How PBS Consulting Recovered up to $50,000 in Unbilled Revenue and Cut Billing Platform Costs in Half with Anchor

01 · The Challenge

Two billing problems were costing PBS Consulting & Tax Solutions real money every year, and both were rooted in the same issue: not enough admin capacity to execute consistently.

“I still have a billing spreadsheet where I was entering what they should have paid, what they did pay, if there were add-ons, if there were subscriptions, if there were ad hocs. That's how we were doing it manually because we had no way to track it otherwise.”
Sam Hallburn, Director of Operations, PBS Consulting & Tax Solutions

The first was annual price increases. The firm had the right language in every engagement letter, but without a system to automate the increase, execution depended on Sam and her operations manager sitting down each October, going through every client one by one, building new agreements, tracking which clients had signed the new version, manually ending the old agreement after signature, and chasing stragglers. Timing errors created double-billing situations at the start of the year. At one point, five years had passed without Sam raising her prices at all, simply because the admin effort to do it properly was too high.

The second problem was ad hoc and out-of-scope billing. For a firm without a dedicated billing person, the steps required to bill for work done outside the engagement, researching the scope, drafting an invoice, getting approval, entering it in the system, meant that thousands of dollars of completed work was routinely left unbilled. Sam estimates the firm lost between $20,000 and $50,000 per year in ad hoc revenue before putting systems in place to capture it.

“I can't even count the tens of thousands of dollars I haven't billed for because the admin time to go in and create the invoices or go in and remember to re-scope. I basically let thousands and thousands of dollars of scope creep go because of the admin necessity.”
Sam Hallburn, Director of Operations, PBS Consulting & Tax Solutions

02 · The SolutionWhy Anchor

Sam evaluated Anchor alongside one other platform, Forwardly. By the time she had worked through what Anchor offered, she had stopped looking at alternatives. The feature set covered what the previous platform had been missing. The subscription model eliminated the flat monthly fee. And the onboarding team closed the deal.

Sam credits the people at Anchor as the deciding factor. The firm's model is built on relationships, and she needed to trust the same from a vendor. That trust was established quickly during the evaluation and has held throughout the relationship.

“You could have charged double the amount, and I still would have made the move because of the people. The mission behind what Anchor's trying to do with the accounting community was just a really good fit for our model, which is a people-first, human-first approach.”
Sam Hallburn, Director of Operations, PBS Consulting & Tax Solutions

Implementation

Setting up Anchor prompted a broader rethinking of how billing operated across the firm. Sam built in a 3% minimum annual increase as a standard term in every new engagement. The increase, the timing, and the terms are disclosed to clients upfront at signing. A re-scope triggered by volume or service changes sits alongside the automatic increase as a separate line item, but the baseline 3% runs without any action required.

For ad hoc billing, the firm established a workflow between account managers and the office manager. Accountants log out-of-scope work through a defined process and communicate billing instructions to the office manager at month-end. Clients pre-approve ad hoc charges up to a defined threshold within the agreement, which means the office manager can bill on the 15th without a separate approval conversation each time.

Anchor's 5-day silent approval feature became a key part of how scope additions are handled. Changes are sent to the client, and if there is no response, the agreement updates automatically.

“The five-day approval if the client doesn’t do anything was gold. We would just change it, send it out, and if they did nothing about it, it would just auto-approve. And it actually made people pay attention and not just ignore things, because they knew it was going to be accepted if they didn't have the conversation.”
Sam Hallburn, Director of Operations, PBS Consulting & Tax Solutions

03 · The ResultsDirect Savings

The impact showed up in four areas, all based on Sam's own estimates and observations:

* $20,000+ in ad hoc revenue billed in the first year of refined processes. Sam estimates the firm previously lost double that annually, between $20,000 and $50,000 per year, due to insufficient billing infrastructure.
* Billing platform costs cut in half. Anchor's model charges per transaction rather than a flat monthly subscription, reducing the firm's cost of having the platform regardless of usage.
* 3% automatic annual increases now execute reliably, disclosed to clients upfront and built into every agreement. The firm had previously gone up to five years without raising prices.
* More than 10 hours reclaimed per year from the annual renewal process alone, previously split between Sam and her operations manager each October.

The 3% increase ran without a word from clients. Sam discovered it when reviewing January financials and noticed revenue was up without any new clients having joined. The increase had simply processed as configured.

“I'm one of those who, if it can be screwed up, I'm going to screw it up. I haven't screwed up Anchor much. Because it's not complicated. It really is clear. It allows you to be flexible with your clients.”
Sam Hallburn, Director of Operations, PBS Consulting & Tax Solutions

Ad hoc billing time has dropped to approximately a quarter of what it previously required, now that the account manager and office manager communication workflow is in place and clients have pre-approved charges within their agreements.

A less measurable but equally valued change is the one Sam describes in terms of flexibility. Anchor's ability to push blanket terms updates to all clients at once removed what had been a one-by-one manual process every time an engagement letter needed updating. For a firm whose clients consistently surface new edge cases, that matters.

Sam describes herself as someone who, given the chance, will find a way to make something complicated. Anchor has not given her that chance.

“If you're on the fence, jump. It'll be better no matter what. You're not going to lose anything at all. You're only going to gain. Knowing that the people behind it are awesome makes it that much better.”
Sam Hallburn, Director of Operations, PBS Consulting & Tax Solutions