accounting needs than larger businesses. Enterprises have more extensive bookkeeping needs than private companies. Some business niches like supply chain and distribution require more detailed accounting than straightforward service providers, for instance. The accounting proposal should reflect your understanding of the clients' business, the demands, and the volume of work involved. By tailoring your proposal to the clients' business, you gain more credibility.

In a typical accounting services proposal, the helpful aspects of the accounting firm's services should be sufficiently detailed. It is essential to avoid misleading the client with fanciful words and over-bloated promises. Although the accounting proposal attempts to convince and win a client, the information within the document must be written as professionally as possible to present your services in the right light. While written communication forms the essential part of the accounting proposal, graphic presentation is also a necessary part. Freelancers can utilize written words and graphics images to add more solidity to their accounting proposal.

An accounting proposal is a professional document; hence, the need to be absolutely professional while drafting it cannot be overemphasized. Freelancers should resist the urge to sound casual in an accounting proposal, as the target audience is highly knowledgeable and professional. While language is essential in communication, the organization of the body of work is equally important. The accounting proposal aims to familiarize prospective clients with your abilities in chronological order. Freelancers need to do enough research before commencing the drafting of the work. It is also important to note that assumptions and probabilities are irrelevant in such a document.

The best way to start writing an accounting proposal is first to draft an outline. Freelancers need to shorten the concerns of the accounting services initially, then prepare a proper writing strategy based on the request for proposal. The RFP reveals the need of the client, to an extent, and also the nature of the business which the client is concerned with. The accounting service information should be collected, as well, before any form of writing begins, along with relevant pictorial details.

To start writing, you can begin with an executive summary, an overview of the accounting service. The executive summary highlights why your firm is the best fit for the partnership and details the agreement's benefits to the client. A brief history of the accounting service should be written in this section, highlighting the strengths of your business and your affiliations with regulating firms in the financial sector. Businesses largely trust recognized players, so the freelancer is required to put in a lot of work into getting necessarily helpful information that would boost the image of their accounting brand.

The next step is to delve into your qualifications. While the overview provided a general perspective of the accounting service, this section recalls previous similar projects and details on your performance. Businesses largely trust customer reviews as a guide in decision making, so the freelancer should attempt to show experiences from previous clients to the prospective customers and possibly, present references from these existing clients.

With trust fully established, you can go on ahead to deconstruct and explain your work modules and techniques that will be crucial in addressing the client's needs. In well-detailed sections, the accounting proposal should reveal the accounting service's solutions and strategies tailored to the client's needs. The manner of writing in this section should be both revelatory and descriptive, offering the client the chance to understand the service you offer and how it stands to benefit their organization. A proper accounting proposal should also clearly point to all the services rendered by the accounting firm, timelines, and deadlines if any, and every other additional information that will inform the client sufficiently.

A typical accounting proposal document should address three vital things, which include the branding of your business, the services you offer and how they are tailored to the client's needs, and how the client can quickly close the deal and seal the contract.

There are specific sets of information an accounting proposal should cover. Firstly, in the overview section, the company information should be detailed. No one wants to associate with unscrupulous and shady firms; company history, contact details, licensing, and certifications should be in the overview section. The clients want to know who they will be trusting with their financial information, so include a very detailed overview that gives enough insight into your business.

Another piece of information necessary for the trustworthiness of your service proposal is clients' testimonials and references. Businesses want to avoid risks as much as possible and they favor trusted options. Your qualifications section should detail the identities of clients to which you already provide services, and very necessary, the clients' reviews of the service they received. Testimonials from satisfied clients should be attached to this section, and if the accounting services helped the business scale, it should be well defined.

Team and employee information should also be included in an accounting proposition. Any shadiness and lack of clarity will result in distrust on the part of the client. The number of employees hired by the accounting service, if any, and the management details should be clearly stated. Contact details like email addresses, roles and responsibilities, qualifications, degrees, and even years of experience should be included.

Your services are another set of information that must be in an accounting proposal. Businesses do not intend to pay a nickel for less than average services, so it is vital to detail the services offered in the accounting proposal. How does your firm reconcile tax payments and integrate with existing software? Does your firm have its software, or will the client's existing accounting software be sufficient? How does your accounting firm hope to eliminate backlogs of wages and compensation payments? It is essential to reveal how your brand's services can address the client's problems and how effectively you can be on-boarded onto their existing systems. It is equally important, as well, that the manner of execution is communicated correctly. Does your brand favor paperwork over the cloud? What kind of information does your brand require clients to give access to? How can your brand assure the security of the financial records that are in their possession? These, and many more, are questions that need to be answered in an accounting proposal template.

Finally, the billing information and pricing of the accounting firm's services should be spelled out. The pricing model, either per feature or per service, should also be made clear in the proposal template. There should be a fixed cost estimate, and the pricing schedule should also be detailed per service. 

For the freelancer, writing an accounting proposal is a daunting task that requires a lot of background research and professionalism. We at Indy are well aware of the struggles new business owners face, so we’ve prepared a database of proposal templates that you can use. They are fully customizable, so add your brand’s logo, include all necessary information that we’ve outlined for you above, and send it to your client for approval.