TECH and FINTECH

Jeff Seibert: Digits Software Moves Toward Real-Time Accounting | The Disruptors

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Dovetailing finance and product engineering can transform accounting.
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines 

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When Jeff Seibert, CEO and founder of Digits, was at Twitter, he was astonished by the difference in data quality and timeliness between the product engineering and the finance sides of the business.

On the product engineering side, testing tools, dashboards, and analytic tools provided real-time data on “exactly what your users are clicking on, what your servers are doing every second.” At the same time, “I was waiting two to three weeks for our accountant to give me a black and white P&L,” he recalls, even with “100 people in corporate finance.”

MORE DISRUPTORS: Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors | Poe: What P.E. Really Wants from Firms | The Disruptors  | Blake Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm | Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time |

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That experience led him to start Digits in 2018, an AI-native accounting platform, which is going “head to head with QuickBooks and Xero.”

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Three Tech Priorities with Rapid ROI

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Build advisory capacity without waiting for outside capital.

By Hitendra Patil

The technology gap between private equity-backed and independent firms is real, and it is also smaller than it appears from the outside.

Here is something I have consistently observed: PE-backed firms invest heavily in technology during their first 18 to 24 months post-acquisition because they have to. They are merging systems from multiple firms, migrating client data and standardizing workflows across a larger organization. That investment is substantial, but a meaningful portion of it solves problems that independent firms do not have, because they were never acquired in the first place.

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The independent firm’s technology challenge is different: deliberate modernization at a pace that does not disrupt client service. That is a more tractable problem than integration at scale, and the firms that treat it as a sequenced project tend to close the gap faster than they expected.
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Don’t Lose Your Shirt Over Process

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Standardize and tell your clients what you need.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

Why is McDonald’s easy to price and why is their product so consistent no matter where in the world you are? You know that if you get a Big Mac in Chicago or one in New York, it will taste and cost the same. This is because of standardization, and you shouldn’t underestimate the role digitized data plays in maintaining this consistency.

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Your firm can standardize and price just like McDonald’s does, if you have the right tech infrastructure, in addition to standards related to both clients and workflow.
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The Real Problem with AI in Accounting | ARC

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Technology is advancing faster than the profession’s ability to rethink its workflows.

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Accounting ARC
With Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

In a profession often defined by structure, standards, and well-worn career paths, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, opens a different kind of conversation in a recent Accounting ARC episode—one that challenges assumptions about what it means to build a career in accounting.

His guest, Danielle Supkis Cheek, embodies that challenge.

As senior vice president of AI, analytics and assurance at CaseWare, Supkis Cheek operates at the intersection of technology, methodology, and human judgment. But her path there was anything but linear—and that, Shimamoto suggests, is exactly the point.

MORE Accounting ARC: 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 | Accounting’s “Untalked-About” Frontier | Why Happiness is Hard-Fought for High Achievers | The Fastest Way to Lose Talent Is “Dick Leadership” | Post-Holiday Fatigue Isn’t a Failure; It’s a Signal | OCR, Research Bots & Meeting Assistants: What Actually Helps Now | Return Season is the New Stress Test | Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting |

Supkis Cheek describes her role less as a technologist and more as a translator. “I like to think of myself as someone who translates across domains,” she says, explaining how she helps software companies understand how accountants actually work—and how technology can reshape those workflows.

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CPA-PE Deal Tracker™: How Big Buyouts Are Turning the Profession into a Platform

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Venture capital crashes the private equity party in accounting.

Consolidation constellation: Sponsors in blue, platforms in red, targets in gold.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™ shows the steep rise in deal flow, hitting more than 450.

Private equity’s push into accounting is entering a new and more complicated phase: platform building, sponsor recycling, technology investments, blended tax and wealth services — and now, a new pipeline of cash from venture capital.

MORE PE Wars: The CPA Platform Economy Is Concentrating Fast | Alan Whitman: Why the Next Big CPA Firms Won’t Look Like CPA Firms | Gear Up for Growth | The PE Takeover: Audit Problem? What Audit Problem? | 1,000 Deals Show Where PE Money in Accounting Really Goes. | The 7.6x Machine: How Grassroots Firms Are Taking Private Equity for a Ride | Deal Tracker: PE Platforms Accelerate the Grab for CPA Firms | With Apax Sale, CohnReznick Starts Building a National Platform | PE Deal Tracker for Feb. 2026: 57 deals in 60 days | PE Deal Tracker Update: Alan Whitman Plants a Flag in the Private Equity Landscape | Alan Whitman: Breaking the Mold with PE Backing | Holistic Guide
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This month’s CPA Trendlines CPA-PE Deal Tracker™ shows nine new deals in April, down from the first-quarter deal-closing frenzy but bringing the year-to-date deal count through April 30 to 78, well ahead of the 44 logged in the same window of 2025.

The broader verified dataset now includes 452 in-scope events, giving CPA Trendlines a clearer view of what private capital is doing after its first wave of accounting-firm investments.

The latest data does not show a retreat. It shows a transformation. The new gambits go well beyond roll-ups, and include service line extensions, corporate carve-outs, cross-industry tie-ups, recapitalizations, continuations and a buzzy new venture-backed startup.

World domination

The deal models are sprawling in all directions as big money battles for a dwindling number of prime firms and squeezes for synergies in the firms they’ve acquired.

In the mix, accounting is morphing from a profession into a platform. A launchpad from which to sell a growing, and traditionally conflict-laden, range of products and services. From tax planning to wealth management, from outsourced accounting systems to internal audit, and from risk management to insurance sales.

A once incongruous, even contradictory, collection of services are being acquired, aligned and advanced. The ambition is market encirclement. The impulse is world domination.

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