Today's Features
MANAGEMENT

What Internal Controls Mean to Clients

man writing in notebook

And how to explain them.

By Ed Mendlowitz
77 Ways to Wow!

What are internal controls? Auditors widely use this term. It also appears multiple times in engagement letters for audits of businesses and not-for-profits, but I do not believe many outside of the accounting profession really know or understand what internal controls are. I will try to explain it here.

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Internal controls refer to an organization’s system of deterrence, oversight, checks and balances. An illustration is where someone in a business writes and mails the checks to pay a bill. If this same person then receives the bank statement and performs the reconciliation of that account, there would not be any control or oversight on that person and whether the payment was proper and not misdirected. They are checking their own work. This is how many frauds occur.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI Accountants Cut Costs per Task to 21 cents from $10.35

Claude delivers faster, cheaper production. But what do the tests overlook?

AI models passed accountants on benchmark tasks in 2025 and now score at or near 100%, compared to an average human accountant at 37%. (Accuracy of AI models on the study’s accounting tasks by model release date, compared with accountants without AI. Source: Mercor)

By CPA Trendlines Research

Jason Staats: “How can I be so busy if AI is this good?”

AI accountants are running faster, cheaper and now more accurately than humans.

Artificial intelligence outperforms 12 licensed CPAs on four structured accounting tasks in a new study by an AI deployment firm, with Claude Opus 5 scoring 100 percent across 20 attempts while unassisted accountants average about 37 percent.

MORE AI | Your Next Hire Might Not Be an Accountant | K1x Bets $175 Million to Beat the K-1 Bottleneck | “Set It and Forget It” Is Not an AI Strategy | Kenji Kuramoto: When AI Does the Work, What Are Firms Selling? | Your AI Agent Should Show Its Work | Rillet’s Raise: Betting $100 Million on Fewer Accountants

Claude finishes every attempt in under 10 minutes. Most accountants take 30 minutes to three hours in the Mercor study. Even the strongest participant falls behind the model on both speed and accuracy.

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ACCOUNTING VOICES

The Quiet Fear Behind Accounting’s Growing Divide | Accounting Voices

Leaders face growing questions about influence, identity, and professional relevance.

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The step-by-step operating guide for CPA firms building, pricing, and scaling advisory services that clients value—and pay for.

Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

An accounting firm can keep its clients, meet its deadlines, and remain profitable while the people inside it quietly wonder whether they still belong in its future.

As technology, ownership models, and expectations reshape the profession, Accounting Voices examines the questions that software demonstrations and strategic plans often leave unanswered: Who gets to make decisions? Whose expertise still carries weight? And what happens when the career someone works toward becomes a career they no longer want?

The episode presents accounting’s growing divide as a realignment of power, relevance, and leadership. For firm leaders and professionals preparing to lead, understanding that realignment means looking beneath the most visible changes. READ MORE →

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

How to Attract the Best Merger Candidates

Man's hand sowing wheat

Never stop looking.

By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Mergers: Your Complete Guide

Firms that are serious about merging in smaller firms on a regular basis understand that doing mergers is all about planting seeds. A buyer has to have this attitude:

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Every day of every year, at least one firm decides to test the merger waters. If our efforts to identify sellers are made continuously throughout the year, every year, sooner or later, we will find at least one interested merger candidate and probably more than one.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Your Next Hire Might Not Be an Accountant | It’s Not Just the Numbers

An AI engineer can help accounting teams tackle bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and build capacity.

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

It’s Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines

For years, accounting firm owners have treated the “next hire” question as a simple one: bring on another accountant. However, that assumption is starting to cost firms real time and money.

In this recent case study, MoneyPenny, LLC shares what happened  when their newest hire wasn’t an accountant at all. She was a recent graduate with a degree in AI, and within her first weeks, she had built a tool that solved a problem the whole team had been living with for years.

MORE Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead | MORE Advisory & Consulting

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She graduated in the first AI cohort to come through her university and joined the firm knowing nothing about accounting. What she did know was how to watch a process and ask why it worked the way it did.

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