Ravical launches Workspace to back value-based pricing

Ravical has launched Workspace for accounting and professional services firms, with the platform designed to support value-based pricing rather than billing by time.

The launch comes as firms face growing scrutiny of the billable-hour model, with fee pressure and wider use of artificial intelligence prompting debate over how advisory work should be priced.

Workspace is designed to help firms manage work across their client base rather than at the level of individual advisers. The system reviews client communications, financial data, documents and external triggers to identify work that needs to be done before a request is made.

It then carries out that work through pre-built and custom workflows, using client information, identifying the appropriate specialist within a firm and preparing a draft for review and sign-off. A human remains in the loop throughout the process.

Alongside workflow management, the platform includes a billing agent that examines pricing history, client context and the value of the work delivered to support pricing decisions. Ravical is positioning this as an alternative to charging by hours worked, a model that has long shaped accounting and professional services.

The backdrop is a sector under pressure to show how AI-driven efficiency should affect fees. Earlier this year, KPMG negotiated a 14% fee reduction from its auditor, Grant Thornton, which Ravical cited as evidence of a broader industry reassessment of whether time-based billing still reflects the economics of professional work.

That question has become more pressing as firms introduce AI tools that can complete some tasks much faster than before. If a firm continues to charge by the hour while reducing the time needed for routine or semi-routine work, revenue can fall even as productivity rises.

Joris Van Der Gucht, chief executive and co-founder of Ravical, said firms were being forced to rethink that equation.

“The way work is delivered and priced is changing,” Van Der Gucht said. “The economics of the billable hour are breaking down in real time. When a VAT return that used to take three hours takes 20 minutes, firms face a choice: either absorb the margin loss or build a model that prices what the work is actually worth to the client. Ravical is built for the second option.”

Firm-level model

Workspace has been built to operate at the level of the firm rather than as a personal productivity tool for individual staff. The distinction matters because many AI products introduced to professional services have focused on helping a single adviser draft text, search documents or complete tasks more quickly.

By contrast, Ravical argues that a firm-wide system allows knowledge, workflows and pricing records to build up over time and be reused across teams and clients. In that model, expertise held by senior specialists can be made available more broadly across the practice, while advisers remain responsible for review and the client relationship.

The platform also includes what Ravical calls a knowledge verification layer. Work involving domain knowledge such as tax law, legislation and regulatory guidance is checked against primary sources before it reaches the reviewing adviser, with citations included for direct checking.

That reflects a wider concern in accounting and other regulated professions over the reliability of AI-generated outputs. Firms have been exploring how to use AI in client work while limiting the risk of factual errors, unsupported conclusions or advice based on outdated rules.

Van Der Gucht said capacity constraints in advisory work remained a central issue for firms.

“For most firms, the real bottleneck they face every day is the capacity to deliver advisory work,” he said. “Client demand is there, but firms can’t consistently act on it at scale. The only way to unlock that is to change how the work itself gets done.”

Pressure on fees

The accounting profession is contending with several pressures at once. Compliance work has been subject to automation for years, squeezing margins in some service lines. At the same time, experienced staff remain in short supply, making senior expertise harder and more expensive to deploy across a large client base.

Clients are also becoming more familiar with AI tools, which can alter expectations around turnaround times, responsiveness and what they are willing to pay for. That creates a challenge for firms that still rely on fee structures built around hours logged or full-time equivalent staffing models.

Ravical’s pitch is that firms need systems that do more than cut minutes from existing workflows. Instead, they need a way to organise work across the practice and attach prices to outcomes and client value rather than elapsed time.

Whether firms move quickly will depend on more than technology. Pricing in professional services has long been tied to internal processes, partner incentives and client habits, all of which can be difficult to change. But as AI shortens the time needed for parts of accounting and advisory work, the debate over how firms charge clients is becoming harder to avoid.

Earlier this year, KPMG successfully negotiated a 14% fee reduction from its auditor, Grant Thornton, sharpening attention on how AI and automation may affect pricing discussions across the profession.