Cost increases with the amount of negotiation needed to separate accounting from non-accounting duties, any credential confirmation across jurisdictions, and legal review of a genuinely borderline role. Ask for an estimate that reflects how much restructuring the offer needs, not a flat number for a standard accounting filing.
Price the negotiation, not just the filing
A case where the employer readily confirms the role is substantially accounting work costs less to prepare than one requiring back-and-forth to reduce the consulting component or clarify duties. Ask what the estimate assumes about the final duty split and what happens if the employer's description changes after review. Confirm current government fees separately, since they are unrelated to the professional service work needed to resolve the duty question.
Two further items belong in the estimate. The first is the employer's own time, which is rarely invoiced but frequently decisive: obtaining an authorised signature, running an internal legal review of a duty description, and, in organisations with a shared services function, waiting for a queue nobody in the hiring team controls. The second is the cost of a second attempt.
Where a role is presented on a description that does not hold together and the position is reconsidered, the applicant is not simply back where they started, because the account already given forms part of the history. Hypothetical example: a graphic designer's employer treats the duty breakdown as a formality and issues it unsigned, and the two weeks spent obtaining a signed version costs more than the entire professional estimate for the review itself.