I should first mention that the pricing table further up, is incorrect. The initial proposals were reduced considerably before we launched Affinity back in 2013.
I don’t believe Affinity is expensive compared to other products on the market. You can license 10 Large accounts on Affinity for just £25.45 per month. I don’t believe this is matched by any other major cloud accounting provider.
I accept we do have a different model to some other providers in the sense that the we bill the accountant directly, rather than billing the client a higher amount and passing on a referral fee. Even if you took on an XL client, the £3.00 monthly fee to cover the cost of adding them to Affinity can be rolled into your offering. Ultimately the client will pay less and allow you to operate more competitively.
Affinity also allows you to white label all of your managed accounts, setup shared Workspaces and take advantage of the additional reporting and deadline tracking capabilities.
We do have some plans in the pipeline to offer referral and volume discounts for Affinity, it’s something we should be able to look at later this year.
Thanks for your response. I 100% agree that there is no software as good as QF at the moment which gives a lot of ease to work and facilities.
The only point I am struggling is there should be a more clear price plan for accountants and clients instead of working it out on the basis of usage.
I need more understanding towards pricing so I can layout a more clear draft to my clients and also fully take on Affinity.
Regards,
Kube
The bottom line is that the most you will pay is £2.97+VAT per client per month (for XL accounts). If they use it less you’ll pay less but that is the basic number you can use to set your own pricing.
From very early on we decided to adopt a pricing model that works on the basis of account size linked to transaction volumes. Typically this is the closest we can get to aligning our fees with our own internal overheads, larger accounts consume more resources and bandwidth. This model also allows us to offer better discounts on smaller accounts.
Our billing area in Affinity makes it really easy to see exactly what you’re spending, as costs are accrued and reported daily. Disconnecting accounts mid-month means you’ll only pay for the exact number of days the account was connected.
I would suggest setting up a trial account on Affinity and using the free £10 credit to see how the billing works. I don’t think you will see wild fluctuations in your monthly spend.
If a large client has paid an annual fee to use QF, and I add them sometime later to my Affinty account, I understand that I pay a monthly fee as long as they are attached to me, so we are paying twice for the same thing?
If I then add a new large client do we both still pay a fee or just me?
The Power User Subscription comes with it’s own features and is a separate product from Affinity. So if they’re added to Affinity after purchasing the Power User Subscription, they are paying for additional feature that you wouldn’t get without the subscription (such as advanced customisation, email history, invoice history etc.).
If you create a new QuickFile account from scratch and they grow to become L or XL, then they won’t need to pay for a Power User Subscription, but they can do if they wish to gain access to the additional features.
I am struggling to see the point of Affinity, if one of my small clients signs up he gets it for free, if I sign him up through affinity I pay a monthly fee
Since December 2015 all QuickFile accounts graded “Large” (1,000 nominal entries per year) or above require a subscription (£45 + vat per year). An equivalent account managed on Affinity would come out at around £30 + vat per year, there’s also additional volume discounts available once your Affinity spend exceeds £50 + vat per month.
The other benefits of using Affinity includes custom branding on all accounts, shared Workspace areas, Companies House tracking and zero promotions, i.e. your users will be interfacing with a branded version of the portal with no offers appearing from other accountants (QuickFile Connect).