Ask HN: Good US-based accounting firm that does not “drip” price you?

For a long while my partner in our business has done the books himself. We avoided using a bookkeeper and accountant, engaging with them often when it was too late. We found that we often were not paying the correct corporate taxes, payroll taxes, etc.

We have since migrated to using a payroll service, and are now using "XXX" as an accounting company.

I get the sense that they are drip pricing us.

Accounting services often seem like there are endless fees, and endless work that needs to be done. We keep getting bills for additional fees, and additional taxes (city, state, federal) that we were not aware of. I know this is probably somewhat par for the course, but it is now verging on the tens of thousands of dollars and has had a real impact on our ability to make payroll.

For example, this statement makes me very suspicious: "we need to fix the 20xx tax return; not all expenses are in the 20xx return."

Would an internal accountant really recommend amending a return when a few expenses were not fully included? Would this really trigger an audit? We are talking about a few hundred, perhaps a thousand dollars for revenues of $300k.

Does anyone have a good startup accounting firm they use and like? Or, recommendations on what is a good process? Use a bookkeeper once a month, then hire an accountant once a year? Are there flat rate pricing services where you do the work through a web UI rather than dozens of emails, etc? Are there payroll companies that offer this as an add-on?

Or, is this just the reality of making sure the books are clean?

It really feels like this is a clever company milking us because we are ignorant. But, I'm not sure.