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Andrew Seguin was already running a strong bookkeeping firm when he last appeared on this podcast — at $1 million in revenue with a team of eight. Two and a half years later, he's back with a $2 million firm and a team of fifteen. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Andrew walks through the real work behind that growth: the systems he built, the delegation habits he had to form, and the profitability metrics that changed how he runs everything.
Chapters
- [00:00] Opening quote on delegation
- [00:42] Introducing Andrew Seguin
- [02:30] From $1M to $2M: the story
- [05:30] Getting out of the weeds
- [09:00] Building training systems that scale
- [13:00] Managing change without overwhelming the team
- [17:00] Introducing the effective hourly rate
- [23:00] Building the profitability dashboard
- [28:00] Time tracking: getting team buy-in
- [34:00] Pricing strategy and the 3-month clause
Getting Out of the Weeds
Even after hitting $1 million, Andrew was still deep in the day-to-day — doing bookkeeping, managing clients directly, and holding too much tax knowledge himself. The path to $2 million required him to deliberately reduce his own workload. "I was probably still doing a lot of day-to-day work," he says. "I knew I had some goals for '24 and '25, which was to reduce my own workload." That meant hiring a dedicated payroll team, bringing on a tax specialist, and doubling down on the pod structure — senior and junior team members working together as a unit.
Delegation Starts With Systems, Not Just Trust
One of Andrew's clearest lessons: delegation without a proper training system is just dumping work on people. He invested heavily in building a training package so that new hires could learn the firm's tools, standards, and workflows without having to figure things out from scratch. "You spend a little bit of time upfront — it's always hard because you have to find time to do it. But once you get over that hump, that's where things really start cascading into a really strong effect." He also cautions against piling on too much change in a single year, aiming instead for one meaningful improvement goal per year so the team isn't overwhelmed.
The Effective Hourly Rate: A Metric That Changed Everything
The single biggest profitability driver Andrew introduced was tracking each client's effective hourly rate (EHR) — revenue divided by hours worked on that file. His firm uses ClickUp for time tracking and QuickBooks Online for revenue data, feeding into a custom-built dashboard that shows the team exactly where they stand, client by client. "We essentially cut about 10% of our clients and then priced up about 40% of our clients to a rate that we wanted internally." The target range is $125–$150 per hour, minimum. Before this system, the firm's average was around $106–$108 per hour. After 18 months of using the data, it's closer to $250.
Transparent Data, Aligned Teams
Andrew doesn't hide this metric from his staff. The management team sees it. The bookkeepers who work on those files are aware of it. When a client's EHR falls short, the conversation isn't about poor performance — it's about scope creep, underestimated complexity, or pricing that needs revisiting. He also ties compensation growth directly to hitting those rates, so the team has a real reason to track their time accurately. "I'm very transparent — you guys wouldn't have these increases the way you have been getting for the last 3 years if we didn't have this data."
Pricing, Minimums, and the 3-Month Revisit Clause
Andrew's pricing approach is a hybrid of fixed and value-based: estimate the hours, multiply by the target EHR, then add complexity factors like multi-currency, e-commerce, or payroll. The firm's minimum for monthly engagements is $1,000, with an average around $1,600. Critically, every new engagement includes a clause allowing the firm to revisit pricing after three months — when actual time and complexity data is in hand. "We've had to do that a few times because there is no perfect system. A questionnaire and a quick conversation isn't going to tell you enough about the complexities and the volume of the file."
Links Mentioned
About the Guest
Andrew Seguin is the founder of Seguin Financial, a virtual bookkeeping firm based in Canada with a team of fifteen full-time staff. Over eight and a half years, Andrew grew his firm from a solo side practice to a $2 million business, built around strong systems, transparent team culture, and data-driven client management. He is a frequent speaker and educator in the bookkeeping community.
About the host
Michael Palmer
Michael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.
