AI

Nick Pasquarosa: Advisory at Scale Requires Systems, Not Heroics | Holistic Guide

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Bookkeeper360’s rise to 1,000 clients shows how workflow, AI, and remote talent—not individual effort—power modern CPA firm growth.

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With Rory Henry CFP®, BFA™
For CPA Trendlines

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

When firms talk about innovation in accounting, they often start with technology. But in my conversation with Nick Pasquarosa, founder and CEO of Bookkeeper360, it became clear that technology was never the starting point for his firm. It was the result of listening closely to small business owners and building systems to solve their most persistent problems.

MORE Rory Henry and The Holistic Guide | BOLT: Bookkeeper360 Launches Mobile and Web App Featuring AI-Powered Virtual CFO

Pasquarosa founded Bookkeeper360 in 2012, long before cloud accounting was the norm. What began as a door-to-door side hustle helping local businesses reconcile their checking accounts evolved into a nationwide cloud accounting firm serving nearly 1,000 small business clients with a team of more than 75 professionals across 26 states.

“I started this in high school,” Pasquarosa tells me. “It really started with an interest in helping small businesses stop running their business off their bank account balance and [instead] giving them timely, accurate books so they could make real-time decisions.”

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Will AI Make Students Better Learners — or Just Faster Workers? | SLC

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Educators explore ethics, creativity, critical thinking and the future of learning in an AI-powered world.

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

Student-Led Conversations
With Harshita Multani
Center for Accounting Transformation

Artificial intelligence is no longer a future issue in education. It is already shaping how students study, how teachers prepare lessons, how universities think about access and admissions, and how employers evaluate readiness for the workforce.

MORE SLC: Why the Next Generation May Be Accounting’s Greatest Competitive Advantage | Students Redefine Career Readiness | Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC 

In this episode, host Harshita Multani, a Center for Accounting Transformation intern and Indiana high school business student, leads a thoughtful discussion on AI in education with Markus Ahrens, Ph.D., CPA, CGMA, FMAA, of the American Accounting Association, and David Wood of Brigham Young University.

What makes this conversation stand out is not just the topic. It is the perspective.

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Unicorns and Funerals: From Botkeeper’s Demise to Basis.ai’s Rise

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How AI Accounting Went From Pioneering to Inevitable in 1 Month and 11 Years.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The $90 Million Education: Botkeeper spent 11 years and nearly $90 million teaching the accounting profession that AI could do real work. Basis, Fieldguide, and Accrual raised $250 million in a single month to finish what Botkeeper started.

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.ai’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.

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Jody Padar: The New Playbook Is AI-Powered and Human-Centered | Big 4 Transparency

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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.

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Why the Next Generation May Be Accounting’s Greatest Competitive Advantage | SLC

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Young professionals bring adaptability and media literacy that firms need in an AI-driven era.

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

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Student-Led Conversations
With Arpan Grewal 
Center for Accounting Transformation

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

Student-Led Conversations opens its second season with a conversation that reflects a larger shift underway in the accounting profession: rapid technology change, accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence tools, and an increasing push to bring younger voices into the discussion. 

Arpan Grewal, a Center for Accounting Transformation intern and business student in Indiana, welcomes Liz Mason, CPA, CEO of High Rock Accounting, as the first guest of Season 2. Grewal describes the discussion as “full circle,” noting Mason is among the first professionals she interviewed when Student-Led Conversations launched last year. 

MORE Accounting ARC: 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

Mason, a co-host of Accounting ARC, argues the profession is no longer talking about incremental change. It is, she says, in the early stages of something much larger. 

The word that continues to surface for her is “revolution.” 

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