Anchor

Anchor is a billing automation platform covering the cycle from engagement letter through invoicing to payment collection, supporting fixed-fee and usage-based arrangements with invoices generated and collected on schedule.

How accounting firms use it

The problem it targets is revenue leakage rather than administrative time. Firms routinely perform work that was never formally agreed, bill late because generating invoices is someone’s secondary responsibility, and write off amounts rather than pursue them. Each is small; collectively they are material.

By making billing follow automatically from an agreed engagement, and by requiring scope changes to be accepted before the work proceeds, the platform closes the gap between what was delivered and what was invoiced. Firms adopting it generally do so after concluding their realization problem is procedural rather than commercial.

Key features

Engagement letters are created and signed in the platform, with the agreed services and fees forming the billing schedule directly. Recurring invoices generate without manual initiation.

Payment collection runs by ACH or card under a client mandate obtained at engagement, with automated handling of failures. Scope changes are proposed, accepted, and folded into billing as they occur.

Billing data syncs to QuickBooks Online and Xero so revenue is reflected in the ledger as it is recognised.

Who it’s best for

Firms whose billing is manual enough that invoices go out late or incompletely, particularly those with recurring fixed-fee clients where the arrangement is stable and the administration is pure overhead.

Firms already using practice management with capable billing — TaxDome, Karbon, Canopy — or proposal-to-payment tools such as Ignition and Cone will find substantial overlap and should compare before adding another subscription.