01 · The Challenge
Like many firm owners, Erik had built a billing process that worked well enough in the early days but became harder to manage as the client roster expanded. Proposals were built manually. Engagement letters required a separate step. And invoice follow-up fell to whoever had bandwidth.
Before Anchor, Lexiam's client onboarding and billing process involved several steps. When a prospective client agreed to move forward, the firm would send a PowerPoint-style proposal covering services and pricing. Once the client approved that document, a separate letter of engagement followed, covering payment terms and legal specifics. Clients would then provide their payment information within that agreement. Billing itself ran through QuickBooks Online, with invoices generated and sent manually.
Building a proposal took his team approximately four hours from start to finish. That time included drafting the scope, formatting the document, customizing it for each client, and then producing the accompanying engagement letter. It was a process that worked, but it consumed a significant portion of Erik's week and sat squarely on his to-do list.
Annual price increases presented a separate challenge. Raising rates meant initiating individual client conversations, explaining the reasoning, and updating billing records one by one.
As Lexiam added clients and services, the manual nature of the process became harder to sustain. Erik wanted a path that would allow his team to step back from billing administration without losing oversight or control.
02 · The SolutionWhy Anchor
Erik's primary goal was to simplify and centralize the billing process. He wanted a single place to handle proposals, agreements, and payment collection rather than moving between multiple tools and documents. Three things stood out during his evaluation.
First, the cost structure. Anchor's model, with no monthly subscription fee and processing charges only when payments clear, offered a lower ongoing cost compared to maintaining QuickBooks Online alongside separate billing tooling.
Second, the ability to build recurring services as reusable templates. With a defined set of four or five core services that most clients purchase, the prospect of templating those once and reusing them across proposals was immediately appealing.
Third, automated annual price increases. The ability to program a percentage increase that applies automatically on a set date removed the need for individual client conversations about rate changes.
Implementation
Lexiam's rollout happened in stages. The initial onboarding call included Erik and another senior team member, after which the process was handed off internally before ultimately landing with the firm's billing administrator. Getting fully oriented took longer than expected because of that internal transition, but once the billing administrator took ownership and built out Anchor's service templates to match Lexiam's specific offerings, the platform clicked into place.
The firm migrated its simpler fixed-fee clients first, working through straightforward recurring engagements before tackling more complex arrangements. Hourly clients, who require a different billing setup, are currently being piloted. A broader migration of hourly engagements is planned once that workflow is confirmed to run smoothly.
Anchor's support team was a meaningful part of making the transition work. The firm's billing administrator described the support experience as unusual in the software world: responses within minutes, proactive outreach when an invoice failed to process, and the ability for support staff to view the account directly without requiring a screen share or login handover. That accessibility made the learning curve manageable.
03 · The ResultsDirect Saving
The most immediate change was in proposal time. What previously required approximately four hours of work per client now takes around 30 minutes, based on the firm's own assessment. The shift came from two things working together: Anchor's service templates, which allow the billing administrator to select the relevant services with a few clicks rather than writing them out fresh each time, and a streamlined workflow that removes the separate engagement letter step entirely. Once a client approves the proposal within Anchor, their payment information is collected as part of that same signing flow.
New clients are now signed and set up in Anchor by default. All new engagements go through the platform from the first proposal, which means the manual, multi-document process is no longer part of how Lexiam brings on business. Automated annual price increases are set to run on a calendar year cycle without any manual intervention.
Recurring billing now runs without Erik's involvement. Clients connected their payment method when they signed, and invoices collect automatically on the agreed schedule. The administrative weight of billing, which previously sat on Erik's to-do list each month, has been removed from his workload.
Roughly half of Lexiam's clients have been migrated to Anchor. The remaining clients include those with more complex scope arrangements or pricing that needs to be updated before migration, as well as the hourly clients currently in pilot. As those conversations happen, additional clients will move to the platform.
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