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What does the data actually say about where accounting firms are headed? Blake Oliver talks with Chelsea Summers of Inside Public Accounting about the real numbers behind firm performance, pricing, staffing, offshoring, advisory growth, and AI adoption. You’ll hear why top firms aren’t just working people harder, how offshore teams are boosting margins, and why hourly billing may be the biggest obstacle to using technology well.
Chapters
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Chapters
- (00:00) - EAP 112
- (04:45) - Advisory vs compliance mix
- (09:40) - Capacity and burnout signals
- (18:27) - Pricing models and billable hour
- (25:08) - AI ROI and adoption blockers
- (29:37) - About IPA and closing
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Download the Earmark CPE App
Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/earmark-cpe/id1562599728
Connect with Our Guest, Chelsea Summers
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseasummers620/
Learn more about Inside Public Accounting
http://insidepublicaccounting.com
Connect with Blake Oliver, CPA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaketoliver
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blaketoliver/
Creators and Guests
Guest
Chelsea Summers
Chelsea Summers joined INSIDE Public Accounting (IPA) in February 2014. Chelsea is an accomplished leader with extensive experience in survey administration, strategic planning and business development. As the Executive Director of INSIDE Public Accounting (IPA), Chelsea is responsible for overseeing the organization’s operations, including the annual IPA Practice Management Survey and the Rosenberg Survey. With a keen focus on data integrity and innovation, Chelsea ensures the continuous improvement of IPA’s research methodologies, delivering high-quality benchmarking reports and insights that drive growth in the accounting profession. Under Chelsea’s leadership, IPA has expanded its survey reach, optimized efficiency through technology, and developed new products. A strong communicator and problem-solver, Chelsea collaborates with advertisers, manages marketing initiatives, and actively participates in leadership meetings to drive organizational success. With her experience in survey administration, project management and business strategy, Chelsea brings a wealth of expertise to IPA. Her ability to anticipate industry trends, implement cutting-edge technologies and maintain high standards of service ensures that IPA remains a trusted resource in the accounting community.
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Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!
Chelsea Summers: [00:00:00] I can't wrap my brain around how we're going to utilize technology and make our work more efficient, even just research or some of that data entry, like that's going to make things quicker. How do we build that if we're billing by the hour, like are we going to start having reduced fees on on their invoices? No. So what does that look like?
Blake Oliver: [00:00:22] Are you an accountant with a continuing education requirement? You can earn free Nasba approved CPE. For listening to this episode, just visit earmarked app in your web browser, take a short quiz and get your certificate. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the earmark podcast. I'm Blake Oliver. Today I'm joined by Chelsey Summers of Inside Public Accounting, one of the best sources in the profession for understanding what's actually happening inside accounting firms. Ipa's benchmarking and survey data gives us a rare window into firm performance economics, staffing, pricing, technology, adoption, and more. So instead of talking about what firms think is happening, we're going to talk about what the data actually says heading into 2026 and beyond. And what firm leaders and operators should take away from it. Chelsea, welcome to the podcast.
Chelsea Summers: [00:01:15] Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here and talk about my favorite thing, which is Accountingfirm data.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:20] Let's start at the highest level. You've got access to data across multiple survey cycles. So as firm leaders look ahead, what are the top 2 to 3 trends you're seeing based on the latest survey cycles?
Chelsea Summers: [00:01:34] Yeah. So the latest survey data we have is for 2025. We're currently in our data collection period for the 2026 survey. So I can't wait to talk about that when we have more data in. But based on what we saw last year, there were a couple trends that emerged. I think a big one is the operating model of firms is really changing faster than maybe the service mix. So advisory revenue continues to to grow, but gradually across the firms. And tax and assurance really still makes up the majority of revenue across most firms, which is kind of contrary to the all the talk that we're hearing on, on advisory. And that's really the next frontier. And I think it is, but the data just isn't showing that that is yet the predominant model inside most firms. But I think the bigger shift is, is how work is being delivered. There's more outsourcing, more nontraditional staffing roles and more technology layered into workflows. So that's, that's a big trend that we're seeing. And then the second one is that the productivity metrics are really mattering more than ever. Revenue per FTE is the big one. That's the one we talk about a lot. So revenue per employee inside of the firms last year, that rose to 220,000, which is about a 4.5% increase over the prior year. So that's great. Firms are making more money per employee. But when you overlay inflation on top of that, they're still barely keeping up, if not not increasing at the rate of inflation. So I think the firms that are outperforming the market are ones that are improving their productivity faster than they're adding headcount to their firms.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:09] What types of firms are we talking about? Who are the firms that respond to your surveys?
Chelsea Summers: [00:03:13] Yeah. So last year we had a little over 600 firms participate. Those firms are typically 5 million and above in revenue. Ipa names the IPA 500, which are the 500 largest accounting firms in the United States, starting with Deloitte, down to about a $6.5 million firm. So most of the firms are mid-size and large firms that participate in our survey, all in the United States. We do have some participants from Canada, but North American based survey.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:41] Was there anything that surprised you in the latest results?
Chelsea Summers: [00:03:45] Um, yes, there always are some surprises. And I think a big surprise that came out was how resilient firm profitability has been despite intense cost pressures. There's a lot of, uh, increase in labor costs. Technology spend has increased quite a bit. And, and we are not seeing yet that that is cutting into the firm profitability. Most firms are maintaining their margins through their price increases or increased leverage.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:15] So salaries are going up, technology spend is going up, but the firms are able to maintain margins.
Chelsea Summers: [00:04:21] Yes.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:22] And and revenue is growing. Margins are staying the same.
Chelsea Summers: [00:04:26] Yeah. It is growing. Um not quite at the rate that we've seen in the post Covid years of ten, 12, 15% growth across firms. It's more normalized to what we saw in the early 20 tens, um, through 2020 of like that 6 to 8% growth is a lot closer to what we're seeing right now.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:45] You mentioned something about how there's been a lot of focus on advisory. I think client accounting services as well. Yeah. But you said that tax and audit still dominate the revenue.
Chelsea Summers: [00:04:56] Yes.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:56] What's the breakdown?
Chelsea Summers: [00:04:59] So the data showing that most firms still generate less than one third of their revenue from advisory services. Of course, in those larger firms that is higher. And in the smaller firms it's a little bit less. And there are firms that are the exception to that rule that are very dominant in Cass services or technology consulting. Um, transaction advisory services. But for the overall, for all of our survey participants, about a third of revenue from advisory services.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:28] Okay. And, and client accounting services. Are you able to see that specifically? Because I remember a few years ago, there was some data, maybe it was from the AICPA that said it was it had reached 10% of firm revenues. Are you seeing that grow? Are you seeing that stay the same?
Chelsea Summers: [00:05:44] Yeah, we are seeing that as an area of growth. We're not seeing it as an area of super high growth, but we're seeing firms start to make investments in client advisory services. I think that I'm hearing the conversation shift a little bit away. Whereas a year or two ago it was like, oh, that was the foot in the door of advisory services. And it seems like a lot of firms, especially the larger firms, have shifted away from feeling like that's a foot in the door to like, that might be a strategy, but that's not our only strategy going forward.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:12] So compliance revenue still dominates. It's for now, two thirds compliance. A third advisory.
Chelsea Summers: [00:06:19] Yep. In our average firm. Yes.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:21] Let's talk about performance. How do we as a firm do better than the rest? When you look at the top performing firms in the data, what are they doing differently operationally?
Chelsea Summers: [00:06:35] Yeah. Ipa names what we call the best of the best firms. So those are the firms that we think are operationally the highest performing. We look at 30 different metrics on that. So it's not just you make the most money, it's you have low turnover. You have um, you know, succession plans in place, marketing plans in place. Like operationally, you're a high performing firm that's going to succeed. So when we took a look at those firms, there are some metrics that stood out for those best of the best firms and how they're performing differently. They have a higher revenue per FTE 272,000 versus 220,000 for the rest of the firms. They typically have better leverage inside of their firms, so more professionals per partner. Their leverage ratios are 17.7 versus 11.8 for all firms.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:16] So that would be 17 staff for each partner versus 11 staff for each partner at a typical firm.
Chelsea Summers: [00:07:23] You got it.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:24] That's a big difference.
Chelsea Summers: [00:07:25] It is a big difference, yes. And the other big thing that we're seeing is stronger pricing discipline. So the average partner bill rate across best of the best firms is $588, 448 for the rest of the firms. So big discrepancy there and what a partner is billing.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:41] Is there a myth about high performing firms that you're benchmarking disproves?
Chelsea Summers: [00:07:47] There are. And I think the big myth is that high performing firms push people harder, and that's why they're making more money. Their staff are billing more and working more. But in reality, those high performing firms are best of the best firms. They often have healthier capacities because they're using that leverage and they're using more specialized roles. So our best of the best firms, when we take a look, have nearly identical utilization rates to all firms and have nearly identical chargeable and work hours. There's relatively no difference between those best of the best and the other participating firms.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:29] So they're not working their staff more hours necessarily. They're just they just have a higher staff to partner ratio and they're leveraging them better. And you said specialization, like what does that mean?
Chelsea Summers: [00:08:42] Specialized roles. So making sure the right person is in the right role inside of their firm. So maybe they have more client service staff doing the work and they're utilizing their administrative staff differently. They're utilizing paraprofessionals. Um, but I really think you hit the nail on the head with the leverage. And the other piece of that is those bill rates I talked about. So there's pricing confidence in those high performing firms. They're billing what they're worth, and that is leading to a better performing firm.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:11] That's interesting because we talk a lot when we talk about small firms, about how they're underpricing, underpricing tax returns, you know, charging a few hundred dollars when that's the same amount that like TurboTax charges. And, and that's crazy. So it's, it's the same tendency in the midsize and the larger firms where some firms just don't charge enough. They, they have pricing power and they're not using it.
Chelsea Summers: [00:09:36] Exactly. Yep. It all comes down to that leverage and that pricing power.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:41] What does healthy capacity look like inside a top performing firm versus like a, an average one or a low performing firm?
Chelsea Summers: [00:09:49] Yeah. So I think the leverage model. But outside of that, the sustainable utilization expectations for their staff. I think clear workload planning across busy season and non-busy season and making sure that their revenue per FTE is continuing to trend upward. So we're adding staff in a way that adds revenue to the firm and not overinflating our firm.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:14] When you talk about the workflow, like, what does that mean?
Chelsea Summers: [00:10:18] Yeah. So just having processes in place and planning, and one of the areas that I talk a lot about is transparency across the firm. So making sure that leadership is, is identifying areas of over time of higher, um, higher need and then letting the staff know why that's there, what the benefit is, what, how does that contribute to the bigger picture? Just working 80 hours a week with no realization of where that work matters and how that's affecting the client, I think really is detrimental to to the firm as a whole.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:56] So high performing firms, they're managing capacity, they are able to bill more with better leverage, more staff per partner. That all contributes to good margins. And I imagine like really helps with with burnout.
Chelsea Summers: [00:11:14] Yeah, absolutely.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:15] So, so like, how do, how, how do these firms track that? Or do they like, how do they know that staff are feeling burned out? Because that's a huge risk to a firm, right? Your, your people are your biggest asset. How do you make sure that they don't get burned out and quit and walk out the door?
Chelsea Summers: [00:11:31] Yeah, I think tracking is very difficult. Um, you know, a lot of firms look at turnover. That's a lagging indicator. Once once somebody leaves, you've lost them, you've burned them out. You've not caught it early. But um you know, I think an increased reliance on overtime and emergency staffing is, is never something that's helpful. And I think when partners are stepping back into production work, that's another area where I think that that could cause issues when the partners aren't doing that partner level work, and instead they're micromanaging and they're getting back into the weeds. That's not great for morale for the firm. It's also not great to build the organization when partners aren't doing the training or the rain making that they need to be doing to grow the firm.
Blake Oliver: [00:12:14] We talked about compensation a little bit like compensation has grown a lot in firms in general. We've seen that. That's been great news. Salaries are rising. And that was a big problem years ago. And it seems like we've made a huge. We've made big progress to like increasing salaries, especially at the lower end. Is that what you're also seeing in the data, like entry level staff, you know, senior staff are making more.
Chelsea Summers: [00:12:39] Yes, we are absolutely seeing um, salaries rise. The the entry level salaries are rising. Firms are giving compensation increases that are. They were giving compensation increases that were above market. Those again, have normalized a little bit with the growth. Instead of seeing ten, 12, 15% raises, we're seeing again back to that 6 to 8%. Um, but with that growth in compensation, I did an analysis a couple years ago looking at the rate of increase for those entry level and mid-level staff versus the rate of increase for a partner compensation. The partner compensation is still increasing substantially quicker and substantially higher than it is for the entry level and mid-level staff. So there's still some room to grow. I think for that staff compensation, I think it could continue to rise higher than it is, and I think it needs to if we're going to be competitive in the current market.
Blake Oliver: [00:13:32] What about flexibility? When I think of flexibility, I think of hybrid work options. I think of letting staff or managers or directors choose where and when to work. Are you seeing top performing firms doing anything different in regards to flexibility, or are you seeing a trend similar to what we've seen in big companies in the federal government, where they're requiring their people to come back to the office?
Chelsea Summers: [00:14:00] Yeah, I think there is a little bit of swing back into in the office, but I think some firms are doing the remote work, hybrid work really well, and I think it is a great opportunity for the firms. You're no longer just looking for those key roles in your immediate vicinity, or trying to convince somebody to uproot their lives and move to you. Now you have the entire United States, sometimes the entire world, at your fingertips to to get the correct job applicant. And I think that's going to be even more beneficial when firms do dive into advisory services and are looking at specializing in certain niches and saying, you know, we really want to be dominant in this area and we need somebody to champion that well, that person exists. They just may not exist in a 50 mile radius of your office.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:43] You mentioned global international Staffing or something along those lines. Let's talk about that. We have a couple of different alternative staffing models that have grown rapidly in the profession. One is using more contractors, contractors that could be inside the United States and then also using offshore staff, perhaps independent contractors or staffing agencies abroad. What are you seeing in the data about the growth in that?
Chelsea Summers: [00:15:12] Yeah, it is substantially growing. Over half of our survey participants already do some kind of offshoring or outsourcing. And when we ask them, what does that look like in the future? Nearly all of them are going to grow that headcount or keep it the same. Most firms, it was less than 5% were looking to decrease the amount that they're doing. So it's an area that we're going to see really grow. And as more and more firms are utilizing offshoring. I took a look at okay, so those firms that have those offshore staff, how are they performing versus those that don't? Like what does that look like? And found that those firms that have offshore staff grew faster. So they had an 8%, 8.1% organic growth rate versus 7.5% that don't. So those offshore staff are really leading to more revenue for the firms. Also, a 9% improvement in their margins for those firms with offshore staff.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:08] 9%. That's a lot. That's yeah. Yeah.
Chelsea Summers: [00:16:10] Right. And then, you know, anecdotally you hear that it those staff help reduce burnout during those peak periods. And like we talked about earlier, kind of help flatten or normalize the work time. Um, so I think that that is an area we're going to see grow. And I think firms that are doing it successfully are using those offshore teams to really act as employees in their firm. They're giving them training. They're really making them feel like an employee. Whether they are an employee in a firm, has an office in India or the Philippines, or increasingly in South America, um, or they're using one of those agencies. Um, really making that individual feel a part of the team is very helpful in, in correctly utilizing them and making sure they feel the value of working at the firm.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:55] That's a big distinction because I think in the past, a lot of firms viewed offshore staff as like a processing center. Yeah, we are going to send work over here. You're going to do data entry or organize documents or put numbers into a return. And then it comes back to the US and they're not really treated as full team members. But in recent years, I've spoken to partners, managing partners who say, no, we have a different model. We have an office in the Philippines or India, and that office is a office like our firm. It's branded with our firm, and those people wear the firm t shirt. And, you know, they, they, they, they are, they have an email address at the firm and they're treated like full team members and they even get to communicate directly with clients.
Chelsea Summers: [00:17:43] Exactly. And I think that work that we initially saw as kind of being pushed and it's just data entry. I mean, that's really what the technology is replacing, right? That work that initially we were sending offshore is now being replaced by technology or will be very soon. And that frees up the offshore staff that firms have to do that higher level work. I mean we're seeing it go from just doing tax returns to to doing manager level work, to doing other advisory services, to helping out the firm in in their internal operations. Like, there's a lot more that their offshore staff are doing to be part of the firm.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:17] So we've got 50% of the largest firms in the country now using offshoring. It seems like we've hit a tipping point there.
Chelsea Summers: [00:18:25] Yeah, absolutely.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:27] Let's talk about pricing. We touched on it before the best firms or the top performing firms are charging what they are worth, what they can get. And it's, it's substantially more than, um, than an average firm. I think you mentioned billing rates for partners in the four hundreds at an average firm, but it's in the 500 seconds at a top firm, 600. So that's like more than 20% more. Yeah. And that is that's a big deal because if you have similar costs, I mean, that goes to your margins like it goes to your bottom line.
Chelsea Summers: [00:18:59] Exactly.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:59] What about, uh, billing models? We've talked for years about hourly billing going away, the death of the timesheet, the billable hour. In reality, it seems to have stuck around. What are you seeing in the numbers about both pricing models and billing and timesheets, that sort of thing?
Chelsea Summers: [00:19:20] Yeah. So I really thought 2025 was going to be the year that I would get the data and look at it and be like, okay, things are changing. We're moving away from the charge. Our model, it went the other direction. More revenue was coming in like a small amount, but I still was like, oh goodness, what are we doing guys? So overall, right now, according to our survey, two thirds of revenue is still coming from a billable hour model, there are firms that are moving to fixed fee or value based pricing models. Some firms, that's their entire model and some firms it's in certain areas or with certain clients. But a lot of firms are just reframing hourly billing as fixed fee pricing instead of replacing it. So the fixed fees are often coming from time estimates. And okay, here's your fee as opposed to just billing out of whip or they're using value pricing selectively instead of really adopting it firm wide. I'm crossing my fingers that 2026 we're going to see see some change because I can't wrap my brain around how we're going to utilize technology and make our work more efficient, even just research or some of that data entry, like that's going to make things quicker. How do we build that? If we're billing by the hour, like are we going to start having reduced fees on, on their invoices? No. So what does that look like?
Blake Oliver: [00:20:38] It reminds me of how when I started my client accounting services firm and that's all we did. We just did bookkeeping and accounting. No audit, no tax. Yeah. And we moved to cloud very early on. We were early adopters. The efficiency gains were 80%. It took one hour to do the work that used to take five hours. And because of that, we were forced to switch to fixed fees. We couldn't bill hourly or we'd lose all our revenue. Yeah. And so I'm excited about the potential for AI to also give those productivity gains to more traditional areas in accounting. But yeah, like the billing model is going to have to change the revenue model. What are you seeing firms like? Where are firms switching from hourly billing the most? Are there certain service areas where fixed fees or value pricing is taking off?
Chelsea Summers: [00:21:27] Yeah, it's certainly in those advisory services. And it's a lot easier to start a service line and change and adopt a fixed fee or value based pricing than it is to change a current service line with current clients and current processes and move that over. So we're seeing firms very successful when they they're starting something new. We're also seeing in the advisory services that that's a lot easier. Um, specifically, like you said, with the client accounting services, um, CFO or advisory services around their technology consulting, um, wealth management and financial advisory. Those are some big areas where we see firms often adopt other pricing models just out of necessity.
Blake Oliver: [00:22:07] Firms are often hesitant to increase prices because they fear that they're going to lose all their clients. What are you seeing in your survey data about price increases and pushback and churn? Are firms that increase prices actually losing clients, or are they better off?
Chelsea Summers: [00:22:22] Yeah. And that's not something we track explicitly in that manner in the survey, but based on a lot of conversations with firms on, you know, especially around calling clients, it comes up a lot like we have all these D and F clients, we want to call them. We're just going to raise their prices 40%. They all stay. And so I think that firms like you said at the beginning very they they underestimate their worth and they really need to be charging more. And I think the market can absorb those cost increases. So firms that are raising their prices, they're more profitable and they're, they're having success with their clients and accepting those, those rate increases. I mean, unfortunately, we are in an economy right now where everything is, is increasing pretty quickly. And and so when your CPA firm doesn't increase their prices, then you almost say, are they not very good? Do they not believe in their work? So I think, you know, price increases every year. And I think back to what the COVID levels were where we raised prices quite a bit. I mean, I think that is what we're seeing in some of inside some of the high performing firms.
Blake Oliver: [00:23:27] Let's shift to talking about advisory. We already touched on it. A third of firm revenues coming from advisory. But advisory means a lot of different things. So what What is advisory work? How does IPA look at it? You know what, what what is actually in that bucket?
Chelsea Summers: [00:23:45] Yeah. So we say that's anything outside of tax or assurance services and anything outside of tax compliance work. So that would not include tax planning or cost segregation work that would all be considered advisory. So just the traditional compliance work is what anything outside of that would be our advisory services.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:03] For firms that are trying to shift the mix more towards advisory is, uh, you know, is there something that firms that do that are doing right or something that firms that fail are doing wrong?
Chelsea Summers: [00:24:15] Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that the firms who are doing it correctly are doing, and some of that is making sure that you have an internal champion in the firm. And it's not somebody who has 15 other hats on. And oh, you're going to launch this new service area in, you know, wealth management, and you really need an internal champion and you really need to understand that there's some investment that goes into it in order to get the returns. I think also looking at the areas that you're good at, the areas that you have staff internally that can take on the work. Um, or acquiring an organization that has something that you're interested in and just, just buying the service line that you want. But I think the really needs to be some intentionality when starting up an advisory service line to know that it does need to function differently than what your tax and your assurance services look like.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:07] All right, we're going to go to my final and favorite topic, which is technology and artificial intelligence. There's a lot of hype right now. We seem to be in a hype cycle as we were with, uh, it reminds me of, you know, the hype around blockchain and crypto years ago, which, you know, some of that has finally materialized with stablecoins. Those are, those are becoming huge. Um, but it took a while. What are you seeing in the data about firms seeing their ROI on automation and AI. Where is it actually delivering? Inside of firms?
Chelsea Summers: [00:25:44] Yeah, and that's an interesting question. And it's a question that I've been having a lot of conversations with firms. Like, are you tracking your ROI on all these investments? And they're like, how do we even do that? What does that look like? What is an ROI even mean? So I think that firms are really struggling to understand because everything is moving so quickly. But I think there are some areas where firms can put our savings or dollar amount savings in it. There's areas that they intuitively feel like they're getting good value. Um, workflow automation and document processing and data extraction. And then using AI assisted drafting and analysis, um, and then research, tax research is an area we've heard a lot that the firms are getting good bang for their buck, as you would say on time savings for that.
Blake Oliver: [00:26:29] Oh yeah. That's a big one, right? I mean, it's just like the tax code is so enormous, so complex. There's so much analysis that, you know, doing it, the traditional Google search style versus asking an AI to go synthesize all this information. Yeah, it's just, it's just, I mean, I, I don't, I don't do tax research, but just in general, research with AI is incredible. So that's interesting to hear. Um, what about adoption blockers? A lot of firms want to do this. They want to go all in on AI. They know it's going to be a huge productivity boost, but they struggle. What is causing them to struggle?
Chelsea Summers: [00:27:07] Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of firms that are really kind of holding right now. I mean, the accounting profession is certainly not one that's known for being early adopters of things. And in general, and I think there are a lot of firms are holding out to see, you know, what softwares went out, what, what programs and what systems, um, are really beneficial. Instead of just throwing money at different softwares that end up folding or not working or not doing as promised. So I think there's really just a lot of hesitancy to invest money. But I think, um, the other big issue is just partner skepticism and an issue with change management and just, well, that that requires us to change all of our processes and update how we do things and do new trainings. And that all seems like a lot and a lot of work. Let's just focus on what we're good at and making money and worry about the technology later. And a lot of firms, you know, they maybe had conversations last fall and then they tabled them because it's tax season. And I was just having a chat with somebody the other day that said, you know, those those firms that did that and from December to May, when they pick it back up, we're now in a different world. There's different software, there's different models, there's different information going on. So you've missed all of that research time and possible adoption time just because you're too busy doing tax season.
Blake Oliver: [00:28:27] One of the challenges is that there's a lot of tools out there. Not only do we have all the different chatbots that you can choose from, but we've got specialized tax research tools. We've got these AI agents that are coming out that like people are talking about how startups are claiming they can do a partnership tax return with an AI agent. Now, um, more and more and more, I mean, document processing, like you said, portal's AI assisted financial close AI audit software, there's so many tools now. How do you think firm owners should evaluate tools and choose where to start?
Chelsea Summers: [00:29:03] Yeah, I, I think there's a couple questions that the leaders need to ask. And when they're looking at tools, you know, does this reduce manual work in a measurable way across the firm? And then does it integrate with our existing workflows? Or are we trying to layer something that does not mesh with our current systems? And then I think the most important is if we adopt this, is it going to allow staff the time to do more high value work? I think if the answers to those questions are Ah, yes. Then there's a good return on investment for the firm to invest in that.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:37] Chelsea, thanks so much for joining me and sharing these survey data points and insights around them. Could you tell our listeners a bit more about inside public accounting?
Chelsea Summers: [00:29:47] Yeah, absolutely. So inside public accounting has been surveying the data or surveying the accounting profession since 1987. Um, we had, like I said, 600 firms that participated in our survey this year. Our survey covers about 100 data points. Um, focusing on practice management. And then we have some ancillary surveys focusing on firm administration, human resources and information technology. We generate reports out of that data as well as thought leadership. Um, I do speaking events, podcasts like this. I love to chat about data and bring it off the page in a static report and present it in a way that is a little more digestible to, to our firms. And, um, if you're interested in participating in the survey, the survey opens in January and closes in June, so feel free to reach out to me if you're interested or interested in more data, or wanting to chat about any of the things that we talked about today.
Blake Oliver: [00:30:39] And you can learn more about inside public accounting at inside public accounting.com. Yes. And be sure to listen to the IPA podcast.
Chelsea Summers: [00:30:50] Yes.
Blake Oliver: [00:30:51] What kind of stuff do you talk about on there?
Chelsea Summers: [00:30:52] Yeah. So a lot of what we talked about today, um, the Inside public Accounting podcast brings, we say we bring the data and narratives to the accounting profession. So we dig into specific data points and how it's affecting the firms. We interview leaders and consultants and experts across the profession on what they're seeing. Um, and all through the lens of data, we don't, we try not to, uh, get out our crystal ball too much and say, you know, here's where, where things are going. But really, you know, what is the data telling us? And how does that inform the conversations that managing partners need to know about?
Blake Oliver: [00:31:24] And you can earn continuing professional education credit Nasba approved CPE credits for listening to the Inside Public Accounting podcast on earmark. Just like the earmark podcast, go to earmark app and your web browser, or download the free app on the App Store. It's free to create an account. Free to get one CPE every week. And you can just search for inside public accounting right there. And I'm looking at all the latest episodes you've got behind the numbers, partner pay tech and succession. You've got what's holding firms back. Listener Q&A. You've got an interview with about private equity, what firm owners need to know how tax advice is changing all sorts of great stuff. So it seems like an incredible resource for partners and upcoming managers and directors.
Chelsea Summers: [00:32:11] Absolutely. We'd be happy to have you to listen.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:14] Chelsea, thanks for joining me. Great chatting with you and I hope to see you around soon.
Chelsea Summers: [00:32:17] Yeah, I appreciate it. Have a great day. Thanks so much.