Benchmarking: A Practical Guide for 2026
If you’ve ever sat in front of a spreadsheet wondering why the numbers don’t “feel right,” you already understand why benchmarking matters. Most firms aren’t struggling because they lack effort — they’re struggling because the assumptions they’re working from haven’t been checked in years. When your WIP, pricing, or staffing decisions are based on gut feel or what another partner “reckons,” problems creep in quietly.
Over the past few months we’ve seen the same pattern across many firms: salaries rising faster than expected, compliance work taking longer than it should, and partners realising they’ve been undercharging for their core services. Benchmarking is simply the process of putting real, current data around those issues so decisions aren’t made in the dark.
Why Benchmarking Isn’t Just a Report
One of the biggest misconceptions is that benchmarking is a document you order once a year. The reality is more physical than that. It’s the print-out on the desk you reach for when a partner asks whether to raise a junior’s salary. It’s the scribbled margin notes comparing your BAS fee to the firm down the road. It’s the uncomfortable moment you realise your WIP days have crept from 28 to 43 and no one noticed.
Benchmarking works because it notices what people get used to ignoring.
Where Profitability Slips (Real Examples)
Across firms we’ve worked with recently, three situations keep coming up:
1. A partner doing “just a quick review” that turns into two hours.
When we pulled the data, the firm had one partner logging 17% of total review hours — and wondering why their week felt like quicksand.
2. A firm still charging a 2021 BAS price while their peers have updated twice.
They weren’t losing clients. They were just absorbing the cost quietly.
3. A junior whose billable expectations were set too low.
Not deliberately — the partner simply hadn’t checked the market in three years.
These aren’t theoretical errors. They show up on timesheets, in late-night emails, and in the Friday afternoon feeling of “why does this still feel tight?”
Benchmarking helps bring these issues into the daylight.
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June 2026 Charge Rates & Salaries Survey
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Pricing and Charge-Out Rates: The Hard Conversations
You know the moment: you quote a job, hit send, and immediately feel your stomach drop because you know it’s too low. Most underpricing comes from old data, not a lack of confidence.
When firms benchmark their pricing properly, they usually discover things like:
Their charge-out rates for core services are 8–15% behind similar firms.
They’ve kept legacy clients on “mates’ rates” far too long.
Partners are reluctant to adjust fees because they can’t back the increase with current data.
One firm told us they’d been charging the same fee for individual returns for six years. Not because clients pushed back — simply because no one had checked.
Benchmarking gives you a factual anchor in the conversation, so you’re not guessing.
Benchmarking Salaries Without the Stress
Salary discussions are some of the most uncomfortable moments in any practice. It’s not uncommon for partners to sit in a meeting, look at each other, and hope someone else knows whether $78k or $84k is reasonable for an intermediate in their region.
Recent benchmarking has highlighted:
Juniors in regional areas often expect more than metro firms assume.
Hybrid work has shifted package structures more than partners realise.
Some firms are overpaying because they’re reacting to one noisy candidate, not the market.
A clear salary benchmark doesn’t eliminate the tension — but it removes the guesswork, which is often what creates the tension in the first place.
Want to know more? Book a 15-minute call with Michelle Knights and discover how she can help your practice.
Staffing and Productivity: Where Things Bottleneck
When you look closely at the data inside firms, the bottlenecks are rarely where partners think they are.
Some examples we’ve seen recently:
A senior was spending nearly 25 hours a month onboarding clients — something a junior could easily handle with the right process.
Two intermediates were “quietly drowning” because they inherited work that hadn’t been redistributed since 2022.
A partner was losing 5–7 hours a week re-reviewing files that juniors had already corrected.
These issues don’t usually appear in meetings. They show up in scattered emails, late-night logins, and staff quietly working longer hours than they should.
Benchmarking helps map where time is disappearing — and what roles need restructuring, not replacing.
Common Benchmarking Mistakes (We See These Constantly)
Benchmarking falls apart when:
The data is more than a year old.
Firms compare themselves to practices three times their size.
Benchmarks get treated like targets (“we must hit exactly 68% utilisation”).
The process is done once and forgotten.
People chase averages instead of digging into segments.
Accurate benchmarking isn’t about finding the “industry number.” It’s about finding the number that makes sense for a firm of your size, your service mix, and your client profile.
How to Benchmark Well — Without Overcomplicating It
Here’s the approach that works in real firms:
Pull your last 12 months of real numbers.
Not the aspirational ones — the data in your system, even if it’s messy.Compare yourself to firms that genuinely look like yours.
Same size, same mix, same region.Highlight anything more than 10% out of the norm.
Most problems hide in the margins. This brings them forward.Make one change, not five.
Adjust a fee. Redefine a role. Fix a workflow. One shift at a time sticks.Check again in six months.
Benchmarking only works if it’s repeated. That’s where the real gains come from.
Useful Products for Your Practice
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June 2026 Charge Rates & Salaries Survey
Price range: $495 through $1,265 incl. GST This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page -
Typical Fees for Common Services Report
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AML Benchmarking Report 2026
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Leverage Proven Guidance At Rob Knights & Co
For more than 50 years we’ve supported firms nationwide through growth, planning, remuneration reviews, succession, and broking. Benchmarking sits at the centre of that work because it gives firms the clarity to make grounded decisions — decisions that protect margin, support capability, and strengthen valuation.
If you’re preparing for 2026, reviewing prices or salaries, or considering a future sale, we’re here to help you interpret the data and plan your next step with confidence.
Frequently Asked Questions about Benchmarking
Benchmarking gives firms a clear, evidence-based view of how they’re performing compared with similar practices. With rising costs, increasing compliance workloads, and continued salary pressure, firms need reliable data to review pricing, staffing, productivity, and profitability. Benchmarking highlights where a firm is strong, where margins may be slipping, and where adjustments will have the greatest impact as they plan for 2026.
Profitability shifts often come from small, targeted changes — but only if you know where the gaps are. Benchmarking reveals issues such as over-servicing, mispriced work, high write-offs, or partner workloads tied up in review. By comparing your figures to similar firms, you can identify where to tighten WIP, rebalance client portfolios, improve delegation, or refine service mix margins. These insights help firms lift performance and protect margins ahead of a busier year.
The biggest mistake is relying on outdated or generic data — or comparing against firms that aren’t similar in size, geography, or service profile. This can lead to incorrect pricing decisions, recruitment missteps, or unrealistic performance expectations. Strong benchmarking uses current, segmented, verified information and interprets it as a diagnostic tool, not a target.
Benchmarking provides visibility into current pricing expectations, movements in charge-out rates, and trends in realisation. By comparing your pricing against similar firms, you can identify underpriced services and make adjustments that are strategic and defensible. Many firms apply targeted uplifts — rather than across-the-board fees — to ensure their pricing reflects capability, costs, and market expectations.
Generic online benchmarks and AI-generated estimates often lack Australian context, current data, or segmentation by firm type. Professional benchmarking uses verified submissions from practices nationwide, providing accurate insights into staffing, pricing, productivity, and remuneration trends. This gives firms confidence to make decisions based on evidence rather than assumption — especially when planning, budgeting, or preparing for succession.
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