How accounting teams use the time AI frees up could shape their advice and and prepare the next generation of leaders.

Accounting Voices

With Rob Brown

If AI cuts the time it takes to prepare a tax return from five hours to three, an accounting firm has two hours to work with. It could use them to take on another return, talk with the client about a decision they’ve been putting off, or coach a junior accountant through a tricky review.

The software can free up the time. What happens next depends on the firm.

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That distinction runs through this episode of Accounting Voices, part of AI Reality Inside Firms. The episode offers a timely question as firms set their 2027 priorities. Where did the time they saved this year actually go?

Host Rob Brown traces the answer to four decisions firm leaders can easily put off while a rollout is going well. The consequences can surface years later, when a firm is trying to grow its advisory practice, explain its value to a potential investor, or find someone ready to take over a retiring partner’s client relationships.

Building an advisory practice takes more than freeing up staff time. It requires a deliberate approach to client relationships, training, scope and technology.

It's Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines

Accounting firm owners have heard the message for years: move beyond transactional work and build higher-value advisory relationships.

Yet the distance between wanting an advisory practice and developing a team capable of delivering one can be considerable. Outsourcing and automation may free up time, but that capacity only becomes valuable when firms have a clear system for putting it to work.

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Rebecca Burnick, owner and CEO of Office Heads, has taken a process-led approach to that challenge. After 15 years working in strategic management consulting, she founded Office Heads and has spent 18 years developing a structured model for serving clients and helping team members grow into advisory roles. Her experience offers a practical lesson: advisory capability is built through intentional processes, repeated practice and clear client expectations, not simply a change in job title.

Entrepreneurship, community, and a candid look at firm ownership reveal possibilities many never dream of.

Accounting Conversations
With Chayton Farlee
Center for Accounting Transformation

Scotty Scarano knows how to get accountants talking about something besides deadlines. Give them a bracket, put their favorite software up against an industry personality, and let the campaigning begin.

The founder of Accounting High turns professional education and networking into something resembling a school community, complete with friendly rivalries. But beneath the jokes is a question with consequences for the profession: How many potential accountants lose interest before they discover what the work can become?

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On Accounting Conversations, host Chayton Farlee joins Scarano to explore the distance between the accounting industry students encounter in class and the careers they can build. Their discussion connects the appeal of entrepreneurship with the harder decisions behind a growing practice, including when an owner’s enthusiasm becomes a bottleneck.

Accounting firms may offer flexibility, but outdated expectations and missed opportunities can still push experienced professionals out the door.

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

Anne Napolitano used to give advisory-level guidance without charging for it. “I was doing those advisory-type services without really getting compensated for it because I just felt it was what you were supposed to offer to your clients,” she says.

But after learning about value pricing from various resources, including Ron Baker and Ed Kless, her thinking changed. “The better we got at something, the quicker we were, the less money we were making because we could do things faster,” she says.

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That realization helped her understand that clients weren’t buying time; rather, they were buying the decades of experience she and her team had as accountants and the value that comes from that experience. And today, she charges a premium for that expertise.

“We need to value ourselves correctly and appreciate the fact that we’re really doing some great work for our clients, and we should be compensated for that,” she explains.

Her firm, Anne Napolitano Consulting, landed on its niche specialty ofrestaurants, bars, breweries, distilleries, and wineries, partly because of Napolitano’s love of cooking.

Look at pricing, services, and client relationships to assess whether AI investments are reshaping the business.

Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

A tax return completed in three hours instead of five gives an accounting firm something valuable: time.

What happens to those two hours may reveal more about the firm’s AI strategy than the technology that saved them.

Does the firm take on more work? Give employees breathing room? Help a client understand an emerging business problem? Reconsider how it prices its services?

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In a solo episode of Accounting Voices, host Rob Brown examines a distinction that can get lost in the enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence: Adopting AI and changing a business are different accomplishments.

“Efficiency is not reshaping,” Brown says. “A little bit of doing things faster doesn’t change the model.”

The episode, part of the "AI Reality Inside Firms" series, offers leaders three ways to examine their progress: Look at the economics, consider the client relationship, and assess whether leadership is deliberately shaping the firm’s direction.

Together, those questions move the conversation from what a tool can do to what a firm intends to become.

State-based plans and a newly available AI platform put software costs and accountants' oversight role in focus.

By Seth Fineberg
For CPA Trendlines

Avalara is making its sales tax pricing easier to see while expanding the work it says artificial intelligence can perform for accounting firms.

Its published Avalara Select plans cover businesses with annual revenue below $50 million. Its Aviator AI platform became generally available Oct. 8. Together, the changes address two pressures Evan Wright, general manager of Avalara's global returns business, describes in an interview with CPA Trendlines: clients need predictable compliance costs, and accountants need to show their value as technology takes on more of the work.

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“How do I ensure that my billable hours aren't getting, you know, absolutely eroded in this new world of AI?” Wright says, describing questions he hears from practitioners.

The tension runs through Avalara's strategy. The company is trying to simplify buying and using compliance software while asking accountants to trust it with more complicated tasks.

Context, verified sources, and human review remain essential as teams build AI tools.

Innovation Insights
With Donny Shimamoto and Liz Mason
Center for Accounting Transformation

A tax firm can build an AI agent to organize documents, flag missing information, and track unfinished returns. The harder assignment is deciding what that agent should never do on its own. That question drives this episode of Innovation Insights, a Center for Accounting Transformation podcast conversation between hosts Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, and Liz Mason, CPA.

As smaller firms experiment with building their own tax tools, the two examine what separates a useful automation from a costly lapse in security, accuracy, or professional responsibility.

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Shimamoto is founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation. Mason is co-founder and CEO of TaxFigure, founder and CEO of High Rock Accounting, a member of Intuit’s Partner Council, a board member of AuditMiner, and CEO and founder of Rebel Rock.

Their message gives firms room to experiment, but it also gives that experimentation a clear starting point: Understand the data, the workflow, and the professional obligations before building.

The 2026 Accounting MOVE Project report examines how caregiving affects women’s careers. A newly released MOVE Like This episode explores another part of that conversation: whether women’s own healthcare needs are being heard.

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

Supporting women’s careers requires understanding the lives they lead beyond work.

That connection comes into focus with the release of the 2026 Accounting MOVE Project report, Caught in the Middle: How Caregiving Pressures Are Reshaping Women's Careers in Public Accounting, which examines how caregiving pressures affect advancement in public accounting. Among participating firms, 47% reported seeing caregiving slow progress toward promotion or partnership, and 76% said the career impact falls mostly on women.

Released alongside the report, this episode of MOVE Like This broadens the discussion to women’s health. Host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk talks with Michael Annichine, CEO of Magee-Womens Research Institute & Foundation at the time of the recording, about gaps in medical research, the importance of listening, and what happens when women’s concerns are dismissed.

The conversation offers a useful perspective for accounting leaders considering the report’s findings: Understanding what people need is only the beginning. Institutions also have to act on what they learn.

Editor’s note: This episode was recorded April 16, 2024. References to the president refer to then-President Joe Biden. Discussion of federal initiatives, research funding, and diversity, equity, and inclusion reflects the context at the time of recording.