Accounting / Advisory practice

Less chasing. Cleaner workpapers. Busy season without the burnout.

Accounting and advisory firms spend professional attention chasing client documents, reconciling accounts and checking workpapers for basic errors. We find the workflows where that preparation can run on agents, keep professional judgment and sign-off with your people, and measure the result per engagement.

Built for: COO · Managing Partner · Practice Leader · Director of Operations

Assess a Workflow Book an AI Operating Leverage Audit call

The operating reality

Busy season still runs on overtime, and hiring is hard. Much of an engagement goes to work that comes before any judgment: waiting on client documents, tying out balances and fixing review notes that should never have been raised.

Most firms already have AI features in their tax, audit and practice software. The question is which workflows they should run end to end, what they must never decide, and how you will know the hours per engagement actually fell without any change to quality or independence.

Workflows

Where the leverage hides

For each workflow: how it runs today, what agents and plain automation take over, and where people keep the judgment.

Client onboarding and intake

Today: Staff collect entity details, engagement letters and prior-year files by email, key them into practice management and chase signatures.
Agents and automation: Agents gather the intake data, prefill the engagement record, check for missing items and track signatures and approvals.
People keep: Partners accept the client, set scope and fees, and own independence and engagement risk checks.

Measured by: Time from proposal accepted to work start · Intake records returned for missing data · Staff hours per new client

Document chasing and PBC lists

Today: Seniors send PBC lists, track what has arrived in a spreadsheet and write reminder after reminder while the engagement waits.
Agents and automation: Agents send the request list, match uploads to each item, check they are complete and readable, and send targeted reminders.
People keep: The engagement team decides what is sufficient and when to escalate a late client to the partner.

Measured by: Days waiting on client documents · Open PBC items per engagement · Reminders sent by hand

Bank and account reconciliation

Today: Staff export statements and ledgers, match transactions in spreadsheets and investigate every difference by hand.
Agents and automation: Automated matching reconciles bank and ledger data, proposes matches for the rest and lists unexplained differences with the evidence.
People keep: Accountants decide on adjustments and anything that changes the client’s books.

Measured by: Reconciliations completed per staff member · Unmatched items carried forward · Time to close a reconciliation

Workpaper preparation

Today: Staff roll forward prior-year files, tie out balances, build lead sheets and attach support before the real analysis starts.
Agents and automation: Agents roll forward templates, populate lead sheets from the trial balance, tie out balances and attach supporting documents.
People keep: Preparers and reviewers apply judgment to the numbers and own the conclusions in each workpaper.

Measured by: Preparation hours per workpaper · Tie-out errors found at review · Time to first draft

Validation and review-note quality checks

Today: Managers raise review notes for missing references, broken tick marks and inconsistent figures, and the file goes back and forth.
Agents and automation: Agents check workpapers for missing references, inconsistent figures and incomplete sections before review, and list issues for the preparer.
People keep: Reviewers and partners decide on quality, materiality and sign-off.

Measured by: Review notes per file · Review cycles per engagement · Manager hours on mechanical review

Recurring client reporting

Today: Monthly and quarterly packs are rebuilt by hand from client systems, with the same formatting and checks each period.
Agents and automation: Agents pull data from the client’s GL or ERP, build the standard pack, run variance checks and draft commentary for review.
People keep: Advisors review the numbers, write the advice and own the client conversation.

Measured by: Hours per reporting pack · Days from period end to delivery · Corrections after delivery

Technical research

Today: Staff search standards, guidance and firm memos, and ask the technical team questions that have been answered before.
Agents and automation: An agent searches approved sources and firm positions and returns a summary with each point linked to its source.
People keep: Professionals interpret the guidance for the client. The technical team owns firm positions.

Measured by: Time to an answer with sources · Repeat questions to the technical team · Research hours per engagement

Close-process coordination

Today: Outsourced accounting teams track close tasks, owners and dependencies across email, chat and checklists.
Agents and automation: Agents track the close checklist, chase owners, flag blocked tasks and summarize status for the engagement lead.
People keep: The engagement lead sets priorities, approves journals and owns the deadline with the client.

Measured by: Days to close · Overdue close tasks · Coordination hours per close

What we measure

Every workflow gets a baseline before anything changes.

Hours per engagement
Days waiting on client documents
Review notes per file
Realization on fixed-fee work
Busy-season overtime hours

Risks and controls

Risks and the controls that address them
Risk	Control
An agent’s work is treated as a professional conclusion.	Agents prepare and check. Every conclusion, adjustment and sign-off has a named professional, and the file shows who did what.
A wrong match or extraction slips into a workpaper.	Every proposed match and figure links to its source. Low-confidence items go to a person, and reviewers sample the rest.
Client financial data reaches a system or client it should not.	Each agent reads only the client files and systems its role needs, with access reviewed before go-live.
Automation work creates an independence or scope problem.	Services the agents support are mapped to the engagement scope, and new uses are checked against independence policy before launch.

How we would approach it

An example workflow design

This is illustrative. It shows how responsibilities split between systems, automation, agents and people. It is not a client result.

PBC and workpaper preparation desk

Trigger: An engagement is scheduled and the PBC list is approved.

Reference architecture

An illustrative design showing how we would approach the workflow. Not a client result.

1SystemPractice management opens the engagement and the request list.
2AgentSends the PBC requests, matches uploads to each item and sends targeted reminders.
3AutomationChecks each document is complete and readable, and reconciles balances to the trial balance.
4AgentRolls forward workpapers, attaches support and lists open items and differences.
5HumanThe preparer and reviewer apply judgment, clear differences and sign off. Conclusions stay here.
6SystemThe engagement file is updated and the outcome is logged for measurement.

Controls

Agents never post adjustments or sign off
Every figure links to its source document
Low-confidence matches route to a person
Full log of request, upload, check and review

What we would measure

Days waiting on client documents
Preparation hours per engagement
Review notes per file
Hours per engagement

Related use cases

Assess a Accounting / Advisory workflow

Bring us one workflow that is slow, repetitive, error-prone or expensive. We'll help determine whether AI is actually the right lever.