K-1 Bottlenecks Stretch Busy Season, Forcing Firms to Rethink Tax Workflows
More than 50% of K-1 work now hits in a three-month crunch,
By CPA Trendlines
TECH and FINTECH
Six Disruptors in the Accounting Profession
They have big ideas and deep pockets.
By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA
Change isn’t just knocking at your door; it’s kicking it down. We’re in the middle of a major transformation because of new players, cutting-edge technologies and a financial surge. The rules are being rewritten before our very eyes.
MORE by Jody Padar
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If you consider accounting a giant chessboard, many players are making strategic moves. You have the old-school firms on one side who are navigating a rapidly changing landscape. On the other side, you have the new-school disruptors. These innovative entities are reshaping the industry with cutting-edge technologies and fresh approaches.
Alan Whitman: Why the Next Big CPA Firms Won’t Look Like CPA Firms | Gear Up for Growth
And why culture matters more than ever.
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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines
Alan Whitman isn’t trying to build a better CPA firm. He’s trying to replace it.
At Nichols Cauley, the former Baker Tilly CEO is recasting the traditional accounting practice as a “financial services company”—a structure that blends tax, insurance, risk, and transaction advisory into a single, continuous client relationship.
MORE ALAN WHITMAN: PE Deal Tracker Update: Alan Whitman Plants a Flag in the Private Equity Landscape | Breaking the Mold with PE Backing | Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Moss Adams-Baker Tilly Merger: Bigger Isn’t Better. Better Is Better.| Unlocking the Secrets to Smart Growth
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The goal, he tells Jean Caragher in this episode of Gear Up for Growth, is not to expand services around the edges, but to collapse them into one integrated model designed to “manage, protect, and grow” client wealth in a recurring loop.
The shift reflects a broader rethinking across the profession, in which private equity capital, client demand for one-stop advisory services, and advances in AI are pushing firms beyond the partnership model that has defined accounting for decades.
Having previously led transformational growth at Baker Tilly, Whitman rejects the notion that rapid growth damages culture.
“That’s hogwash,” he says. “Culture comes down to one word: trust.” READ MORE →
Unicorns and Funerals: From Botkeeper’s Demise to Basis AI’s Rise
How AI Accounting Went From Pioneering to Inevitable in 1 Month and 11 Years.
By CPA Trendlines Research
In a matter of days, AI in accounting produced its most celebrated funding round and its most instructive collapse. Both developments were years in the making. Neither was a surprise to anyone paying close attention.
The leap from Botkeeper’s machine learning to Basis’s agentic AI didn’t just change the technology. It changed which companies survive.
MORE AI | Outlook 2026: Agentic AI Reaches the Tipping Point in Tax and Accounting Firms | Gen AI in Accounting: Epic Transformation, or Overheated Hype? | AI Tax App Crashes Financial Stocks on Wall Street | The $125 Billion Challenge: Intuit’s AI Platform Redraws the Accounting Map | Bot Wars: Wolters Kluwer, Intuit, Thomson Reuters Battle for AI Dominance in CPA Firms | How TaxDome and Juno Just Changed the Tax Tech Game | Meet Basis, the New AI Bookkeeper on the Block
The juxtaposition is not just ironic. It is clarifying.
What happened in February 2026 was not a story about whether AI works in accounting. The research says it does.
It was a story about which business models survive the moment when AI actually arrives — and which ones get caught between the old world and the new one, having spent years and tens of millions of dollars building toward a future that materialized faster, and harder, than anyone expected.
Jody Padar: The New Playbook Is AI-Powered and Human-Centered | Big 4 Transparency
AI Won’t Replace Accountants. Instead, It Will Rewire the Business Model.
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Big 4 Transparency
With Dominic Piscopo, CPA
Jody Padar, widely known as “The Radical CPA” and author of Radical Pricing, argues the future of accounting won’t be won by automation alone, but by a business model shift that elevates human judgment, advisory, and client relationships.
MORE Dominic Piscopo | AI | Pay & Compensation
In the new episode of the Big 4 Transparency Podcast, Padar joins host Dominic Piscopo to trace her path from early cloud-firm pioneer to venture-backed operator and to explain why her newest venture, Xcel Labs, is focused on training CPAs to think and lead differently in an AI-first world. Xcel Labs’ Navi aims to build empathy and leadership at scale.