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Setting the right financial planning fee is a common challenge for Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs). Clients expect transparency, but standard pricing models often fail to reflect the complexity of individual situations.
Our team at InnReg recently participated in the Kitces Financial Planning Value Summit 2024, where a speaker presented a spreadsheet that calculates fees based on client complexity. Many advisors were impressed by the potential of such a tool, stressing the importance of implementing structured pricing for different clients.
Inspired, our team developed our own RIA Financial Planning Calculator, built for advisors seeking a straightforward, customizable approach to pricing. This tool is free to use, fully editable, and designed to help you confidently communicate your value.
This article explores why a client-specific pricing calculator is becoming essential in today’s advisory landscape, how it functions, and how you can effectively integrate it into your practice.
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Why RIAs Need Smarter Pricing Tools
When it comes to financial planning services, each client has distinct needs. Yet many RIAs still rely on flat fees or loosely defined pricing tiers that often fail to capture the actual value of their work.
At the same time, clients are becoming more informed and analytical. They scrutinize fees, compare advisor offerings, and expect pricing that clearly reflects the services they receive. This expectation compels firms to communicate their financial planning fee structures with precision and consistency.
Here are some reasons why smarter pricing tools are becoming essential:
One-size-fits-all pricing creates gaps: Flat fees may work for some clients, but they can overcharge those with simpler needs or underprice more complex cases. This affects both profitability and client satisfaction.
Clients want transparency: Many expect to understand exactly what they’re paying for. A clear pricing model builds trust and makes early conversations easier.
Scope creep is common: Without defined pricing tied to client needs, advisors often take on more work than initially planned. A structured approach helps manage both expectations and workload.
Value is easier to explain with structure: When pricing is based on specific services and complexity, it becomes easier to communicate and more difficult to dispute. This helps advisors present their fees with confidence.
Regulatory expectations are rising: Advisors are expected to demonstrate fair and consistent pricing practices. A documented process for determining fees helps meet that standard.
The RIA Financial Planning Calculator was created to solve these challenges. It offers a customizable pricing framework that advisors can adapt to reflect the actual work performed for each client.
Introducing the RIA Financial Planning Calculator
At the 2024 Kitces Financial Planning Value Summit, one of the most widely discussed sessions came from Emily Biehler, co-founder of Trailwise Financial Partners. Her presentation focused on a growing challenge for RIAs: how to align flat-fee planning structures with the complexity and scope of client needs.
Rather than relying on arbitrary tiers or static price points, Emily shared a spreadsheet her firm uses to calculate financial planning fees based on two key variables: the number of planning areas involved and the complexity of the client’s financial life.
We decided to design our own version and open-source it.
The RIA Financial Planning Calculator was designed to bring structure, clarity, and flexibility to financial planning fees. It reflects the nuanced work advisors do while supporting scalable, client-specific pricing.
This free tool is built for RIAs who want a more innovative, client-specific way to structure their financial planning fees. Whether you’re advice-only, hybrid, or running a planning-led firm with bundled AUM, it provides a framework that is:
Customizable: Tailor your planning modules and complexity scores to match your firm’s scope of work.
Client-friendly: Clearly communicates which services are provided and how pricing is determined.
Internally consistent: Standardizes how your team articulates fees across planners and support staff.
Scalable: It makes increasing your planning capacity easy without resorting to vague or inconsistent pricing.
We’ve designed it based on real-world input from advisors who want to bring clarity to pricing conversations, manage the scope of services, and deliver a more transparent client experience.
After the first version was developed, we sent it to some advisors for testing.
The reaction proved we were on the right track:
Let’s just say... it struck a chord with some advisors:
Whether you’re refining your flat-fee structure, moving away from AUM, or simply looking to improve your annual review process, the RIA Financial Planning Calculator offers a flexible and field-tested starting point.
How Much Should You Charge for Financial Planning Services?
Determining the right financial planning fee starts with clarity on both the services you provide and the complexity of the client’s situation.
The RIA Financial Planning Calculator works exclusively on Google Sheets—it cannot be downloaded and used in Microsoft Excel. The spreadsheet is divided into two tabs:
Settings
Price Calculator
Before calculating client fees, configure the calculator to reflect your firm's services, pricing, and client complexity factors—under the Settings tab.
Here’s how it works in practice:
Step 1: Define Your Services Menu
List your firm's financial planning services and assign a base fee to each service.
We pre-filled the calculator with a sample list of commonly offered planning services and baseline fees based on industry research and advisor feedback. Some examples include:
Overall Plan Health Review – $300
Goal Envisioning and Tracking – $250
Cash Flow and Budget Planning – $400
Investment Strategy Development – $500
Estate Planning Strategies – $500
Business Owner Financial Consulting – $800
Business Exit or Succession Planning – $1,000
(and many more)
To customize this list, edit the service names and base prices to match your firm’s offerings.
Step 2: Define Client Scenarios
Next, outline typical client scenarios that may impact complexity and planning needs. We divided these into several categories to make it easier to organize:
Income Sources (e.g., W-2 employee income, self-employment, multiple income streams)
Tax Situations (e.g., single-state tax filing, cross-border tax planning)
Investment Complexity (e.g., ESG portfolios, private equity investments)
Family Situations (e.g., married with dependents, second marriage)
Estate and Legacy Planning (e.g., trust and asset protection strategies)
Retirement (e.g., single retirement income source, retirement withdrawal strategy)
Other Scenarios (e.g., one rental property)
Each scenario can be assigned a complexity level — Simple, Moderate, Complex, or Very Complex — depending on how much additional work and expertise the situation typically requires.
Step 3: Set Your Complexity Categories and Multipliers
Finally, you’ll configure how the calculator weights complexity.
Each situation the client presents (e.g., owning a business, managing international investments) earns a certain number of complexity points:
Simple = 0.5 points
Moderate = 1.0 points
Complex = 2.0 points
Very Complex = 3.0 points
Based on the total complexity score, the calculator applies a multiplier to the base service fees to adjust the pricing fairly:
0–10 points = 1.0x (no adjustment)
11–20 points = 1.3x
21–35 points = 1.5x
36–50 points = 1.8x
51+ points = 2.0x
This structure enables your pricing to scale automatically based on the true complexity of the engagement, eliminating the need for manual negotiation or guesswork.
The points and multipliers are, of course, customizable as well. Simply edit them and see the calculator update in real time.
Once you’ve customized your settings, you’re ready to calculate pricing for individual clients. This happens in the Price Calculator tab.
Step 4: Select the Services
For the first input, simply check the boxes for all the financial planning services you’ll be providing to the client. Each service is tied to the base fees you set earlier in the Settings tab.
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Step 5: Define the Client’s Complexity
The second input for a specific client relates to the scenarios you created.
Check off the scenarios that apply to the client’s situation, such as their income sources, tax situations, investment structures, family dynamics, estate planning needs, and more. Each selection contributes a specific number of complexity points, based on how you configured them earlier.
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Step 6: Review the Calculated Results
As you select services and client complexity scenarios, the calculator automatically generates a fee estimate in the Output section:
Total Points: The sum of complexity points based on the selected scenarios.
Complexity Multiplier: Based on the total points, the adjustment factor is applied to the base service fees.
Total Base Fee: The sum of all base service fees selected (before applying the multiplier).
Adjustment: The additional amount added to reflect client complexity.
Total Fee: The final suggested financial planning fee, with complexity accounted for.
This process helps calculate each client’s fee, reflecting both the services provided and the complexity of their financial situation — creating a pricing structure that is consistent, transparent, and potentially more defensible.
The fee adjusts dynamically as you toggle services on or off or change the complexity multiplier, making it ideal for both initial proposals and annual review discussions.
With these inputs and outputs, the RIA Financial Planning Calculator becomes more than a pricing tool. It’s a system for setting expectations, documenting value, and managing your planning workload with intention.
Advantages of Complexity-Based Pricing for RIAs
Complexity-based pricing offers RIAs a more precise, flexible, and scalable framework for structuring financial planning fees.
Here’s how the RIA Financial Planning Calculator supports these benefits in practice:
1. Adjusting Services, Scenarios, and Complexity Weights
Every client has different priorities and planning needs. The calculator allows you to tailor the service menu for each engagement, selecting only the modules that apply (e.g., retirement planning, tax optimization, equity comp, etc.) and adding optional topics like business consulting or charitable giving as needed.
Beyond service selection, you can refine each client’s profile by adjusting their scenario-based complexity, whether they’re navigating career transitions, managing real estate portfolios, or approaching retirement.
This dynamic approach provides flexibility to scale the pricing up or down as client needs change.
2. Editing the Complexity Multiplier Scale
Our tool allows you to define and customize your own complexity tiers.
You can assign internal definitions to each tier, thereby implementing consistency in how your team evaluates and assigns fees.
This supports fair pricing, creates a consistent client experience, and helps avoid over- or under-charging due to subjective assumptions.
3. Helps Standardize and Scale
As your firm grows, having a unified pricing methodology becomes essential, especially when training new advisors or delegating planning tasks across teams.
The calculator provides a shared foundation for setting, reviewing, and explaining financial planning fees, streamlining internal operations, and reinforcing a culture of consistency.
It also simplifies client transitions. If a household moves from one advisor to another within your firm, the fee logic remains transparent and tied to the same structure.
4. Creates a Foundation for Fee Benchmarking and Internal Review
With complexity-based pricing, each fee has a rationale tied to services and effort, not just market averages or gut feel. Over time, this allows firms to analyze trends across client types, assess profitability by segment, and refine how they allocate resources.
It also supports annual internal reviews to verify whether fees remain aligned with the work delivered, which is especially valuable for firms offering tiered service levels or multiple advisor roles.
See also:
5. Reduces Friction in Fee Conversations
Fee discussions often cause hesitation, especially when pricing is subjective. By using a consistent, rules-based system, advisors can shift the conversation from “what we charge” to “how we price.” This fosters trust and credibility, particularly with clients comparing multiple advisory firms or evaluating value for money.
A structured framework also removes emotion from fee changes. When a client’s situation changes, say, they launch a business or go through a divorce, it’s easier to explain the increased planning fee based on logic.
How to Use It in Real-World Prospect & Client Meetings
Introducing pricing to a prospective or existing client can be one of the most sensitive parts of a conversation. The RIA Financial Planning Calculator is designed to support these discussions with clarity, structure, and visual alignment, making fee conversations more professional and less personal.
Here’s how to integrate the calculator into your prospect and client workflows:
1. Communicating Value Visually
Instead of simply stating a flat fee, the calculator provides a visual breakdown of:
What services are included in the plan
How the complexity of the client’s situation affects the workload
A transparent formula for calculating the total fee
For many clients, this moves the conversation from subjective pricing to a value-based structure. By clearly mapping the fee to the scope of work, you can demonstrate the breadth of your support and why it matters.
2. Demonstrating Fee Logic During Onboarding
When used in an initial prospect meeting, the calculator allows you to explain:
What goes into the fee
How it can change over time based on their needs
That the fees are consistent and grounded in a documented process
This helps eliminate pricing ambiguity and sets expectations early, especially if you're moving away from AUM or offering flat-fee planning.
You can even show different scenarios side by side (e.g., “if we keep planning simple, here’s the baseline; if you’d like us to help with equity comp and business succession, here's the fee range for that”), empowering the client with both context and control.
3. Framing Pricing Discussions with Confidence
Pricing conversations tend to be easier when advisors believe in the structure behind the numbers. Because this calculator ties each fee to actual service areas and defined complexity tiers, it empowers you to:
Explain the “why” behind your pricing with confidence
Say no to unscoped add-ons that fall outside the agreed plan
Adjust pricing transparently as client circumstances change
Clients appreciate this level of intentionality. It signals that your process is thoughtful, repeatable, and built for long-term fairness, not reactive or opportunistic.
4. White-Labeling with Your Own Branding
To support a fully branded client experience, we designed the calculator to be white-labeled. You can easily:
Insert your firm’s logo
Update color schemes to match your visual identity
Customize module names, complexity labels, or descriptions to reflect your firm’s language and tone
When presented professionally, the calculator becomes a powerful reflection of your firm’s operational maturity and client-first philosophy.
Is a Financial Planning Calculator Regulator-Friendly?
During the Kitces Financial Planning Value Summit, we noticed some lively discussion around an important question: Is using a financial planning pricing calculator allowed by regulators?
As some participants put it:
“I hate that I even have to ask this - but has this passed the regulators’ review?”
“I was just thinking that. The SEC could have a field day with this and how it’s implemented...”
These concerns are valid, especially in a regulatory environment that expects advisory firms to demonstrate fairness, consistency, and full disclosure around fees.
The good news: we are compliance experts..
At InnReg, we specialize in compliance consulting and outsourcing services for RIAs.
To help address these concerns, our compliance experts drafted sample language you can adapt for your Form ADV or client disclosure documents to describe the use of a financial planning price calculator:
“Our fee for financial planning services is based on the complexity of your financial situation as determined during our initial conversations. We use internal tools, including a financial planning price calculator, to assist in determining appropriate pricing for our services based on your specific needs. These tools are used exclusively by our advisors with the goal of applying consistent and transparent pricing criteria.
The calculator is not provided to clients for independent use. However, elements of its outputs, including fee estimates or service scope breakdowns, may be shared with clients during consultations to provide context for how we arrive at our pricing. Any figures discussed are estimates and subject to adjustment based on a more detailed review of your circumstances. The final agreed-upon price will be reflected in the advisory agreement you sign.
This tool is used to support our discovery process and does not replace the personalized assessment conducted by our advisors. Additionally, the final determination of service scope and pricing remains at the discretion of our firm.”
Using language like this helps set clear expectations with both regulators and clients.
It reinforces that the tool is for internal use (if this is the case), that pricing discussions are personalized, and that final fees are subject to formal agreement — all key compliance principles under the SEC and state regulatory guidelines.
See also:
Get Your Free Customizable Financial Planning Fee Template
As client expectations continue to evolve, RIAs are under increasing pressure to justify fees with clarity, fairness, and consistency. The RIA Financial Planning Calculator is designed to meet that challenge, offering a transparent, modular framework that helps advisors price based on both scope and complexity.
By using this tool, you can move beyond vague ranges or one-size-fits-all pricing and offer a more thoughtful, tailored experience that earns trust and drives long-term engagement.
How Can InnReg Help?
InnReg is a global regulatory compliance and operations consulting team serving financial services companies since 2013.
We are especially effective at launching and scaling fintechs with innovative compliance strategies and delivering cost-effective managed services, assisted by proprietary regtech solutions.
If you need help with RIA compliance, reach out to our regulatory experts today:
Published on May 13, 2025
Last updated on May 13, 2025
