How Frequent Pricing Changes in 2025 Reshaped Firm Billing Workflows

If I think back on 2025, one question kept coming up:

“Why are software costs taking so much time, and where is all this money actually going?”

That question came up in almost every conversation I had this year. When firms switched on Rechargly, they did not just see line items. They surfaced problems.

At the Accounting Business Expo in March, I spoke at length with Chris Wheatley from Scope Accounting about this topic. He was excited to onboard to Rechargly, but the process has slowed because he'd found a half dozen orphan subscriptions before a single invoice had even run through our system. By simply reviewing each charge and working out which client should have been billed, gaps started to appear. It was tedious work, but it was the first step.

In many ways, that moment summed up my year. Not sudden change, but helping firms put together the pieces of issues they had known about for far too long.

Another price rise?

You’ve probably seen this in the news already, but price increases were rampant across the board, and I don’t see it slowing down in 2026.

Vendors like Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks and Dext all increased pricing this year. Not once, but multiple times. 

Both Intuit and Xero also implemented API fees for vendors, which means firms and end clients will start feeling those increases more directly in 2026.

When I posted about price rises on LinkedIn, the response told the same story. Some posts reached more than 150,000+ impressions. The sentiment across Australia and New Zealand was consistent. The pace and size of increases did not match the improvements firms felt they were getting from the products.

And yet, switching was rarely a realistic option.

With Xero holding roughly 70 to 80 percent market share across ANZ, the operational cost of changing core systems is often higher than the cost of staying put. Most firms were not trying to reinvent their entire model. They just wanted tools that helped them work efficiently.

Introducing tools to improve firm efficiency

Something else shifted as firms took a closer look at their software budgets.

Smaller firms that had historically passed on full vendor discounts often realised they were unintentionally carrying losses once they mapped the true cost. This included write-offs, subscription changes and time spent managing exceptions. Larger firms had already recognised this, which is why they rarely passed on full discounts in the first place.

This was not about raising fees. It was about acknowledging that software carries an operational cost beyond the invoice. With clearer visibility, pricing decisions became grounded in data rather than assumptions.

I also saw the impact on client relationships. When a firm manages a client’s software, it creates more touch points and more opportunities to help. This does not always lead to advisory projects, but it does create reliance if the client is thinking about leaving. Whether that reliance is a good or bad thing is up to the firm to decide.

AI is the next frontier for accountants and bookkeepers

AI came up in almost every conversation. Not as a future idea, but as a direct change to daily operations.

Firms are sitting on large volumes of data that were never practical to work with manually. AI changes what is possible by reducing the cost of accessing and acting on that information.

What remains essential, though, is a billing foundation firms can trust.

A simple truth emerged: if firms cannot see software clearly, they cannot automate confidently.

That is why this shift is less about efficiency and more about economics. AI makes work viable that firms would never have staffed before, but only if the systems underneath are reliable. If software costs are unclear or recovery is inconsistent, automation adds risk rather than leverage.

When firms have visibility and control, AI becomes a practical way to retain clients, surface savings and unlock opportunities that were previously out of reach.