The FirmLever Weekly Roundup: Issue #52

I've been running this newsletter and blog for one year exactly today. 🎉

To celebrate I have some exciting news.

As FirmLever grows, we've been steadily releasing tools to help firms increase leverage, command premium fees, owning their niche, while reducing owner hours.

Based on all the data and findings over the years from our tools, assessments, personal interactions, coaching and most recently the FirmLever Network--its time to give back.

Starting with three major announcements.

1. AI pricing for CPAs + fractional CFOs (pilot, 2 spots this week)
   Most accounting firms and fractional CFOs price by gut — discount when the prospect pushes back, lose the deal when they don't. So I built Firmlever Optimizer: an AI pricing and scoping engine for firms doing $200K-$5M in revenue.
   
   Sync a discovery call recording, a tax return, or operational signals on any prospect. Optimizer returns a 3-tier, industry-aware proposal that does two things at once: surfaces the specialty tax strategies most firms miss (cost seg, R&D, 179D, RSU), and runs the operational diagnostic a fractional CFO would normally do in week 1 (slow close, cash forecast gaps, customer concentration, key-person risk). All baked into a Cost of Inaction analysis showing the client exactly what their current setup is potentially costing them every year.
   
   Accepting 2 more firms into the pilot this coming week--I personally onboard every firm, so intake is capped.
   → app.firmlever.com/optimizer
   
2. Our new Firm Operations Benchmark tool is now live – and it's free.
   Plenty of accounting firm owners that I coach have great visibility into client margins but zero visibility into how much of their own week is going to work that shouldn't require partner involvement.
   
   So to help more firm owners, without sacrificing more hours, I created a coach-in-a-box.
   
   This free 5-minute Firm Operations Audit surfaces this and more. Drop in your revenue, partner count, weekly hours, time allocation, and labor stack--get back a Leverage score, an Arbitrage score, and an honest estimate of the partner hours your firm could realistically redirect to advisory, BD, or just getting your evenings back.
   
   You'll also see where your firm lands on a live benchmark grid against peer firms running the same audit, plus the operational gaps most likely holding you back.
   
   → dothework.firmlever.com/do-the-work
   
   Why now: last week's newsletter was about Anthropic's finance agents--the ones that just compressed the commodity work CPAs bill for: month-end close, audit, GL reconciliation. The Operations Audit is the other side of that equation. If you can't see where your week is leaking partner hours to work that doesn't need partner judgment, you can't shift to the high-margin work AI doesn't touch yet.
   
   Short version: AI is eating the bottom of your service stack. The Operations Audit shows you where the top is hiding.
   
3. We're going all-in on AI agents
   I've been in discussions with some scary-good startups who are pioneering the age of AI agent powered accounting firms. No, not the crapy app + ChatGPT-like experience in your practice management app, nor do I mean the agencies who has your firm running dozens or hundreds of Zaps to "automate" things like reconciliation, tax prep, etc.
   
   No, this next wave is truly autonomous and in fact I've recently seen a setup where an entire 70-page 1040 was prepped, reviewed and had tax strategies extracted for the tax payer in under 90 seconds. Not Anthropic, not N8N, not Zapier but a bespoke system. Well, I've decided to double-down in this tech and over the next few months will be posting more as I use internally and for firms using Optimizer. More updates coming soon!

That's it for week #52 of this newsletter.

One year. Thanks for being here. 🙏

Marc
Founder, FirmLever