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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

If AI Is Saving Time, Why Are You Still Working Late?

How fast (or slow) are accountants adopting AI? Depends on whom you ask.

Six Surveys. Eleven Answers.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Hourly billing is fading. Advisory is spreading. Artificial intelligence is freeing accountants to do more valuable work.

But agreement may end there.

The meanings of adoption, advisory and the AI dividend are leaving firm leaders with sometimes clashing pictures of how far the change is going.

MORE AI: Gen AI in Accounting: Epic Transformation, or Overheated Hype? | Intuit, Thomson, Wolters Kluwer: Accountants Question AI Promises | Caseware’s David Marquis: AI Can Do More Work but Auditors Must Make the Call | AI Accountants Cut Costs per Task to 21 cents from $10.35 | Your Next Hire Might Not Be an Accountant | It’s Not Just the Numbers

The problem surfaces again in a fresh series of surveys that tell different, even confusing, versions of the same story. One study finds advisory in 57 percent of surveyed U.S. practices. Another puts advisory or consulting at 94 percent in its U.S. sample. A pricing-platform survey finds little hourly billing for particular services. A broader practice-management benchmark finds most responding firms still use hourly billing.

Firm leaders are being shown evidence of progress, but the evidence does not consistently measure the same progress. READ MORE →

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Intuit, Thomson, Wolters Kluwer: Accountants Question AI Promises

At the big three user conferences, AI is changing the rules… again.

Vendors take center stage at user conferences. Logos: Thomson Reuters, QuickBooks, Wolters Kluwer

By CPA Trendlines Research

Over the next few weeks, Intuit, Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Reuters will be gathering their users in Las Vegas and Orlando, each bringing software and strategies that accountants fear could encroach on a firm’s client relationships.

Intuit Connect – Oct. 26-28, Aria, Las Vegas. Client books, monthly close, advisory, agents and the accountant relationship. More than 100 breakouts. Up to 12 CPE credits. Learn more
CCH Connections (Wolters Kluwer) – Oct. 25-28, Grande Lakes, Orlando. Tax and audit production, review, migrations and quality management. More than 90 sessions. Up to 19 CPE. Learn more
Thomson Reuters Synergy – Nov. 16-19, Fontainebleau, Las Vegas. Research, preparation, document workflows and engagement evidence. Combined professional audiences; separate general sessions. Learn more

The gap between firms and vendors provides a lens into the season. Intuit Connect, Wolters Kluwer’s CCH Connections and Thomson Reuters Synergy are pairing agentic AI demos with sessions on pricing, review, staffing and leadership. READ MORE →

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI Accountants Cut Costs per Task to 21 cents from $10.35

Claude delivers faster, cheaper production. But what do the tests overlook?

AI models passed accountants on benchmark tasks in 2025 and now score at or near 100%, compared to an average human accountant at 37%. (Accuracy of AI models on the study’s accounting tasks by model release date, compared with accountants without AI. Source: Mercor)

By CPA Trendlines Research

Jason Staats: “How can I be so busy if AI is this good?”

AI accountants are running faster, cheaper and now more accurately than humans.

Artificial intelligence outperforms 12 licensed CPAs on four structured accounting tasks in a new study by an AI deployment firm, with Claude Opus 5 scoring 100 percent across 20 attempts while unassisted accountants average about 37 percent.

MORE AI | Your Next Hire Might Not Be an Accountant | K1x Bets $175 Million to Beat the K-1 Bottleneck | “Set It and Forget It” Is Not an AI Strategy | Kenji Kuramoto: When AI Does the Work, What Are Firms Selling? | Your AI Agent Should Show Its Work | Rillet’s Raise: Betting $100 Million on Fewer Accountants

Claude finishes every attempt in under 10 minutes. Most accountants take 30 minutes to three hours in the Mercor study. Even the strongest participant falls behind the model on both speed and accuracy.

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CHARTS & GRAPHS

CPA PE Deal Tracker™: The Next Deal Cycle Comes into View

By CPA Trendlines Research

Going into the fourth quarter of 2026, Wall Street’s buying spree for accounting firms is cooling as platform firms digest a two-year surge of acquisitions and the earliest investors, from three to five years ago, begin to cash out, according to the CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™.

MORE Private Equity: Michael Hoover: Growth Without Discipline Comes at a Cost | Big 4 Transparency | CBIZ Told Grant Thornton No, No, No, Before Saying Yes | PE Already Knows Your Price. Do You? | How Private Equity Turns CPA Loyalty into Legal Risk | Ira Rosenbloom: PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | The Disruptors | Allan Koltin: What Elite CPA Firms Do Differently | Gear Up for Growth

The October 2026 edition of the CPA PE Deal Tracker™ shows accounting’s private-equity deal flow easing in the third quarter, with 37 acquisitions in the U.S. and Canada, down from 42 a year earlier and a far cry from this year’s first-quarter surge of 58. The Tracker now counts 400 such deals in the U.S. and Canada since its records began in December 2016, plus 87 it has found elsewhere, for 487 worldwide, although its coverage outside North America is not systematic.

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PRO Member Exclusive

New Guide Shows How Firms Build New Sales Tax Service Lines

New CPA Trendlines / Avalara playbook shows accountants don’t need to be SALT specialists before they can help.

Sales tax is getting harder for clients to manage.

By CPA Trendlines
with Avalara

Sales tax used to be easy to leave to somebody else.

That gets harder as clients sell more products and services across more state and local boundaries. The accountant may not consider sales tax part of the engagement. The client may assume it is.

Download the guide: From Generalist to SALT-Savvy: How Accounting Practitioners Can Build Sales Tax Expertise That Wins Clients.

A new guide from CPA Trendlines and Avalara takes aim at the gap.

“From Generalist to SALT-Savvy: How Accounting Practitioners Can Build Sales Tax Expertise That Wins Clients” is now available, with a practical roadmap for accounting firms that want to add sales tax compliance and advisory work without first building a full-fledged state and local tax practice.

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