The part of my job I love the most is speaking with accounting professionals each week, and connecting with the small and midsized businesses we jointly serve. Lately, those conversations have been pointing me toward the same conclusion: what triggers a business to engage with a firm is changing.
Business owners trust their own instincts more when their work is augmented with AI. Compliance events are still the primary trigger for SMBs to consider working with an accounting professional, but as compliance tools mature their use of AI, SMBs are holding on to the accounting work longer. By the time they reach out, they either need a lot more clean-up work, or they're ready to scale and looking for a strategic partnership with an advisor.
A fundamental shift for the profession
The accounting community is focused on how AI is changing what accountants do. But the more central truth, considering the shift in the way SMBs are operating, is that AI is changing what accounting professionals are for.
For decades, the value of an accounting professional was providing highly consequential, expertise-driven, time-consuming work that business owners simply couldn't do while running their businesses. The model worked because it was genuinely hard to operate a new business and manage compliance at the same time.
Now, routine tasks that used to anchor billable hours are getting compressed into minutes. Clients defer bringing an accountant on until later, and when they do, the ask is bigger. Yes, they want to outsource financial operations, but only to someone whom they can trust to guide them.
New research from Bill puts it plainly: 87% of accounting firms plan to expand into new services — tax planning, client advisory services, business consulting, fractional CFO work.
This is not a small pivot. It's a fundamental rethink of what firms are selling, and to whom.
The services AI makes possible
Here's what I find most interesting about this moment. Every past wave of technology — paper to PC, PC to web, web to cloud, cloud to phone — left firms asking themselves the same question: how do we leverage this for efficiency? They're asking themselves that same question about AI too, but there is also a second question they've got to grapple with. Because of the scale of efficiency firms are poised to benefit from, once automation is doing its job, what are you actually offering?
Consider what happens when processing a vendor bill drops from 15–20 minutes to just one minute, as it has for firms like Belay that redesigned their AP workflows around AI. What they've done is create capacity in a way that doesn't keep them beholden to a talent pool that just isn't out there.
Advisory is the assumed answer, and it's the right one, but for plenty of firms it still feels abstract. They can see the destination but not the road from where they stand.
The way I've seen firms find that road depends on the services they're already delivering. Firms offering CAS, for example, can also help clients design budgets, manage cash flow and set KPIs that guide decisions. AI can surface patterns and anomalies. The firm steps in to frame what they mean and what to do next.
In tax and strategic planning, instead of a relationship centered on a once-a-year filing deadline, I see firms using always-current financials to model scenarios, smooth tax liabilities over time, and advise on things like compensation strategies. AI can support forecasting and what-if analysis, while professionals evaluate trade-offs and risk.
New skills for a new mandate
In our research, roughly two-thirds of firms said they expect the skills they need from their people to change meaningfully in the next few years. Emerging priorities include:
- Data interpretation and storytelling: Turning AI-generated reports into clear recommendations. The insight is only as valuable as the conversation it sparks with a client.
- Systems thinking: Understanding how tools connect across AP, AR, spend, payroll, banking and the general ledger — and designing workflows that hold together as an integrated system, not a collection of point solutions.
- Client education: Helping clients understand new processes and trust what's happening behind the scenes. As firms adopt AI-driven workflows, the clients who understand and trust the automation get more value from the relationship.
Pricing for outcomes
The firms I find most interesting right now are the ones questioning their billing models outright.
Hourly billing made sense when effort was the primary input. As automation improved, the community started to shift toward value-based billing. Now AI is compressing effort even further, and billing by the hour is starting to work against firms, both economically and in terms of how clients perceive what they're getting.
Subscription models and outcome-based pricing are gaining ground for exactly this reason. The firms making this shift aren't just changing how they invoice. They're changing the conversation from "what did you do for me?" to "what did I gain from working with you?"
Building a transformation roadmap
None of this has to happen all at once, but it does have to start. A pragmatic roadmap might begin with auditing your current services and workflows. Begin by identifying manual, low-margin or error-prone work and flag it for automation or retirement.
Next, standardize your core tech stack. Choose integrated platforms for AP, AR and spend, alongside your general ledger, and commit to them across the firm.
Then, pilot one or two new advisory offerings. Select a segment of clients who are open to change, define a clear value proposition, and experiment with packaging and pricing.
Lastly but most importantly for long-term impact, invest in people and training. Develop your team's analytical, communication and systems skills so they can step into more strategic roles as transactional work declines.
Key takeaway
AI will likely result in business owners holding on to more of the work, for longer, before they feel the weight of it. But they will feel it. And when they do, the question won't just be whether to bring in a firm. It'll be whether the firm they bring in is worth it.
The steps above aren't just about automating workflows to create capacity for advisory. They're about building a firm whose value is so clearly tied to client growth that the answer to that question is never in doubt. The kind of firm where holding on would have held the client back, and the partnership is what moved them forward.
