Using AI is not a reason to cut your fees

Sooner or later a client will ask. If a machine is doing most of the work now, why is the bill the same?

Kevin Lord, Firmcheck CRO, put that question to the panel at our AI agents session on 1 October. It had come up in the chat too, alongside letters of engagement and what clients need to be told. The answers he got disagreed on almost everything except the conclusion: don't drop your prices. (watch)

Your client isn't paying for the hours

Celso Pinto, who runs Connector Central, took what he called the contrarian view. As a client himself, he said that how his accountants do the work doesn't matter to him at all. He pays them "primarily for some reassurance that we're compliant with HMRC". Whether they get there with AI, a chisel and a rock, or an abacus makes no difference. (watch)

What does worry him is whether the firm will still be around in a few years. That's a reason to adopt AI, not to discount for using it.

Kevin agreed, more bluntly. Most clients treat their accountant as a keep-out-of-jail card. They want your name on the return so they don't get into trouble. That is what the fee buys.

And if a client does ask you to cut your fees because you use AI? Celso's answer: "By all means, fire them and find better clients."

Faster is worth more, not less

Billie Mcloughlin, who runs Aiccountancy, made the commercial case. In almost any other industry, faster costs more. Order something from New York for delivery tomorrow and you pay a lot more for the speed. AI makes a firm faster and often more accurate, with the accountant's judgement still on top. That is a better service, and in her view "people should actually be paying a premium." (watch)

The early numbers point the same way. In Xero's May 2026 survey of 520 UK accountants and bookkeepers, three in five practices using AI had put the time it saved into advisory work, the highest-margin service most firms offer. The best-performing firms were the most likely to be planning significant price rises.

Your own costs are going up

Billie's second point is the one firms are most likely to miss. "Do not reduce your prices because you're using AI," she said, "because you'll have to shoot them back up." (watch)

The detail is worth getting right. The cost of a single unit of AI, for a given level of capability, has been falling fast. What businesses actually pay has been going the other way. Microsoft raised its commercial Microsoft 365 prices from 1 July 2026 by around 16% on average, and tied the increase to the AI it has built into the suite. GitHub moved its Copilot coding assistant from flat-rate premium requests to usage-based billing in June. As a firm uses AI for more of its work, the bill grows faster than the unit price falls.

A fee you cut today against a cost that rises next year is margin you won't get back without an awkward conversation.

Billie also had a reason to start now rather than wait. With any new technology, the return in the early months is "through the floor". Better to take that while the tools are cheap than later, when they cost more and the firms that started earlier are further ahead.

What to tell clients

Marcus Batson, Head of Customer Success at Sodium, focused on the relationship. Be clear about what you use and why, especially where client data is involved, and be clear that you remain in control of and responsible for the work. Most clients are comfortable with that. Nobody, in his words, really cares "how the sausage is made" as long as the result is right. (watch)

His more useful point was where to spend the time AI gives back. Spend it on things clients notice: a proposal that quotes back what the client said in their onboarding call, or one that simply carries their logo. Touches like that are cheap for an assistant to produce and rare enough amongst firms to justify a higher fee.

Before your next renewal round

Pick the five clients whose work AI has sped up most this year. For each, write down what they got that they didn't get last year: a faster turnaround, an earlier warning, a better proposal. If the list is empty, that is the gap to close before anyone asks about fees. If it isn't, you already have your answer when they do.

The full recording of the panel is here.