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Hand moving triangle along beam to indicate balance between price and value

Don’t discuss fees as soon as a potential client calls.

By Sandi Leyva
The Accountant’s Accelerator

How do you talk to a prospect or client about your fee?

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Some of the answers I have heard are:

  • “It depends.”
  • “Tell them and get off the phone as fast as possible.”
  • “I don’t know.”
  • “What is your budget?”

Most accountants spill the beans about their rates way too early in a conversation with a future client. So when should you talk rates?

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Make Value Your First Priority

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Hand moving triangle along beam to indicate balance between price and value

Don’t discuss fees as soon as a potential client calls.

By Sandi Leyva
The Accountant’s Accelerator

How do you talk to a prospect or client about your fee?

MORE by Sandi Leyva
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Some of the answers I have heard are:

  • “It depends.”
  • “Tell them and get off the phone as fast as possible.”
  • “I don’t know.”
  • “What is your budget?”

Most accountants spill the beans about their rates way too early in a conversation with a future client. So when should you talk rates?

READ MORE →

Agentic AI Does Not Need Your Job. It Needs a Job Description | ARC

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Its greatest value to accounting may be as a carefully controlled specialist working behind the scenes.

Sponsored by Radical Pricing by the Radical CPA, Jody Padar | See Today’s Special Offer
Published Sept. 10, 2026

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Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, & Build a Top-Value Firm!

Accounting ARC
With Donny Shimamoto, Liz Mason, and Byron Patrick
Center for Accounting Transformation

Agentic AI does not have to replace an accountant to transform accounting. Its more practical role may be far less dramatic — and far more useful.

In this episode of Accounting ARC, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; Liz Mason, CPA; and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, explore how narrowly focused AI agents can help professionals retrieve information, analyze data, navigate systems, and make better-informed decisions.

MORE Accounting ARC: AI Isn’t Erasing Tax Careers. It’s Rewriting Them. | Accounting Internships Need an Upgrade | The CPA Career Nobody Talks About | Conference Season Exposes Accounting’s Knowledge Gap | The Feedback Mistake That Costs You Your Best People | Is Your Boss Really the Problem? | Most Accountants Are Missing This AI Shift | AI Can Fix Your Workflow—or Break It in Seconds | Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal for AI | Accounting’s Hidden Talent Risk: The Sandwich Generation | Built Fast. Sold Faster. Broken Later? The Truth About Accounting Tech | Recognize When You Need to Recharge Before You Burn Out | Valuing More Than the Balance Sheet

Their conversation challenges one of the dominant narratives surrounding agentic AI: that firms should build autonomous digital employees capable of handling everything a staff accountant does. Instead, the hosts envision specialized agents that operate within structured systems, perform clearly defined tasks, and show users how they reach their conclusions.

“If you have agentic AI that’s built into an architecture that already exists, there’s a whole lot more that has to happen from a training perspective,” says Mason, CEO of High Rock Accounting.

That architecture, she explains, can include multiple agents working together rather than one agent attempting to handle an entire assignment.

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Four Ways to Develop Your Marketing Plan

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Plus five questions to ask first.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

It makes no difference what size practice you have. The following tips apply if you are developing an individual marketing plan, a departmental plan or one for the entire firm.

MORE by August J. Aquila
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From an overview perspective you will want to consider the following five questions:

  1. What will be the range of services you offer?

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On Hold with the IRS. On the Hook with Clients.

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A shrinking workforce leaves tax professionals spending more time pursuing answers and explaining delays.

Emily Aprea, NAEA: “On hold for up to two hours, only to be disconnected”

By CPA Trendlines

Despite the IRS’s insistence it’s processing 98% of the returns it receives, practitioners are reporting two-hour phone waits, authorizations that take weeks to post and client problems that remain unresolved after they finally reach an employee.

MORE Tax | Logan Graf: Build a Modern Accounting Business, Not a Job | Jason Ackerman: Roth Mistakes That Cost Clients the Most | The Top Tip for Reviewing Tax Returns

The problem, apparently, is the difference between routine e-filed processing and what happens when a case needs an actual human.

New oversight reports and practitioner complaints show an agency that moves enormous volumes of returns while struggling to clear exceptions.

For accounting firms, those exceptions mean repeated calls, delayed access to records and more time explaining why a filed return has not produced a finished case.

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The 85/15 Formula for Partner Pay

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man's hand drawing upward arrow labeled "profit"Chart listing example profits of business units

Here’s a simple way to implement your distribution plan.

By Domenick J. Esposito
8 Steps to Great

Let’s say your firm has five offices that handle audit/tax compliance services and two advisory and consulting lines of business (tax consulting and management consulting). Let’s refer to them as business units and let’s also say that net profits were generated as in the chart at right:

MORE by Domenick J. Esposito
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Let’s keep the example simple. Let’s assume that each of the seven business units is self-sustaining, and that certain high-performing business units do not have to “give” profits to others and that lower-performing business units do not have to “take” profit from others.
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Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk: Caregivers Caught in the Middle | The Disruptors

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

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first and always available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by Radical Pricing: Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, and Build a Top-Value Firm

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

Accounting firms have spent years worrying about the front end of the talent pipeline. Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk wants them to look at the other end as well. 

Ruszczyk, owner and research lead of the Accounting MOVE Project, led this year’s MOVE report, Caught in the Middle: How Caregiving Pressures Are Reshaping Women’s Careers in Public Accounting. This new report examines what happens when experienced professionals take on care for children, aging parents, spouses and partners, and whether their firms keep them on the path to leadership. 

MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

MORE MOVE Like This | MORE Caregiving Research

That question matters because of the disparity in women’s representation in leadership at accounting firms.

Firms “tend to be pretty much 50:50 gender parity up until you get to the senior director, almost going to go into partnership,” Ruszczyk says. At MOVE firms, women hold about 42% of partner roles. Across all U.S. firms, that ratio drops to around 34%. For women of color, the drop is even sharper. According to Ruszczyk, about 20% of associates are women of color while only 5% of partners are.   

Caregiving isn’t the only cause for the disparity, but it is “one of the areas where we’re seeing some leaks spring up,” Ruszczyk explains. While caregiving has always been a part of the lives of accountants – men and women – several converging trends are making this a bigger issue today.

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National Study Asks Accounting Professionals How Life Outside of Work Impacts Their Careers

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Survey now open.

By CPA Trendlines

How does life outside of work impact your career? That question is at the heart of Beyond the Ledger: The Caregiving & Life Events Study (officially, The Impact of Caregiving & Life Events on the Accounting and Allied Professions). Many professionals are caring for a child, a parent, a spouse, or someone else while they work, and many are also coping with major life events such as illness, loss, or financial strain. This study will examine how common these experiences are across the profession and how they affect careers and the pipeline.

The study is led by Stephani Mason, PhD, CPA, associate professor of accounting and MIS at DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business, Claire Costin, PhD, CPA, associate professor at the University of Portland’s School of Business, and Dereck Barr-Pulliam, PhD, CPA, CIA, associate professor at the University of Louisville’s College of Business. The research team also includes assistant professors Grisel Lopez-Alvarez, PhD, at North Central College; Matthew Evans, PhD, CMA, at Florida State University; and Amy Mathews, PhD, CPA, at Auburn University.

MORE Caregiving Research
Take the Survey

“At a time when the accounting and finance profession is navigating evolving talent challenges and changing workforce expectations, caregiving and major life events are among the least understood reasons people step back or leave. It’s crucial that employers understand their impact on the workforce. We are asking now, after the tax deadline, because the profession is making decisions about its future right now and needs evidence, not guesses,” Mason explained.

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Staying Isn’t Advancing: 2026 Accounting MOVE Project Finds Caregiving Is Quietly Stalling Accounting Careers

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MOVE’s new research examines caregiving’s impact on careers and leadership pipelines and recognizes the 2026 Best Firms for Women and Equity Leadership.


By CPA Trendlines

Every firm in the 2026 Accounting MOVE Project has watched employees cut back hours or change schedules to manage caregiving. Nearly half have seen people slow their path to partnership or turn down leadership roles. Not one has calculated what that is costing them.

The 2026 Accounting MOVE Project found that 65% of firms surveyed have seen caregiving influence career progression during the past year, with mid-career professionals most often affected. Forty-seven percent have seen employees defer or slow promotion or partnership, and 47% have seen employees decline leadership opportunities. Forty-one percent have experienced resignations related to caregiving.

MORE Caught in the Middle | MORE MOVE Like This | MORE Caregiving Research

Yet firms are only beginning to understand the broader business implications. Fifty-nine percent say caregiving has definitely or possibly contributed to turnover during the past two years, and 53% believe it is affecting their partner and leadership pipelines. None of the firms surveyed has quantified the cost of caregiving-related turnover.

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