Today's Features
ACCOUNTING INFLUENCERS

Visibility Is the New Accounting Authority | Accounting Voices

Reputation now grows through clarity and communication, not tenure.

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

After two episodes dissecting the Big Four’s AI arms race, the final chapter of the mini-series turns the lens inward. This episode of Accounting Voices makes the case that staying competitive in an automated profession has less to do with budgets and bots — and everything to do with judgment, visibility, and trust.

AI has changed what clients and employers value. Hours and output no longer differentiate. Clarity, confidence, and credibility do.

In accounting, reputation once followed hierarchy. Today, it follows visibility.

When a client, prospect, or employer searches your name, they are not just checking credentials. They are looking for proof of thinking. Insight. Perspective. Signals that you understand what the numbers mean — and when they should be questioned.

READ MORE →

PRO Member Exclusive

Want Better Clients? Raise Your Rates

portrait of Loren Fogelman
Fogelman
 Loren Fogelman, founder of Business Success Solution, is an expert in pricing strategy and sales for accounting firms. A sought-after keynote speaker, she is continually listed among America’s top-ranked business coaches.

Your fees send a message about your firm.

By Loren Fogelman
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management

Setting your fees appropriately is one of the primary challenges that accounting professionals face. According to McKinsey, 80 to 90 percent of services are priced too low. Throughout my career, I too have found that most firm owners don’t know how much to charge for their services – and too often they undercharge.

MORE Rory Henry and The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

Many firm owners tell me that setting fees can feel like tiptoeing through a pricing minefield. And pricing shouldn’t be taken lightly. This is especially true for wealth management services. The prices you set today will impact your firm’s profit margin as well as your growth for years to come.
READ MORE →

PRO Member Exclusive

Use Workflow Apps to Pump Up Profits

You’ve been reinventing the wheel. Why?

By Jody Grunden
Building the Virtual CFO Firm in the Cloud

As a business grows, it becomes necessary to systemize the processes in order to increase the team’s efficiency and deliver a consistent experience for clients.

MORE by Jody Grunden
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

One of the challenges that comes with creating systems can be getting every team member on board with the process you want to put in place. For example, Joe may have one way of doing things, while Karen does them another way and Susie yet another.

Creating a system will likely require all of them to make some changes in their own day-to-day workflows.
READ MORE →

FEATURED VIDEO

Lewis: Workforce Development Is the Next Imperative | Gear Up For Growth

Training and growth—not just recruitment—will determine the profession’s future.

This is a preview. The complete episode is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!
.

Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

When Jan Lewis, vice chair of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), says, “The world is a complicated place, and who better than a CPA to help cut through the noise?” she’s not offering a slogan. She’s issuing a call to action.

More Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | More Gear Up for Growth

More CPA Trendlines videos and podcasts here

In a wide-ranging and refreshingly candid conversation with host Jean Caragher on Gear Up for Growth, Lewis makes the case that this moment—right now—is one of the most consequential and opportunity-rich periods the CPA profession has ever faced.

READ MORE →

GROWTH STRATEGIES

Twelve Ways to Use ChatGPT Today

Embrace artificial intelligence in your accounting practice.

By Jackie Meyer
The Balanced Millionaire: Advisor Edition

In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP) and advanced large language models (LLMs, the brains behind tools like ChatGPT) are no longer futuristic concepts – they’re here now, and they’re incredibly powerful. Integrating AI into your tech stack can revolutionize your practice, freeing up time, enhancing client service, and providing insights that would be hard to get manually.

MORE by Jackie Meyer
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

It might sound a bit abstract or even hype-y, so let’s break it down in practical terms for an accounting and tax advisory firm.

What are AI, NLP and LLMs?

  • Artificial Intelligence: AI is a broad term for machines or software that mimic human intelligence processes. This includes learning from data (so they improve over time), reasoning to make decisions or predictions, and self-correcting when they get things wrong. In practice, AI can be as simple as an email spam filter (which “learns” what spam looks like by example), or as complex as an autonomous vehicle. In our context, think of AI as tools that can analyze data or perform tasks in a humanlike way – but at computer speed and scale.

READ MORE →

ABOUT US

Bissett Bullet: Look To The Future

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “In writing a proposal for a potential client, it serves us to remember that they want us to help them create history more than record it.”

By Martin Bissett

Because we are so used to providing compliance work, we are used to looking in the rear-view mirror. Our prospective client, however, wants to look out of the windshield to where we are going. So, let us make sure that our proposals represent a forward-looking view more than they do a historical-looking view. The prospective client takes the recording of the past as a given. They want to know where they are going with us in charge.

Today’s To-Do:

Today the action point is this. Before a meeting with a prospective client, make sure that our agenda is future-focused, not historically focused.

See more Bissett Bullets here

READ MORE →

ACCOUNTING ARC

OCR, Research Bots & Meeting Assistants: What Actually Helps Now | ARC

Firms use AI, planning, and “hope” to make tax season more manageable.

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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

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

Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

As firms head into tax season, the hosts of Accounting ARC make a case for lowering the temperature — and the workload — with practical tech choices, proactive planning and a stronger focus on people.

MORE Accounting ARC: Return Season is the New Stress Test | Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn’t Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure

In a special Tax Season Readiness episode, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; joins co-hosts Liz Mason, CPA; and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, CGMA; to preview new tax platform research, spotlight emerging AI tools and talk candidly about what helps teams sustain momentum from January through April.

Shimamoto, founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation, sets the tone early. He says he intentionally avoids calling it “busy season,” noting that practitioners tell him the upcoming cycle may feel lighter than the past few years. The conversation that follows keeps returning to the same core question: What, specifically, helps firms reduce friction before deadlines hit?

READ MORE →

BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Busy Season 2026: How Ready Are You? It Depends

The answers track firm size and practice focus.

On the front lines (clockwise from top left): Winke, Sosinski, D’Angelo, Parent, Kaplow, Gehring

By CPA Trendlines Research

Across the profession, accountants heading into the 2026 Busy Season are not sounding alarms, nor are they celebrating breakthroughs. Instead, they are settling into a steady, almost restrained confidence.

JOIN the Busy Season Barometer survey here.

MORE TAX, PRICING, and THE 2026 OUTLOOK

The latest Busy Season Barometer reveals that firms’ sense of readiness bears a striking resemblance to where they stood a year ago. For some, this signals resilience. For others, it signals stagnation. The portrait that emerges is a profession caught between incremental improvements and persistent operational friction.

READ MORE →

MARKETING & SALES

Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try

Maybe you can help a client at the same time.

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

Just in case you have run out of marketing ideas, what follows is a laundry list of activities for your consideration. Any marketing activity you undertake needs to start with an understanding of your market, and then develop the activity around those needs. Marketing is about getting in front of your targets so that they can see how much you can help them.

MORE by August J. Aquila
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

Create your activities around this concept: “I will provide my clients and prospects with valuable information in order to help them determine that I (or my firm) can best solve their problems and satisfy their needs.”
READ MORE →

FEATURED VIDEO

Epp and Schrock: Firms that Listen Keep Their People | MOVE Like This

Paychecks and perks are no longer enough to retain talent.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines Research podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

In this episode of MOVE Like This, Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk sits down with Kristi Epp, a tax partner, and Amber Schrock, an advisory partner and Las Vegas market leader at Frazier & Deeter, explore how the accounting profession is evolving and how firm leaders can better support their people. Both guests share their career journeys and how they found long-term professional homes at the firm, emphasizing mentorship, growth opportunities, and a culture that values people as much as performance. 

MORE MOVE

Epp and Schrock note that the past five years, particularly the post-COVID period, have fundamentally reshaped accounting. Remote work, automation, and regulatory complexity are now the norm, while consolidation and private equity activity are accelerating change across the profession. Frazier & Deeter’s recent growth initiatives, including acquisitions, reflect this shifting landscape and the need for firms to think differently about scale, talent, and integration.  READ MORE →

CHARTS & GRAPHS

Gallup: Accountants Still Trusted, but on Thinning Ice

New honesty and ethics ratings place accountants near historic lows.

Accountants rank seventh out of 21 professions measured by Gallup, trailing all healthcare professions and teachers, and clustering near other mid-tier trust occupations. Source: Gallup, December 2025.
Accountants rank seventh out of 21 professions measured by Gallup, trailing all healthcare professions and teachers, and clustering near other mid-tier trust occupations.

By CPA Trendlines

Accountants remain among the more trusted professions in American life — but barely, and increasingly precariously.

In Gallup’s newest Honesty and Ethics of Professions survey, only 35% of Americans rate accountants’ honesty and ethical standards as “very high” or “high.” That places the profession in the middle tier of public esteem and, according to Gallup, statistically close to its lowest point since the polling series began in 1976.

MORE Accounting Industry Buoyed by Positive Image | Gallup: Accountants Recover Pre-Enron Reputations | Gallup: Accountants ‘Top-Rated’ for Honesty, Ethics | Gallup: Accountants’ Reputations Unsullied by Financial Debacles | Are CPAs Fretting Too Much? | Gallup: Accounting Reputation in Recovery | Accounting’s Reputation Hits 14-year High

The new poll comes with a broader warning label: Americans’ ethics ratings have fallen across many occupations, and the average across Gallup’s core set of professions has slid to a historic low. Accountants are not isolated — but they are exposed. Their work is built on trust, and their public standing appears to be eroding at the exact moment the profession is asking clients and regulators to accept more complex roles for CPAs, including AI-enabled advisory services, outsourced finance, and expanded assurance responsibilities.

READ MORE →

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Nineteen Things to Expect When Merging Up

Smaller firms should be prepared.

By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library

The degree to which merger terms are negotiable is often determined by the relative size of the two firms.

MORE by Marc Rosenberg
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Generally, the larger the gap in firm size between buyer and seller, the fewer the items are open to negotiation. This can be illustrated by the following chart:
READ MORE →

MARKETING & SALES

Don’t Sell to Clients, Attract Them

woman points to laptop to explain something to a female client

Demonstrate how your value meets their needs.

By Martin Bissett
Business Development on a Budget

It’s about time to realize that value is not about time.

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

 

When I look back on the research that has been conducted by various groups as to the biggest obstacles accounting firms cite to growing their practice,

  • 50 percent said creating opportunities,
  • 25 percent said knowing how to close deals
  • and the remainder said having self-confidence in presenting, and then being able to positively differentiate from their competition.

Let’s not sell, let’s attract.
READ MORE →