AJ Zepeda had seen how billing breaks a firm long before Maverick existed. Across earlier practices, he watched the same pattern repeat: work started before terms were locked, payments lagged, and receivables piled up. At one firm, outstanding AR would sit at $50,000 or more at any given time, a mix of tax and monthly accounting clients who fell behind because nothing required them to pay automatically. Collections meant staff time, phone calls, and uncomfortable follow-up. The smaller practice he and his wife ran before Maverick still carried around $5,000 in open receivables that had to be chased.
"I knew from day one I didn't want to have accounts receivable.”
AJ Zepeda, Co-Founding Partner, Maverick Accounting
The billing work itself was slow. Setting the right recurring amounts, entering everything into QuickBooks, tracking who had paid, and reconciling it all added up. So did the gap between sending an engagement letter and getting it signed, which routinely ran weeks. By the time a signed agreement came back, the team had often already started the work, taking on delivery risk before payment terms were in place.
Credit cards were their own recurring headache. On the old setup, the firm kept card payments switched off, then had to manually calculate a fee and adjust the invoice whenever a client asked to pay by card, then switch the option off again. AJ's word for it was "a pain."
Underneath all of it was a cost structure that never sat right with him. The platforms he knew in the space priced by client count or by seat, so the bill climbed as the firm grew, whether or not those clients paid on time. When three partners came together to build Maverick, AJ was not looking to fix a billing system later. He wanted to choose one up front that would not repeat any of this, and would not tax the firm for growing.
Why Anchor
AJ first came across Anchor at a conference, then connected with the team afterward. He already knew the category well, DocuSign and PandaDoc for signatures, manual invoicing in QuickBooks, and the per-client platforms that dominate accounting billing. What set Anchor apart was not a single feature. It was the economics.
Most platforms AJ had seen charge by client count or by seat, so the software bill rises as the firm grows. Anchor charges a flat fee per payment and passes credit card processing fees to clients. For a firm planning to scale, that difference decided it. The cost of the system would track the firm's actual payment volume, not punish it for adding clients, and AJ would always know exactly what a payment cost him.
"I love that it was just a flat fee per payment. That makes so much more sense in billing your clients, because then you know exactly what your costs are going to be. It's not like you have to pay this platform fee based on how many employees are set up, or you have this many clients.”
AJ Zepeda, Co-Founding Partner, Maverick Accounting
The second draw was structural. Anchor collects a payment method at signing, so the agreement and the billing relationship start in one motion. That let Maverick adopt a rule it still runs by: no work begins until a client has signed and billing is live. The weeks-long gap between engagement letter and first payment, the gap that used to expose firms to delivering work before terms were set, simply closed.
Rather than move the whole book at once, the partners piloted Anchor with a handful of clients in December before committing. The result convinced them fast.
Going straight from engagement letter to billing, with no separate signature tool and no manual invoice setup, was the simplification that sealed it. Maverick launched on Anchor and has run on it since.
"The first couple of clients, it was just like, wow, they're paying us. The agreement is signed and everything's in there. It was super easy.”
AJ Zepeda, Co-Founding Partner, Maverick Accounting
Implementation
Because Maverick launched on Anchor from its first day, there was no legacy billing system to unwind. The friction came from a different place: the three partners were bringing clients over from their separate prior practices, and every one of those clients had to be signed onto fresh agreements under the new LLC. The first couple of months were bumpy for that reason. AJ is clear that the friction was the firm's own, a function of moving people onto new paperwork, not anything to do with Anchor.
Once clients were on their agreements, billing ran without manual intervention, and the partners kept building on the setup as they went. Three changes did the most work.
"Now we just prorate the first month, call it good, and it starts auto billing on the first.”
AJ Zepeda, Co-Founding Partner, Maverick Accounting
They turned on prorated billing for the first month of every new engagement, so the opening invoice calculates and sends automatically no matter when in the month a client signs. That removed the judgment calls about who gets charged when.
They set invoices to auto-draft after 15 days for out-of-scope work, so ad hoc charges stop slipping through uncaptured.
And they added an auto-acceptance clause to proposals for clients who don't respond within 30 days, which pulls forward the slow signers who used to stall new engagements.
The pattern across all three is the same one that drew AJ to Anchor in the first place: set the rule once at signing, then let the system run it. Eighteen months in, the partners have kept layering on automation rather than adding billing work.
Eighteen months in, at roughly 65 clients billed a month, the model AJ chose up front is paying off in three distinct ways.
Lower, predictable costs. Anchor's flat fee per payment, with card fees passed to clients, means Maverick's billing cost tracks payment volume instead of client count. AJ estimates the firm saves $500 to $1,000 a month against the per-client and credit-card handling it would face elsewhere, roughly $6,000 to $12,000 a year. Just as valuable to him is the predictability: he always knows exactly what a payment costs.
More revenue per client. Maverick uses Anchor's tiered proposals to offer three base packages, each with optional add-ons a client can select at signing. AJ estimates those packages and add-ons have brought in an additional $10,000 to $15,000 a year in revenue the firm would not otherwise have captured, and he expects that figure to grow next year as the team expands its package structure.
Partner time back. The billing work that used to fall on the partners, setting recurring amounts, entering data into QuickBooks, and chasing payments, is largely gone. AJ estimates it saves at least 10 hours a month, mostly partner time, which adds up to about three weeks a year. That time has moved to revenue-generating work and to building out how the firm uses AI. As AJ put it, he is no longer worried about tracking down a payment and can focus on making the firm better.
Underpinning all three is a receivables position most firms never reach. Because Maverick starts billing the moment a client signs and never begins work before that, it carries almost no accounts receivable at any point, apart from the occasional one-off charge that clears within about 15 days. The AR problem AJ watched drain his prior firms was never allowed to form at Maverick.
"We don't start anything until a client has signed and billing has started. As soon as they pull the trigger, we're off and running.”
AJ Zepeda, Co-Founding Partner, Maverick Accounting
The Takeaway
Most firms adopt a billing system to fix a problem they already have. Maverick did the opposite. The partners chose Anchor before their first client, so the receivables, the collection calls, and the fee headaches AJ had lived through at earlier firms never got the chance to take hold.
The decision came down to economics. A flat fee per payment, rather than a bill that climbs with every client or seat, meant Maverick's costs would scale with its payments and never penalize growth. Eighteen months and about 65 monthly clients later, that choice is worth an estimated $6,000 to $12,000 a year against per-client alternatives, the tiered packages built on top of it have added an estimated $10,000 to $15,000 in annual revenue, and the partners have roughly three weeks a year back to spend on revenue and building the firm instead of chasing payments.
For an owner weighing options, AJ's case is less about any one feature than about the model underneath it. Pick the system that gets you paid before the work starts and charges you by the payment, not the headcount, and the problems most firms spend years managing never have to be managed at all.
See what a consolidated billing system could do for your firm.
We’ll walk you through what an Anchor shaped transformation looks like for your practice.