Weekly Roundup
The FirmLever Weekly Roundup: Issue #51
The "Is My Firm Viable In 3 Years?" Edition
AI and Accounting
Anthropic shipped ten finance agents this week, including a month-end closer and a statement auditor. I called a member firm to talk through it. The takeaway isn't what most CPAs think.
Operations
Client concentration is the single biggest reason buyers chop a firm's valuation. Three thresholds decide whether your book trades at a premium or a discount.
Wealth
A BlackRock director's post pulled 75 comments, mostly from CPAs explaining why RIA referral relationships break. None of them named the third path that quietly erases the whole problem.
Anthropic shipped ten finance agents this week, including a month-end closer and a statement auditor. I called a member firm to talk through it. The takeaway isn't what most CPAs think.
How to avoid joining the 75% "regret club"
Most firms I talk to are underpriced by 20% or more and don't know it. Here's how to read the signals and raise fees without losing your best clients.
Deciding when and how to sell my accounting practice is perhaps the most significant professional decision a firm owner will ever make, representing the culmination of years, often decades, of hard...
150+ answered questions on revenue per employee, profit per partner, realization rates, multiples, and valuation. Benchmark your firm instantly.
How accounting firms actually sell: revenue multiples, EBITDA, SDE, and asset approaches. Data from 600+ transactions reveals what buyers pay.
From solo to $7.5M, get our proven playbooks to grow, price, automate and hire the best.
The 'It's Time to Fix My Pricing' Edition.
Most firms aren't underpricing because they're bad at math. They're underpricing because they can't see the signals. Here's how to spot them and how to actually move fees.
Underpricing is the most common profit leak I see when firms run their numbers on FirmLever. The fix isn't a blanket rate hike, it's a sequenced strategy that protects retention while recovering margin fast.
The "More Money, Less Hours" Edition
How to avoid joining the 75% "regret club"
The margin math of why more U.S. firms are running a front-office/back-office split with offshore prep partners.
A new AI tax prep tool just raised $12M promising to cut return time in half. The interesting question isn't whether it works. It's what happens to your billable model when it does.
A practical vetting framework for CFOs and controllers evaluating 179D specialists. The right questions to ask about licensing, modeling software, audit defense, and fees before signing an engagement letter.
Effective hourly rate isn't just a pricing check. It's the number buyers back into during diligence, and the one that caps what your firm sells for.
Meet the "accountant killer"
Anthropic's newest AI just posted the highest accounting benchmark score ever recorded. It still scored 50% on month-end close. The machine they told you would replace your firm is currently closing books at coin-flip accuracy. Here's what that means for the work you're still carrying.
Most firms I talk to are underpriced by 20% or more and don't know it. Here's how to read the signals and raise fees without losing your best clients.