How TaxProMarketer Eliminated Up to $100,000 a Year in Credit Card Processing Fees with Anchor

01 · The Challenge

For years, TaxProMarketer ran its billing on PandaDoc paired with Stripe and a separate CRM to capture and process payment information. The arrangement was functional, but barely. Getting a signed agreement into a payment workflow required moving data across multiple tools. Christian Jones, the firm's CEO, describes it as "a bit of a gymnastics move."

“We have 27 people. Not everyone engages with our proposals or billing, but enough people do that we needed something the whole team could understand and use.”
Christian Jones, CEO, TaxProMarketer

Editing an existing agreement was time-consuming and clunky. Once a contract was signed, updating scope or pricing required significant workarounds. The search function in PandaDoc made it difficult to locate a specific agreement quickly, so answering a billing question often meant pulling in a salesperson or account manager when billing or client support staff could not find what they needed on their own.

Underneath all of it was a growing line item that had become impossible to ignore. The firm was paying roughly $7,000 to $10,000 per month in credit card processing fees, with no simple way to pass those costs to clients or offer a lower-cost payment alternative. Over the course of a year, that added up to somewhere between $80,000 and $100,000 going out the door. Christian was tracking it closely alongside the firm's CFO and bookkeeper, and the number kept climbing.

“We were looking at eight to ten thousand dollars a month in credit card fees that we were just throwing out the door. It’s crazy. The number just kept going up.”
Christian Jones, CEO, TaxProMarketer

02 · The SolutionWhy Anchor

TaxProMarketer started evaluating alternatives after connecting with Anchor through the accounting and professional services community. Two things stood out immediately.

First, the interface. With 27 team members touching proposals and billing at various points, TaxProMarketer needed a platform that did not require expert-level training. Anchor's layout was intuitive enough that staff across the team could navigate it without hand-holding. Features like discounts, deal expirations, and billing options were easy to find and use.

“A shared team interface that we would all be comfortable using, plus a way to save on credit card fees, were the biggest selling points for us at the time.”
Christian Jones, CEO, TaxProMarketer

Second, the fee structure. Anchor made it straightforward to offer clients an ACH payment option and, for those who preferred a credit card, to pass those fees on to the client. That was a capability the firm had not found elsewhere without significant friction.

“It’s not often you get someone affiliated with a software who’s so engaged, saying, let me be in your corner, let me help you, let me make sure you understand what’s going on. There was a level of support from the Anchor team that is definitely not normal.”
Christian Jones, CEO, TaxProMarketer

Implementation

TaxProMarketer chose to move more methodically, migrating clients in batches rather than all at once. The transition was quieter than expected. The firm received only a handful of questions from clients about the new payment setup. Most completed their payment details without issue and accepted the updated fee structure without pushback.

03 · The ResultsDirect Savings

The most direct impact has been on processing costs. By moving clients to ACH and passing credit card fees through transparently, TaxProMarketer has cut what was a $7,000 to $10,000 monthly expense down to a fraction of its former size. The firm estimates total annual savings in the range of $80,000 to $100,000, based on its own tracking of processing costs before and after the switch.

The operational gains are harder to put a single number on but are visible across the team every day. Agreements that once required digging through signed PDFs are now accessible in seconds. Editing scope or pricing on a live engagement, such as adding a seasonal ads service for a client, takes about ten minutes from start to finish. Billing and client support staff can answer payment questions on their own without pulling in account managers or salespeople.

"Anytime there’s a question, you just go to Anchor. In five seconds, you can look up the agreement and see all the change history, all the invoices, and the scope of services. It’s easy to grab. Billing and client support can just get in there and get what they need.”
Christian Jones, CEO, TaxProMarketer

Out-of-scope work that might previously have gone unbilled, because updating the agreement was too much effort, is now captured and added to a client's agreement cleanly. Christian notes the firm's ads team in particular benefits from being able to amend agreements on the fly as campaign needs shift.

The broader shift is that billing has moved from an area of ongoing friction to one the team simply does not have to think about. As Christian puts it: "It's really nice to have that area of the company be running efficiently and smoothly."

"As we grow as a team, you want these systems, billing especially, to be scalable. You don't want to get stopped at the end where it becomes clunky."
Christian Jones, CEO, TaxProMarketer