LCvista acquires CPA QualityPro

CPE compliance solutions provider LCvista has acquired CPA license management solutions provider CPA QualityPro, combining accounting expertise and data across CPE, learning, licensure and mobility. As part of the transaction, LCvista's lead investor, Polaris Growth Fund, has increased its investment in the company.

The acquisition means that LCvista's current product, which enables customers to set firm-wide policies for individual licenses and trigger remediation processes to ensure their people are eligible to practice, will be bolstered with CPA QualityPro's technology. Using the combined solution, LCVista customers will be able to determine which jurisdictions their firm and individual professionals are authorized to practice amid the state-by-state patchwork of license mobility regulations and alternative licensure pathways that introduce more variation in how requirements are met. Firms will have a single source for professional readiness across both individuals and the firm as a whole — including CPE compliance, goal-oriented learning and development, and licensure and mobility tracking. 

LCvista CEO Mark Rothbert said the acquisition came in response to firms repeatedly expressing a need for a way to reliably tell where they can and cannot operate. As firms grow across geographies and service lines, he wrote in a blog post, the ability to see whether or not they can practice in a certain state for a certain client is key to pursuing growth. This is happening at a time of rapid change for licensure and mobility requirements make things even more confusing.

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"When firms operate across jurisdictions, the risk increases," he wrote. "Small uncertainties can turn into real exposure, especially as firms grow or take on new types of work. Many firms are still relying on spreadsheets, email or narrow point solutions. As a result, basic questions are harder to answer than they should be. Are our people authorized to do this work? Is the firm fully covered in this state? Can we take on this client without introducing risk?"

As a result, demand has grown for a unified system that can give real-time answers at both the individual and firm level, so combining with CPA QualityPro made sense in this respect. 

"Firms have told us again and again that they need a scalable way to know whether their firm and their people are ready to practice right now, for this client, in this state," said Rothert. "Bringing CPA QualityPro into LCvista lets us give customers a fuller picture of professional readiness than any other solution — combining CPE, learning and now licensure and mobility in a single system of record."

The acquisition took place nearly a year after CPA Quality Pro launched with the backing of the Florida and Washington CPA societies (see previous story.) Initially it featured a firm license and registration module; a few months later, the company released a licensure feature that allows accounting firms to determine individual CPAs' practice privileges in different states under new mobility and substantial equivalency rules (see previous story.)