$79 a client, not $200 a company: pricing equity compliance across a firm's clients

A CPA firm that keeps a client's cap table clean, tracks its option grants, and gets its Section 16 and Form 8-K work filed on time is doing the same equity-compliance work we sell to a company directly. The difference is that the firm already has the client relationship. It did not have to find that company; the company found the firm years ago, for a different reason, and the equity work rode along.

The size of the audience

An estimated 120,085 accounting firms operate in the United States. About 50,885 of those are CPA firms specifically. On both counts, roughly 95% have fewer than twenty people. A channel this size does not need help finding its customers. It already has them, one relationship at a time, the way it has always found them.

What one client company costs, bought two ways

Bought directly, this work costs $200 a month per company on the Documents plan: SEC EDGAR filing tools, the filing-grade documents themselves, two seats included. Bought through a firm's own Firms plan, the same work costs $79 a month per client company, billed to the firm under one login, for a minimum of ten client companies. The gap is real, and it is checked in the billing test suite so it cannot drift without someone noticing: $200 divided by $79 is 2.53.

Run it on a real client count

Ten client companies is the floor: $790 a month, $9,480 a year, against $2,000 a month and $24,000 a year buying each one direct - a $14,520 annual difference for identical work. Twenty-five client companies: $1,975 a month, $23,700 a year, against $5,000 a month and $60,000 a year direct - $36,300 a year. Forty client companies: $3,160 a month, $37,920 a year, against $8,000 a month and $96,000 a year direct - $58,080 a year, more than the cost of another junior hire.

Where it does not pay off

The ten-client floor cuts both ways. Below ten actual clients, the firm still pays for ten: $790 a month whether it has three client companies on the plan or nine. Buying those same companies direct, at $200 each, costs less up through three clients - $600 a month - and more from four clients on - $800 a month against the flat $790. A firm with three clients or fewer is better off on Documents, bought directly, per company. Four clients and up, the Firms plan is cheaper, and the gap widens with every client added after that.

What is actually in it

Every client company gets the same tools a direct Documents customer gets: SEC EDGAR filing tools, the filing-grade documents themselves, audit log retention that runs seven years (2,555 days), single sign-on, custom branding, a signed data processing agreement, and a SOC 2 report to hand its own auditor. What it does not include is managed equity administration - a firm that runs a client's actual cap table, not just its filings, buys the Equity plan for that one client, separately. Firms is Documents repeated across many companies. It is not Equity repeated.

Getting set up

There is no self-serve checkout on this plan. The button goes to a contact form, and someone confirms the firm before the account exists - that is deliberate, not an oversight: the price is for a firm managing real clients, not for anyone who types "firm" into a form. unfoldcfo.com/pricing shows where Firms sits against the other four plans; unfoldcfo.com/contact is where a firm starts the conversation.