Best Proposal Software for Accounting Firms (Detailed Comparison 2025)

Hey, this is Isaac from Opsa.co, and in this video I'll be sharing how accounting firms are streamlining the process of getting paid, getting engagement letter sized, and proposals out the door. I'll be sharing some of the best tools to do this in 2025, 2026, and beyond, and we'll actually be taking a quick peek under the hood at what those tools actually look like, their pricing, their features and integrations, and ultimately helping you make a recommendation or a decision if you're in the market for a tool like this one. We'll be discussing whether those tools can accept credit card, whether you can pass on those credit card fees to clients, Whether you have the ability to easily and quickly charge for out-of-scope work when you have a particular job from the client that maybe is out of that agreement, how easy it is to update it, whether you can bulk send proposals, bake in price increases every year from the very beginning, and also allow the client to pick from several options. Something that's of course near to our heart as well is how integration-friendly or automation-friendly the platform is. So we'll be touching as well on whether it has some integration capabilities baked in, or whether it supports other automation platforms like Zapier or Make, or has an open API available to automate as much as possible. Okay. So this is what Anchor looks like. Effectively, you can see that you can have like an introductory message and video just to welcome the client to the proposal if that's something you wanted to do. And you have here the packages, right? The gold, platinum, diamond in this case, or like the good, better, best. And each one of those will have its own list of services, which you can leave either as optional. And you can also do, if it is recurring service, make sure doesn't start immediately if you want it to. For example, you're signing the client today, but you want that recurring billing to be postponed. And also, as we mentioned, setting up that automatic annual increase from the very start. So this client's almost like committing to that from the very beginning, or at least very aware of it. You can round up as well to the nearest $10, so it's not like a weird number. Fundamentally, this is what it looks like to create it. You'll have your list of services, and then you'll have the ability to say, hey, Who's going to pay the credit card fee? Is that something we're going to take or the client's going to take? You can make that selection. Do you want to allow the clients to approve the agreement without paying? You can have that option available if you want it or not. And you can also make sure that you have these 2 little lifesavers of like, if there are amendments to the agreement or additional charges out of scope, can the client commit from the very beginning to a timeline to give us a response on that? And can you bake it in so that if in that period of time, the client doesn't approve, it gets automatically approved after that and setting that expectation from the very beginning. A quick client preview of what it will look like on their end after they receive an email and they click a button, they'll be able to select a specific service that they might be interested in, looking at the various options and then being able to come here and say, hey, actually I also want personal taxes or I want this or I want that, seeing the terms of services that you have. In kind of like short detail there, including some of the kind of amendments and out-of-scope charges that we've kind of baked in or turned on in this case, and just allowing them to, you know, put their payment method in, being aware that this will be an extra fee, and approve your proposal. One of the things we like about Anchor compared to other alternatives, it has a different pricing model. It doesn't charge you per month, but rather it charges per payment received. So if you have low volume of invoices that you are or proposals you're sending on a regular basis, then it will be very much, much more budget-friendly. It will depend there if you have a lot of small invoices like $100, $300, then it can become expensive. But as an example, we have a client that bills about almost $2 million a year, like $1.8 million, and they probably pay Anchor like maybe $6,000 or $7,000 for the year. So that's like less than half a percent of the revenue. We must say that Anchor has an API. It integrates with Zapier and Make as well. So it's pretty automation-friendly from our perspective. The next one in the list is Ignition. Very similar flow of creating the proposals where you come in and make sure you list the different packages that you might be able to provide. In this case, kind of they cap it to 3. So does Anchor, by the way, at least at this moment in time. And you'll see the list of services that are included within each package. Similarly, you can allow the option to turn on or off how clients can pay. And though the card processing fee setup happens at an account level. You'll have the terms of services so that they can accept, including custom fields where appropriate. So you can bake in the client name, the client address if you have that available, and so on. And just edit how it's going to look like for them to receive that email, which is also editable in Anchor, by the way. And you can kind of quickly here preview what the client's going to look like or the client experience is going to look like, which again, very similarly, they select the package. They're going to see the list of services that the package includes. They can always go back and change it if they realize that that's not the right plan for them. They add their payment method here. I can't because it's a demo, but here they'd be able to sign. And if you have this set up, you can have a video or some sort of instructions or what their next steps should be. From a pricing standpoint, people find Ignition a little bit more on the pricing side, pricier side. It depends because they cap it based on number of clients. So if you have a lot of small clients, it will definitely be more expensive. A few high-level clients, then it's going to be a lot more cost-effective. But overall, for the average firm charging like average prices, Ignition is probably going to be a little bit more expensive just from a pure cost standpoint. And that gap again will depend on how— on the amount of your average invoice. The higher that invoice is, the probably the less the gap is going to be between the price you'll pay for Ignition versus Anchor. From an integration standpoint, actually Ignition does integrate with Zapier and it has some very valuable actions and triggers available that we've been able to use such that you can, when the proposal is signed, create all the work items in Carbon or all the tasks in ClickUp that are associated with that, which can be an incredibly helpful automation to put in place, one that we've done many times. But it's less integration-friendly overall from the perspective of not having an open API, at least at this point. There are things you can't do with this type of integration, like creating a proposal, for example. But overall, it's been a pretty good tool and established for years and one that many accounting firms love. Most accounting firms think they're moving towards automation, but when you look under the hood, what we find is messy spreadsheets, siloed tools, and half-baked workflows that are still slowing them down. So that's why we built our AI and automation readiness With just 10 quick questions, you'll be able to see where your firm is strong and where you're falling behind. Here's why it matters. Understanding where you stand is the first step our clients take towards a smoother, more scalable practice. That's exactly how Donna Bordeaux cut a full-time bookkeeping role and went from 90 hours a month down to 1 day a month of her time while scaling her firm from 45 to 60 clients without adding new staff. And that's how Gareth, a partner in a Canadian tax firm, went from dreading every January to looking forward to tax season and actually earning 47% more per hour on their tax return work without price increase. So feel free to check the link in the description, take that quiz now and see exactly where you stand. All right, now back to the video. The next one on the list, it's PandaDoc. It's really started more as a kind of document signing platform. So as a result, it has a lot of that baked in, but it has a lot of flexibility compared to Anchor Ignition. For example, you notice that Anchor Ignition almost box you into like a series of steps. Here it's more like a document, like a Word or Google Docs type format, but you can put whatever you want in that particular proposal and organize it the way you want. You can accept payments as well, typically via Stripe or PayPal, and there are some options for you to present multiple options. It's not as easy or as baked in as some other tools, but it's also doable. From a pricing standpoint, one of the benefits is not priced per client. So if you have a lot of clients, you can still— it's very cost-effective at scale because you won't only pay per seat. And it has a lot of integrations as well available, both with Zapier, with Make, with its own API. Overall, this is a tool that we would recommend if someone's already managing their billing or invoicing somewhere else. For example, we sometimes meet with Canadian firms that are using a Roteza as an example to build and kind of get paid. So if they're looking just for like a document engagement letter signing piece at a price that makes sense and with the ability to integrate with the rest of their stack, it's probably the best option. Beyond those 3 options, which for us are probably the best and the one that we recommend the most, there's a couple of other notable mentions. The first one being TaxDome. This is one of the few practice management tools and practice management software that has a proposal feature that's at least good enough, and I've seen some firms being very happy with. It's relatively basic to like Anchor and Ignition, but to show you what that looks like, as you can see here, I can simply like select, make sure that we select team member, if you have a specific template. And similar to how we saw earlier, we have the ability to have a specific introduction. Want to have a video, a picture so the client can get the sense of what they're getting into. The terms of services, this will be where you have all your terms and conditions. And then pretty much either your list of services or 3-tier packages, which you can have here set up however you would like. So it is, if you're in the TaxDome platform already, I think it's definitely worth exploring for you. One of the things we don't necessarily like about TaxDome is a relatively closed systems, right? They prioritize product over integrations, which is totally fair when they have like limited developer resources, but it makes it very challenging to integrate with other tools. So you kind of almost have to push to use every feature they have and every native integration they have, and you hope that it works the way you want, which sometimes doesn't, unfortunately. The other proposal tool that has been around for a while is GoProposal. also acquired Sage actually a couple of years back. But this is one of the kind of main Ignition competitors back in the day, right? And you see that you have like a monthly fee, very similar to Ignition, although it seems to be a little more friendly because they have an unlimited proposal option available. There's some automations we've been able to do with it. We have a video on our channel automating with it 'cause it has the Zapier integration as an example. So it has some automation capabilities. Although not as robust as some of the other tools that we've talked about. And the other caveat is because it's been acquired, some people will come to expect that maybe there will be less investments in the product. It's not always that a product goes to crap after it's acquired, but it's happened often enough that I think it's worth the caveat. The other notable mention, it's Noola. Again, an engagement proposal software targeting specifically accounting firms. We've seen it be a little bit more common on the audit side specifically, because we've worked with a handful of audit firms that like it. It has an API, relatively new in beta mode. So I'm familiar with the founder and he's kind of been kind enough to share a little bit with us what that looks like. So it does have some automation capabilities, although it kind of takes a little bit more work to get that up and running. We've definitely seen it be a little bit more, maybe because of the target market, a little bit more popular in kind of mid-market and up, so kind of for larger firms and more on the audit side, as I mentioned. And you can see some of the prices here, which can be based on client volume, where if you have 500 to 1,000, you start at $3,900, 1,000 to 3,000, $5,900, and 3,000+ starts at $8,900. So it can also be an option to explore if you have a lot of clients, which tends to be the case with either personal tax return shops or audit audit people as well. Lastly, the last notable mention that I'd like to suggest, it's Cone. It's trying to be much more than just proposals, and I fear they're trying to do a little bit too much because they're trying to be a practice management tool as well. I haven't met a firm yet that uses it, to be transparent, but it seems like they're actually venture-backed. I see they have some positive reviews around some of their online channels, and it does seem like they're investing a lot in the product. Although again, I fear that they have tried to do more than they can chew. Although if they have the funds to back that up, maybe they're able to do that properly. Their pricing is on the much lower end. You can see that starts as little as £12 a month for unlimited clients and proposals. So that's very appealing. And then they have some integrations available as well on this other plan. So it's one of those tools that I'm keeping an eye on. It's not something I've tested personally or know someone who has, but it's another up-and-coming platform that might become one of the top choices, maybe if I do this video in a couple of years. Now, Kohn, as I mentioned, is trying to be an accounting practice management system as well, and I recorded a video to rank 25 different accounting practice management systems so you know which ones are worth a try. So if you happen to be in the market for a practice management system as well, that's definitely a video worth washing. Okay, with that, I'll let you go. Uh, stay tuned for the next video, and until then, stay efficient.