SURVEYS & RESEARCH

Clients Need Empathy

By

Henry
 Rory Henry, a Behavioral Financial Advisor, is the director at Arrowroot Family Office and co-founder of AFO Wealth Management Forward. He has created a program to help accounting professionals incorporate holistic wealth management and proactive planning services into their practice.

Think about a return on relationships.

By Rory Henry
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management

In his iconic work, “Meditationes Sacrae” (1597), Sir Francis Bacon wrote that “knowledge itself is power.” Many scholars believe Bacon wanted to further the idea that having and sharing knowledge is the cornerstone of reputation and influence – and therefore power. All achievements emanate from this philosophy.

MORE: Advisory Includes More Than You Might Think | Wealth Management: Can You Afford Not to Provide It?
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

But in many areas such as business, finance, sports and the military, knowledge can be a competitive advantage. Therefore, many are reluctant to share their knowledge with others.
READ MORE →

Advisory Includes More Than You Might Think

By

Henry
 Rory Henry, a Behavioral Financial Advisor, is the director at Arrowroot Family Office and co-founder of AFO Wealth Management Forward. He has created a program to help accounting professionals incorporate holistic wealth management and proactive planning services into their practice.

What do you see when you envision your future?

By Rory Henry
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management

I work at a virtual family office called Arrowroot Family Office. Over the course of my career I have learned that family (and family dynamics) significantly shapes who we are and how we form relationships in life.

MORE: Wealth Management: Can You Afford Not to Provide It?
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Research shows that one of the biggest drivers of family dynamics is the order in which each child is born. Birth order theory, developed by Alfred Adler in the 20th century, suggests that the order in which children are born can have a significant impact on their development and personality.
READ MORE →

Barometer: Firms Brace for a Tough Tax Season

By

Busy season 2026 clouded by regulatory shifts and client pressures.

Ready or Not: Less than half are ahead of last year’s preparation for Tax Season 2026. On the Front Lines: Clockwise from top left, Cicero, Saul, Krueger

By CPA Trendlines Research

Fewer than half of accounting firm leaders report entering the 2026 busy season in better shape than a year ago, according to the new CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer.

Join the survey; Get the answers

MORE Tax Practice | TaxPlanIQ Escalates the Battle in Tax Planning Software | How TaxDome and Juno Just Changed the Tax Tech Game | DOGE, Palantir and the IRS: What Could Go Wrong? | Five Million IRS Refunds Delayed by Staff Cuts | IRS Phone Stats Improve—Unless You’re a Tax Pro | ‘Kryptonite:’ IRS Buried under 8 Million Paper Returns | Mounting Delays Undermine Public Trust in IRS Refund Process | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients

The readiness gap, evident across firm sizes and specialties, sets the tone for a season overshadowed by heightened concerns about tax law changes and mounting pressure on margins.

READ MORE →

Wealth Management: Can You Afford Not to Provide It?

By

portrait of Seth Fineberg
Fineberg
 Seth Fineberg is an accounting industry consultant, content strategist, analyst and speaker. His current business is Accountants Forward. He has been a business editor and journalist for over 30 years, the vast majority of which has been spent overseeing the accounting profession’s evolution.

Advisory begins with conversations.

By Seth Fineberg
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management.

Today we are cresting the biggest waves of change that I’ve seen in my 20-plus years of covering the accounting profession. I’m talking about the need for CPAs to go beyond simply being the trusted tax guy (or girl) for their clients and to help them manage all aspects of their wealth. This movement has been building for the better part of a decade, but only recently has it gone from “I’ll think about it” to “Can I afford not to get on board?”

Not to sound the alarm bells here, but CPAs must soon choose between riding the financial planning wave or being swept under it.
READ MORE →

Clients Demand Niche Know-How, and They’re Willing to Pay for It

By

Expertise is the new table stakes.
Brands matter: Clients rely on business or personal referrals to find their accountants.

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines Research

U.S. business clients are willing to pay up to 25 percent more for specialized accounting services — and many are making niche expertise a non-negotiable.

MORE in Client Service Opportunities and in Advisory and Consulting, and

A TaxDome-commissioned survey of 353 small- and mid-sized business executives and owners across industries finds that as companies grow, they leave generalists behind in favor of firms that understand their vertical, speak their language and solve the high-stakes problems that come with scale.

Once they go niche, they rarely return.

READ MORE →

CPA Pricing Power Falters as Salaries March Upward

By

The tax and accounting sector shows signs of accelerating change.

By CPA Trendlines

Salaries at CPA firms are entering their second year of marked year-over-year gains, even as billing rate increases remain few and far between, according to a new analysis by CPA Trendlines.

MORE: Most Tax and Accounting Firms Are Relying on Pay Raises in a Losing Battle for Talent | Higher Wages, Fewer Jobs: A New Era for CPA Staffing | Struggling to Keep Up with Market Salaries? |

GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

An industry that once seemed stable and predictable is now anything but. Some can call it a transformation. For others, it’s a massive dislocation.

READ MORE →

Overcome Health, Wealth and Stealth Challenges

By

Why we need them.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

Now we move on to our sixth “C” in the passport to partnership – challenges.

Again the heading has more than a single application, which we’ll explore here.

MORE by Martin Bissett
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Ultimately, the partners interviewed in our research broke “challenges” down into two key areas:

  1. The ability for a manager to pull the firm out of the mire when there’s a problem
  2. The ability for a manager to pull the client out of the mire when there’s a problem

READ MORE →

What Empowerment Can Do for Your Team

By

smiling woman standing at end of table, speaking with three seated colleagues

Unlock intellect and innovation.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

“If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail.” – Kobe Bryant

I do a lot of work with firms to help them improve their project management, where everything is color-coded as red, green or yellow, depending on how the project is going. Frequently what I initially see is that everything is green for weeks on end, but still no nearer completion.

MORE by Alan Anderson | Ask the CPA Trendlines AI Chatbot about Transforming Audit for the Future
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

My instinct tells me that those projects that were green four weeks ago really weren’t green then. But out of fear of retribution, the staff were all afraid to tell the partner that something wasn’t going as well as expected. It takes about three to four weeks before people start being sincere about the job status.
READ MORE →

Higher Wages, Fewer Jobs: A New Era for CPA Staffing

By

AI and India Replace U.S. Staff in CPA Industry Shakeup.

The great restructuring: After the pandemic rebound, hiring gradually slows, finally going negative this year.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The nation’s tax and accounting firms are cutting job rosters even as they’re aggressively raising wages, signifying a structural retrenchment redefining how firms produce and deliver services, according to a new study by CPA Trendlines Research.

MORE Tax and Accounting Wages Hit Record Highs | Show Us the Money! Accountants Are Making More | Chris Vanover: Audit, Now with 100% Less Misery | The Disruptors | Gen AI in Accounting: Epic Transformation, or Overheated Hype? | AI Will Steal Your Job. And That’s a Good Thing | Accounting ARC | Steve Evans: Why Traditional Hiring Methods Fail | The Disruptors

U.S. firms are scaling back staff-level roles, favoring automation and offshore operations. Generative AI and cloud platforms now perform tasks once handled by entry-level staff, including reconciliations, bookkeeping, and basic tax prep. Simultaneously, more firms are offloading transactional services to overseas teams, particularly in India, in response to domestic labor shortages and cost containment efforts.

READ MORE →

What Empowerment Does for Your Firm

By

two men talking across a table, one holding a sheet of paper, window and brick wall in background

Ten ways to get started.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Empowerment seems like it would be the easiest attribute to build up in a firm, but it’s actually one of the hardest. Firms go to these Kumbaya events on leadership and trusting your team, but then when they go back to the office the next day, nothing has changed.

MORE by Alan Anderson
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

Empowerment is last in my book because it’s the furthest from what clients value most. Clients look at What’s In It For Me – they value what’s relevant to them. But empowerment is the most important attribute in our framework. It’s the key to unlocking the power of your team.
READ MORE →