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Why Your Service Business Client Shouldn’t Have Cost of Goods Sold on Their Tax Return

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You’re reviewing a new client’s prior-year returns when something catches your eye. The business is a consulting firm—pure services, no inventory to speak of—yet there’s cost of goods sold on Schedule C. You pull up the financial statements and find “cost of services” listed separately from other expenses. The previous preparer apparently decided consistency was the goal and carried the figure straight over to the tax return.

It’s a mistake Jeremy Wells sees all the time. In fact, he’s seen so many tax returns with this exact error that he devoted an entire episode of Tax in Action to breaking down what cost of goods sold really means for tax purposes and why getting it wrong matters more than you might think.

“I’ve seen a lot of tax returns prepared for new clients coming into my firm, where the returns were either self-prepared or prepared by another firm that reported cost of goods sold for a particular business when I knew that that business should not have reported cost of goods sold,” Jeremy explains.

You might think it all reduces taxable income anyway, so what difference does it make where the numbers land? But that reasoning misses something fundamental about what cost of goods sold actually represents in the tax code.

Only Three Types of Businesses Get Cost of Goods Sold

Treasury Regulation 1.61-3(a) tells us that only three types of businesses calculate gross income using cost of goods sold:

  • Manufacturing: businesses that produce goods from raw materials
  • Merchandising: businesses that purchase finished goods for resale
  • Mining: businesses that extract natural resources

If your client isn’t in one of these three categories, they don’t have cost of goods sold for tax purposes.

“No other kind of business has that formula described in terms of gross income,” Jeremy emphasizes. “Only businesses in those three categories: manufacturing, merchandising, and mining.”

This trips up practitioners because every business has what Jeremy calls “direct costs”—the expenses they must pay to generate revenue. He uses his own firm as an example. They use ProConnect tax software with a pay-per-return model, buying individual credits to file or print each client’s return. These are clearly direct costs related to serving specific clients.

But those software credits are ordinary business expenses, not cost of goods sold. Jeremy’s firm provides services, not merchandise. They don’t manufacture anything. They’re not mining. So despite having clear, traceable direct costs for each client, they don’t report cost of goods sold on their tax return.

The confusion gets worse with modern businesses that blur traditional categories. A business coach might sell one-on-one coaching (a service) while also selling digital products or online courses (potentially merchandise). A content creator might offer consulting while also selling physical products. Each revenue stream needs its own analysis.

“I’ve even had some pushback from new clients when we prepare that first tax return, where the prior returns had cost of goods sold reported, the return I prepared doesn’t, and the taxpayer actually notices and questions that,” Jeremy says.

Understanding which businesses qualify is just the start. The real insight comes from understanding why this classification matters so much.

Cost of Goods Sold Isn’t a Deduction—It’s Income Itself

Every tax professional knows the phrase, “expenses are deductible due to ‘legislative grace.’” Congress decides what deductions you can take. They can expand them, limit them, or take them away entirely.

But cost of goods sold works differently.

IRC Section 61 defines gross income as “income from whatever source derived.” For those three special categories of businesses, the regulations specify that gross income equals gross receipts minus cost of goods sold. This happens before you even think about Section 162 ordinary and necessary business expenses.

“Cost of goods sold is actually part of the definition of gross income when it comes to tax,” Jeremy explains. “It’s not just a special kind of expense.”

The courts have interpreted this to mean that cost of goods sold represents a “return of capital” rather than a tax deduction. When a store buys inventory for $50 and sells it for $100, that first $50 isn’t income; it’s just getting back the money they invested. The income is only the $50 profit.

This has real implications for what costs belong in the calculation. The basic formula is:

Beginning inventory + purchases of inventory + production costs (direct labor, freight)

– ending inventory

= cost of goods sold

Selling, general, and administrative expenses never belong in cost of goods sold, no matter how essential they are to running the business. These are always ordinary expenses.

The courts don’t care what you call things. In Atkinson v. Commissioner, a taxpayer tried to classify operating expenses as cost of goods sold. The Tax Court rejected this because the costs weren’t directly tied to inventory. As Jeremy notes, “Economic reality controls over labels used on tax returns or financial statements.”

For most businesses, this distinction is about accuracy. But there’s one area where understanding the difference between cost of goods sold and deductions becomes absolutely critical.

When Getting It Wrong Can Cost Millions: The Cannabis Example

IRC Section 280E is tough on cannabis businesses as it allows no deductions or credits for businesses trafficking in Schedule I or II controlled substances. Since marijuana remains Schedule I under federal law, dispensaries can’t deduct rent, utilities, salaries (except those directly tied to inventory), or any other ordinary business expense.

Their taxable income essentially equals their gross income. Except for cost of goods sold.

“Section 280E doesn’t disallow cost of goods sold,” Jeremy explains. “Because cost of goods sold is not an ordinary deduction; it is a reduction of gross income.”

This distinction became the center of Californians Helping to Alleviate Medical Problems (CHAMP) v. Commissioner, a 2007 Tax Court case that Jeremy calls “a really good illustration of why this concept is important.”

CHAMP operated both a medical marijuana dispensary and provided caregiving services for patients. Same business, two revenue streams, completely different tax treatment.

The IRS looked at the business and said it was trafficking in marijuana, Section 280E applies, no deductions allowed. CHAMP argued that costs of acquiring marijuana inventory were cost of goods sold that reduced gross income.

The Tax Court partially agreed. They allowed cost of goods sold, but only for costs directly tied to acquiring marijuana inventory. The dispensary’s operating costs were disallowed under 280E. It also disallowed the caregiving service costs and since caregiving is a service, those costs couldn’t be cost of goods sold anyway.

“The Tax Court allowed cost of goods sold, but only for the inventory-producing activity, only for the merchandising part of the business,” Jeremy clarifies. “Not for the caregiving services.”

This case shows having inventory isn’t enough to sweep all your costs into cost of goods sold. When a business has multiple activities, you have to analyze each one separately. And courts always look at economic substance over whatever labels you use.

Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Jeremy shares a frustration many practitioners face: clients who report the same inventory year after year or give suspiciously round numbers.

“We ask for their ending inventory and we get the same number as last year’s ending inventory, or we get round numbers,” he says. A restaurant claiming exactly $1,000 in beverage inventory while doing millions in revenue? “I seriously doubt that it’s an accurate reflection of their inventory.”

For sole proprietors and single-member LLCs, cost of goods sold goes on Schedule C, Part III. Corporations and S-corporations use Form 1125-A. Both forms walk through the same calculation: beginning inventory, plus purchases and production costs, minus ending inventory.

The key is educating clients about proper inventory counts and valuation. This matters for accuracy and for defending the numbers if the IRS asks questions. The substantiation requirements are the same as for any business expense. You must prove costs were incurred, properly classified, and correctly valued.

Jeremy also mentions that inventory valuation methods matter. Businesses can use First-In-First-Out (FIFO), Last-In-First-Out (LIFO), or average cost methods. But consistency is necessary. You can’t switch methods year to year just to get better results.

One final note on the future: if marijuana gets removed from Schedule I, Section 280E would no longer apply to cannabis businesses. But Jeremy cautions this would likely only affect future years. “It’s very unlikely that something like that would happen” retroactively, he explains. For now, the distinction between cost of goods sold and ordinary expenses is critical for every cannabis business.

The Bottom Line for Tax Professionals

If you take away nothing else from this episode, remember cost of goods sold belongs only to manufacturing, merchandising, and mining businesses. A consulting firm with “cost of services” is ordinary expenses. Same for the coaching business tracking direct costs.

“Just because the financial statements report cost of goods sold or cost of sales or cost of services doesn’t mean the tax return should or even can have cost of goods sold,” Jeremy emphasizes.

This isn’t about matching financial statements to tax returns. Cost of goods sold represents a return of capital invested in inventory, not just another expense category. When you get this right, you properly calculate income.

For most clients, fixing this means moving numbers from cost of goods sold to ordinary expenses. When they ask why their return looks different, you now have the framework to explain why accuracy matters more than consistency with an incorrect approach.

For cannabis clients, the stakes are much higher. Under Section 280E, properly identifying cost of goods sold might be the difference between staying in business and closing doors.

Whether you prepare returns for a local retailer or advise a multi-state dispensary, you should understand what cost of goods sold really means, know which businesses qualify, and report costs where they belong based on substance, not convenience.

To dive deeper into the regulations, court cases, and practical examples, listen to the full Tax in Action episode. Jeremy walks through each concept step by step, giving you the technical foundation to turn confusion into competency.

Human Connection Still Beats AI in Accounting Despite What the Headlines Say

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Breaking news dominated a recent episode of The Accounting Podcast as hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary analyzed the Supreme Court’s landmark decision striking down Trump’s global tariffs. But the conversation quickly turned to what this means for accounting firms: a massive opportunity to help clients claim refunds on $133 billion in tariffs already paid.

The episode also digs into why taxpayers are losing trust in AI for tax preparation, how law firms are hiking rates to offset AI-reduced billable hours, and why human connection remains the profession’s secret weapon in an increasingly automated world.

A $133 Billion Opportunity Knocks

“The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s global tariffs in a six to three decision,” Blake announced at the start of the episode, barely containing his satisfaction at having predicted this outcome in previous episodes.

The court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn’t authorize the president to set or modify tariffs, which are a form of taxation. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, emphasized that tariffs require clear statutory authorization from Congress, something the emergency powers act doesn’t provide.

But US businesses have already paid $133 billion in these now-invalidated tariffs. And while the court didn’t lay out a specific refund mechanism, those funds are potentially recoverable.

“I think there’s a big opportunity,” Blake said. “Smart accountants are going to jump on this.”

The opportunity mirrors the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) work that kept many firms busy during the pandemic. Firms will need to help clients identify affected entries, determine liquidation status, quantify refund amounts, and support administrative claims. If accountants charged even a small percentage fee for this service, Blake estimates it could generate “$1 billion to $10 billion in services revenue.”

David warned tariff refund mills will pop up just like ERC mills did, urging accountants to “beat them to the punch” by proactively reaching out to clients who import goods.

The situation remains fluid. Trump announced plans to impose new 10% tariffs under a different authority, using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. But for now, accounting firms have a huge opportunity to deliver value to clients who’ve been paying these tariffs.

Why Taxpayers Are Backing Away from AI

While accountants scramble to understand tariff refunds, they’re also watching taxpayers lose faith in AI for tax preparation.

According to Invoice Home’s latest survey of 2,000 US tax filers, only 37% would consider using AI to file their taxes instead of hiring a professional. That’s actually down from 43% last year, despite all the AI hype.

“I think people are getting burned,” Blake observed. “The more you use AI, the more you recognize its failings.”

The generational breakdown shows younger taxpayers remain more open. Half of millennials and 46% of Gen Z would consider AI tax prep. But even they’re growing skeptical as they gain real experience with AI’s limitations.

Blake has a similarly nuanced relationship with AI. He described using ChatGPT to draft legal agreements with “flawless” results, completing in minutes what used to take hours. Yet he readily acknowledges that taxes are different. “Small errors can compound and create big problems.”

This declining trust should reassure tax professionals worried about being replaced. Taxpayers seem to understand intuitively that tax preparation requires expertise and accountability that algorithms can’t yet provide.

The $3,400-Per-Hour Question

Meanwhile, the legal profession is showing accountants the problem with simply jacking up rates when AI reduces billable hours.

Top partners at elite law firms now charge up to $3,400 per hour, with some niche specialties pushing $6,000. Partner rates jumped 16% last year among the 50 largest firms. Even junior associates can run clients $1,400 per hour.

“If there’s less work, there’s fewer billable hours, and they’ve got to make up the difference somehow,” David acknowledged.

But Blake sees disaster ahead. “Businesses are going to say, wait a minute, why am I paying $3,400 an hour for legal work that’s being done by AI?” He can now draft his own legal agreements using a $30-per-month ChatGPT subscription—work he previously would have paid lawyers to handle.

The absurdity peaked with news that KPMG Australia fined a senior partner $7,000 for using AI to complete an internal AI training exam. The same firm that’s publicly committed to spending $2 billion on AI globally.

“If you know how to use AI to cheat on the test, you’ve passed the AI test,” David pointed out. “Obviously, you have the skills to use the AI.”

The contradiction perfectly captures professional services’ confused relationship with artificial intelligence: desperately embracing it while simultaneously punishing those who use it too effectively.

The Power of Human Connection

The episode’s most compelling segment came from David’s interview with Dawn Brolin about the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation, which helps accountants attend their first professional conference.

The foundation raised about $45,000 last year and sent 11 people to conferences—each one potentially life-changing. But it’s not just about money. They help recipients overcome travel anxiety, select sessions, and find their tribe in the profession.

“We get on a Zoom with them,” Dawn explained. “We talk through their anxieties. We give them travel tips.”

One recipient has since become active on social media, attended more conferences, and regularly sends thank-you letters. His life changed because he met people who understood his challenges.

“AI will never replace human interaction,” Dawn emphasized. “It will never replace the human touch.”

This stands in sharp contrast to how many firms actually treat clients. David described his experience with his own accounting firm. “Subject line: ‘Reminder you have outstanding task.’ And then I open the email in a giant font that says ‘Outstanding Task to Complete.’ It’s a horrible experience. It creates anxiety.”

Compare that to Intuit’s new TurboTax campaign offering free Uber rides to their offices. They understand customer experience in a way many accounting firms don’t.

“Accounting firms focus on their internal processes too much and not the customer experience,” David argued.

Focus Time Is the Real Productivity Crisis

A Hubstaff study cited in the episode found that average workers only get two to three hours of true focus time daily without meetings, messages, or tool-switching.

The productivity struggles “weren’t about effort,” the study found. “It’s about constant disruption.”

Workers use an average of 18 apps each day. Hybrid teams report the least focus time (31%), while in-office teams get slightly more (45%). The differences are smaller than expected, suggesting the problem isn’t location; it’s how we work.

Even AI adoption isn’t helping. Despite 26% of firms now using generative AI daily (up from 3% three years ago), it hasn’t meaningfully changed how employees spend their time.

Looking Ahead

The paradoxes explored in this episode reveal a profession in transition. Taxpayers are losing trust in AI just as its capabilities advance. Law firms are raising rates to offset efficiency gains, creating an unsustainable value proposition. And the most transformative professional experiences still happen through human connection, not algorithms.

Here are the top three takeaways for accountants:

  1. Jump on the tariff refund opportunity before the mills do. This could be the next ERC-sized revenue opportunity for proactive firms.
  2. Don’t follow law firms down the path of inflating rates to maintain partner lifestyles. Clients with access to the same AI tools will eventually revolt.
  3. Invest in human connections and customer experience. Sometimes the most valuable service is simply helping someone find their professional community.

As Dawn reminded listeners, “There isn’t any competition in accounting” when professionals support each other. The same collaborative spirit should guide how the profession approaches AI—as a tool that enables more human connection, not a replacement for it.

Thriving firms use AI for efficiency while doubling down on relationships, advisory services, and the judgment that no algorithm can replicate. Listen to the full episode of The Accounting Podcast for complete coverage of these stories and more insights on navigating the AI-augmented future of accounting.

What Tax-Season-Buried Accountants Need to Know About Intuit Accountant Suite Before May

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Intuit recently dropped a surprise on accountants: pricing for its new Accelerate and Books Close features begins May 1, 2026, not at the end of the year as many practitioners understood. For professionals buried in tax season, the window to test these tools before paying just got smaller.

In Episode 130 of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, co-hosts Alicia Katz Pollock and Dan DeLong dig into what these features actually deliver and whether they’re worth your money come May.

The Pricing Timeline Confusion

“When I signed up for it, they asked for my credit card information, and I was pretty darn sure it said it’s going to be free until the end of the year,” Alicia explains. But Dan sees it differently. “I took it as it’ll be free until it’s not. It’s kind of like the stock market, it will continue to go up until it doesn’t.”

This confusion stems from Intuit’s original announcement at QuickBooks Connect, which Dan diplomatically describes as having “a lot of opportunity for improvement.” Now practitioners have just three months to decide whether these tools deserve a spot in their tech stack.

What Stays Free vs. What Costs Money

Your ProAdvisor account, the portal where you manage clients, complete trainings and certifications, switch between files, and access accountant tools, will still be free.

“If it’s not, somebody from Intuit needs to tell me ASAP,” Alicia emphasizes.

What’s new (and will cost money) are two add-on tools:

Intuit Accountant Suite Accelerate

($149/month for your entire firm)

This unlocks the client insights feature, giving you a dashboard where you can view Balance Sheet or P&L data for all clients in a single grid. There are no per-user fees; one price covers your whole team.

“For a solo practitioner, $149 is maybe kind of expensive,” Alicia notes. “But if you’re running a firm with five or ten team members, and especially when you scale up, that’s actually really, really cheap.”

Books Close

($8/client/month, dropping to $6 after 50 clients)

This per-client tool lets you manage monthly closes without entering individual QuickBooks files. You only pay for clients you actually onboard to the feature, not your entire client list.

Even without these paid features, the free Intuit Accountant Suite now includes a dashboard with widgets that show which clients need bank feed reconnections or have integration issues. As Dan explains, “Instead of your home screen being your client list, it’s now a dashboard with customizable widgets.”

Books Close: The Feature That Surprised Alicia

During Dan’s live demonstration, Books Close’s capabilities genuinely impressed Alicia, including reconciliations.

“Wow. So it’s a straight-up reconciliation, but it’s from here and it lists all the balance sheet accounts so that I can actually run down the list,” she says, seeing the feature for the first time.

Workflow Management Built for Real Firms

Books Close includes three workflow roles (Preparer, Reviewer, and Approver) that you can rename to match your firm’s terms. Solo practitioners can turn off the multi-role structure entirely. For teams, you can assign different segments to different people and track progress as work moves through the pipeline.

The status options go beyond simple “To Do” and “Completed.” You can customize statuses like “In Progress,” “Waiting on Client,” or “Blocked.” Templates let you create different task lists for different engagement types. Your full-service clients get one checklist while lighter engagements get another.

Transaction Review That Catches Problems

The transaction review section offers visibility into issues that typically require hunting through client files:

  • Transactions without payees (critical for 1099 tracking)
  • Expenses without attachments (with customizable dollar thresholds)
  • Transactions auto-added by bank rules
  • Unapplied payments
  • Manually created transactions

Alicia shared why the bank rule review matters. “I was working with somebody who had a bank rule for Apple, putting everything in software. But then they had a vendor with Apple in their name, and it started classifying those transactions as software expense.”

Each review category lets you set thresholds and exclusions. If you don’t need receipts for certain expense categories, you can exclude them. If you have vendors that always code correctly, you can skip reviewing them.

The W-9/1099 Management Feature (Finally)

The W-9/1099 management just went live, unfortunately after 1099 season ended. “It would have been nice to know the W-9/1099 management was not coming soon,” Dan observed.

The feature shows vendor lists with EINs, 1099 eligibility, and year-to-date amounts. But Alicia immediately spotted a gap, as entity type shows only “Individual” or “Business.”

“I would like to see whether it’s an S-Corp or an LLC,” she points out, since that determines 1099 eligibility.

A Critical Limitation

Dan discovered a major problem after spending two hours with Intuit support: you cannot remove clients from Books Close once you add them.

“You can onboard a client, but you cannot offboard them,” he explains.

This creates multiple problems:

  • Clients who leave your practice still cost $8/month
  • You can’t remove Books Close while keeping other services
  • Testing the feature means potentially paying for test clients indefinitely

Intuit support offered two workarounds:

  1. Remove the client from your list entirely (useless if you still provide other services)
  2. Cancel Books Close completely, lose all customizations, then restart and re-add only the clients you want

“They have essentially three months to figure this out,” Dan notes. Both hosts urge listeners to submit feedback requesting offboarding functionality. Feature requests from within the beta may get higher priority.

Who Should Consider These Tools?

The value proposition varies dramatically by practice type.

  • Already using third-party tools. As Dan notes, “If you are already using something that does a lot of these features, you are probably not going to see the value.” Tools like Keeper, Financial Cents, or Double provide similar capabilities. Alicia admits she’s “kind of embedded with Double” and faces the switching-cost dilemma many practitioners will encounter.
  • Building a new practice. “Anytime Intuit creates something new, it’s not for existing users,” Dan says. “A new accountant coming in today doesn’t know any different.” When they need close management tools, they’ll see a built-in feature rather than evaluating alternatives.
  • Looking for one-off use. Alicia sees potential. “I would onboard somebody just to do a cleanup and then offboard them when I’m done. I would pay eight bucks for this for a job.” Unfortunately, without offboarding capability, this use case doesn’t work yet.

The Bottom Line

Intuit’s push into practice management shows promise, but the accelerated timeline puts pressure on practitioners during tax season—exactly when they have no bandwidth for evaluation.

If you’re testing these tools, submit feedback now, especially about the offboarding problem. Beta periods exist to surface these issues, but only if users speak up.

For firms with teams, the math likely works: $149 for unlimited users plus manageable per-client fees delivers real workflow improvements. For solo practitioners, the value depends on how much you value not switching between files.

Most importantly, if you’re considering adoption, test it with real client work. Theory doesn’t reveal whether the interface fits your thinking; only hands-on experience does.

Listen to the full episode for Dan’s complete screen demonstration. Seeing the interface in action reveals details that descriptions can’t capture, and might be the difference between a confident decision and an expensive guess.

Alicia Katz Pollock’s Royalwise OWLS (On-Demand Web-based Learning Solutions) is the industry’s premier portal for top-notch QuickBooks Online training with CPE for accounting firms, bookkeepers, and small business owners. Visit Royalwise OWLS, where learning QBO is a HOOT!

From Frustrated Firm Owner to Tech Founder Without Writing a Single Line of Code

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Thirty-three percent. That’s how much time Judie McCarthy’s bookkeeping firm was spending chasing clients for information instead of doing accounting or advising on business decisions. Just sending requests, following up, and tracking down the same documents week after week.

The breaking point came on a Friday afternoon when one of Judie’s biggest clients called, furious. “The bookkeeper is harassing me for the same information over and over again,” she said, demanding a new bookkeeper. Judie talked her off the ledge that afternoon, promising to investigate Monday morning.

But when she reviewed the email thread with her team, the problem wasn’t the bookkeeper. It was the system, or rather, the lack of one. They were sending emails with multiple questions each week. Clients would respond but never answer everything, starting the cycle all over again.

When Judie called the client back to explain what she’d found, the phone went silent. “I thought, oh, she’s hung up on me,” Judie recalls. “And I realized she was crying.” The client, a high-powered woman running two businesses, wasn’t angry anymore. She was overwhelmed. “It is so hard to keep up with everything,” she said through tears.

That conversation changed everything. This wasn’t a difficult client; it was a horrible client experience and none of the existing tools were solving it.

In this episode of She Counts, hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka sit down with Judie, co-founder of Client Hub, a company that notably doesn’t use titles, reflecting their values of collaboration over hierarchy. After 25 years running a successful bookkeeping practice and a previous career in automotive management, Judie built the practice management software she wished existed. And her experience offers a roadmap for any woman in accounting who’s ever thought, “There has to be a better way.”

The Problem Nobody Wanted to Name

The idea for Client Hub didn’t start with Judie at all. It came from her lead bookkeeper during a regular team meeting.

“We were always trying to be really productive, looking for ways to increase productivity and deliver better client experience,” Judie recalls. “We’re going around the room and my lead bookkeeper said our biggest challenge is getting the information we need from our clients to do the work.”

The statement hit hard. Everyone knew it was true, but hearing it said out loud changed something. Judie’s team decided to measure the problem. Their mini research study revealed that staggering 33% figure. A full third of their time was going to administrative chase-downs rather than actual accounting work.

“There are lots of great internal workflow tools on the market,” Judie explains. “But our internal workflow wasn’t the biggest challenge. It was that external workflow.”

After that crying phone call with her client, they tried to solve it together. The client suggested sending one email for everything. Judie knew that wouldn’t work. They’d just have the same conversation about too many emails. So they created a shared Google Sheet where the client could answer all questions weekly.

“That didn’t last two weeks,” Judie says. “This was when I thought there has to be a better way. And there really weren’t any good tools on the market at that time.”

From Frustrated User to Unlikely Founder

The jump from identifying a problem to building software isn’t obvious, especially for someone without recent coding experience. Judie had been a software developer in the 1980s, but as she jokes, “Code is much different now. We’re working on Windows now, not DOS systems. I couldn’t write code to save my life right now.”

What she did have was connections and a clear understanding of the problem. Through a mutual friend, she met her future business partner, an experienced product manager who wasn’t necessarily looking to build accounting software either.

“We were talking about different software projects,” Judie says. “It just came to fruition that we were really well aligned on this idea.”

For four months, they just talked. Judie created a PowerPoint presentation outlining her vision. They compared notes, did market research with their networks, asking the crucial question: “If we build it, will they buy it?”

“It probably wasn’t until six, seven, eight months in that we said, hey, let’s make this a business,” Judie recalls. “We didn’t have to do it all up front.”

When they were ready to build, fortune smiled again. Her partner found two developers looking for work. Those developers are still with Client Hub today, eight years later. That kind of team stability is almost unheard of in tech startups.

The Hardest Part: Letting Go of What You Built

For two years, Judie juggled both businesses, running her practice while building Client Hub. But eventually, something had to give.

“It finally took me about two years to really wrap my head around the idea of selling my practice,” Judie admits. The hesitation wasn’t just about steady income versus startup uncertainty. “Many of my clients had been with me for over 20 years. A lot of them were almost like family.”

Nancy and Questian immediately understood this tension. When they faced emotional paralysis making decisions about the podcast, Questian told Nancy, “We just have to think like a man.” The comment was partly joking, but it pointed to something real about how women often consider relationship impacts in business decisions.

“As women, because we’re often caretakers, relationships are so important to us,” Judie observes. “A man selling a practice probably wouldn’t think so much about that. They’re like, ‘I’m going to get rid of this practice, take the biggest payout, and go.’”

When Judie finally decided to sell, she approached it with characteristic attention to relationships. The broker’s initial ad copy was “absolutely horrendous—typical accounting, all about the numbers, nothing about what the practice was.” She rewrote it herself to attract tech-forward firms that valued client experience.

The response was overwhelming. She received 20 offers at or above asking price within 24 hours. But after interviewing several candidates, Judie chose the lowest bidder.

“Within ten minutes of the start of that conversation, I knew he was the one,” she says of the Texas firm owner who bought her practice. “Everything about the offer and the transition planning and how he ran his firm, it felt more like a family firm.”

The transition showed just how embedded Client Hub had become in her clients’ workflows. When Judie and the buyer announced the sale together via Zoom, her lead bookkeeper of eight years went quiet, then asked, “I don’t have to give up using Client Hub, do I?”

“I said, we’ve been together eight years and you’re worried about giving up your tech, not losing me?” Judie laughs. One of her clients asked the same question during their meeting.

The Surprisingly Simple Path to Building Something New

For anyone sitting on an idea, Judie offers practical and decidedly non-technical advice.

Write Everything Down Immediately

“I have a whiteboard on my desk,” Judie says. “Whenever something comes to mind, I jot it down because otherwise I’ll forget it in about five minutes.”

Questian laughed in recognition, “As soon as you walk through a doorway, it just goes poof out of my mind.”

Stop Worrying About Idea Theft

“Don’t be afraid that somebody’s going to steal your idea,” Judie emphasizes. “Chances are somebody’s not going to steal it and run. I’ve never heard of that happening.”

Instead, she encourages talking to everyone. “Firm owners reach out to me all the time saying, ‘Hey, I have an idea. Would you mind if I bounce it off you?’”

Launch Before You’re Ready

When Client Hub was approaching release, Judie kept hesitating. “It’s not ready, it’s not ready.”

Then Laura Redmond from Aero Workflow gave her the advice that changed everything: “It will never be ready.”

“Thank you, Laura,” Judie says now. She’s internalized this so deeply that she sometimes pushes her product team to release features before they feel complete. “Let’s let our customers tell us what more it needs instead of us building what we think it needs.”

You Don’t Need What You Think You Need

“People think you need investors and a marketing company to build a software company,” Judie says. “You don’t. It is a big investment because you’re going to be paying developers eventually, but just get started.”

Client Hub has grown organically, without outside funding, staying true to its original vision while evolving from a simple portal to a full practice management solution with internal workflow, file management, and integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, Anchor, and more.

Breaking Through the Real Barriers

When asked about obstacles she faced as a woman entering tech, Judie’s answer surprised even the hosts.

“I never saw barriers in anything I did,” she says. “I never walked into a room full of men and thought, ‘Oh, I’m the only woman here.’ I’m an equal.”

She credits this mindset to her mother, who passed when Judie was just 22. “She was my greatest champion. She always told me there were no limits to what I could do or who I could become.”

This outlook carried Judie through careers in automotive management, bookkeeping, and now technology—all traditionally male-dominated fields. But she’s quick to acknowledge reality. “I know a lot of women do experience barriers. I don’t want people to think I’m saying there aren’t barriers, because there are. You just need to find your way around them, just like a traffic jam.”

The tech ecosystem has been surprisingly welcoming. “I’ve never met any of my male counterparts in this profession that I didn’t feel had respect for me as an equal,” she says. “They want talent. It doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, black, white, Asian, gay, straight. People nowadays, especially in technology, we are just very welcoming.”

Perhaps most importantly, Judie operates from a different fear calculation than most. “I’m the kind of person who is never afraid to try because the thought of regret or what-would-have-been really scares me,” she explains. “I don’t ever want to regret that I did or did not do anything in my life.”

And through it all, she maintains perspective with humor. “I don’t know why I wasn’t voted class clown,” she jokes. “Maybe don’t take yourself so seriously. Roll with it.”

This philosophy extends to Client Hub’s company culture, from their no-titles policy to their biweekly “happy hours” where customers gather informally to network, laugh, and share feedback that shapes product development.

The Legacy of Solving Your Own Problem

Today, Client Hub is more than the simple portal Judie first envisioned. But it stays true to its original mission: helping firms get work done without friction.

“People ask us to implement something like time and billing,” Judie explains. “For us, it was the perfect opportunity to partner with somebody.” They integrated with Anchor rather than building their own billing solution. “We need to keep it simple.”

This focus means saying no to features that don’t serve the core vision, even if they might be profitable. It means listening more than talking, a skill Judie learned in automotive management training decades ago. “The most important communication skill you have is listening.”

When asked what she hopes her presence as a female tech founder represents, Judie’s answer was immediate. “I hope my presence shows the next generation that their passions, ideas, and creativity belong here.”

The message applies to any woman considering a significant professional leap. Don’t let anything or anyone hold you back—not parents, partners, or that one person who says it’s not a great idea.

Your Problem Is Someone Else’s Too

Judie’s story proves that the best solutions come from problems you live with daily. A bookkeeper frustrated by wasted time became a tech founder because she couldn’t ignore the problem anymore.

Listen to the full episode, which Nancy closed with a quote from Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, developer of the first compiler for computer programming: “Humans are allergic to change. They love to say we’ve always done it this way. I try to fight that.”

Women like Judie show us we don’t have to bend ourselves around broken systems. We can build better ones instead.

Sometimes, we have to create the tools we need. So write down that idea, share it with someone, and start before you’re ready.

Join the conversation: Have you ever come up with an idea for a new app? What has prevented you from pursuing it? Or if you have pursued it, share that with us too. Follow the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page and share your story under this episode.

From Ticking and Tying to Selling Out Arenas: How One Auditor Became EDM Royalty

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A former Big Four auditor traded spreadsheets for turntables and now commands 11.8 million monthly Spotify listeners, sells out Madison Square Garden, and has racked up over two billion career streams. His name is John Summit, and he might just be the most famous accountant in the world.

On a recent episode of The Accounting Podcast, hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary dove into John’s remarkable transformation from EY auditor to global EDM superstar. His career change story captures something profound happening in the accounting profession right now.

From Audit Room to Arena Stage

“If you’re into electronic music, then you know who John Summit is,” Blake explained to David during the episode. 

The numbers tell an incredible story. John—born John Walter Schuster in Naperville, Illinois—followed the traditional accounting path at first. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in accounting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. From 2018 to 2019, he worked as an auditor at EY in Chicago, starting at $65,000 a year while DJing on weekends.

Blake even pulled up John’s CPA license during the show. “I went to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, and I looked him up by his original name,” he said. The license was active in 2018 and expired in 2022, right around the time John’s music career went stratospheric.

Today, John’s success metrics are staggering. His debut album “Comfort in Chaos” hit number two on the Billboard Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart and cracked the Billboard 200’s top 40. He headlines festivals like Coachella and Tomorrowland, and his own festival, Experts Only, draws 50,000 attendees.

Leaning Into the Accounting Story

What makes John unique is how he’s embraced his accounting past. His new album “CTRL Escape” drops on April 15th, Tax Day, and the cover art shows him sitting atop office ceiling tiles, the corporate world below giving way to open sky above.

“He’s dropping one track from the album every Wednesday,” Blake noted. “And the reason he’s doing it on Wednesday is that he remembers Hump day being the toughest day in the office.”

The album’s merchandise had David cracking up. “Crappy accounting firm swag. This is great,” he said, looking at the offerings. “It’s a backpack that says Summit CPAs, a pen that says Summit CPAs. This is so great he’s leaning into it like that.”

The music video for “Lights Go Out” drives the theme home. John appears in an oversized tan suit at “Summit CPAs,” working at an old green-screen computer before leading his fellow office workers in what Blake described as “basically like an accounting firm turning into a rave.”

The Profession John Left Is Disappearing

Blake and David’s conversation takes a darker turn when they discuss Botkeeper. One of the original “AI bookkeeping” startups announced it was shutting down after 11 years.

“They did the typical tech company ‘fake it ‘til you make it,’” David explained. Botkeeper promised AI-powered bookkeeping but was actually using offshore accountants in the Philippines. When real AI technology finally arrived through companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, investors weren’t interested in funding a company that had burned through capital on the false promise.

It wasn’t just Botkeeper. Jenesys, a UK-based AI bookkeeping startup, also entered a formal sales process after key investors pulled out. Clearly, the old model of pretending to have AI while using human workers is dead.

Meanwhile, companies with actual AI capabilities are thriving. Tax AI startup Accrual raised $75 million, Audit AI startup Fieldguide raised $75 million, and Pilot announced what it called an “AI accountant,” a fully autonomous system capable of running end-to-end bookkeeping with “zero need for human intervention” in typical cases.

Why Tax and Audit AI Are Different

Blake explained why investors are pouring money into tax and audit AI while bookkeeping AI companies struggle.

“When we moved to cloud bookkeeping and accounting, we were able to set up rules-based systems,” he said. “You can still automate 80% of bookkeeping work today with just the old tech.”

But tax and audit are different beasts. “Those areas of accounting were not automatable with rules-based tech, because there are too many gray areas, there’s too much complexity. But AI is starting to handle it really, really, really well.”

To illustrate the point, Blake shared his own experience with Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant. He gave it access to a folder of scanned documents that his scanner had poorly named and asked it to organize them.

“It created a whole logical folder structure. Different types of files, receipts, legal documents, statements,” he said. “And then it put all the documents into those folders and renamed all the documents based on the content of the PDFs. And it did this in minutes.”

“You can get that if you’re a pro subscriber for like $20 a month. It’s incredible.”

The Entry-Level Jobs Are Vanishing

This AI revolution is having a profound impact on accounting careers. Technology is automating routine tasks that once defined entry-level positions at breakneck speed.

“We’re seeing reductions in entry-level jobs, not reductions in mid-career or later-stage career positions,” Blake observed. “It’s really, really hard to find a tax manager. Nobody can find a tax manager for their public accounting firm.”

The work being automated reads like a first-year auditor’s job description. “Requesting documents from clients, receiving and organizing them, rolling forward prior year workpapers, ticking and tying. AI is starting to do all of that stuff.”

As a result, “it’s really hard to get a job as a staff accountant because nobody wants to train you and they don’t have work to give you to justify the cost of training you for several years.”

Even the Big Four Feel the Pressure

In an ironic twist, even KPMG International is feeling the AI pressure. The firm recently pushed its own auditor, Grant Thornton UK, to lower its audit fee by 14%, arguing that AI-driven efficiencies should reduce costs.

“The negotiations reportedly included pressure tactics, where KPMG threatened to switch auditors if Grant Thornton didn’t agree to a significant reduction,” Blake said, citing Financial Times reporting.

The fee went from $416,000 in 2024 to $357,000 in 2025. As Blake wryly noted: “I think KPMG ought to watch out, because now clients are going to ask for the same fee reduction.”

The Pyramid Is Crumbling

This pressure on fees creates a domino effect. Lower fees mean less money for staff. Fewer entry-level positions mean the traditional pyramid model of public accounting, where large numbers of junior staff support a small number of managers and partners, is collapsing.

“The whole model is going to have to shift,” Blake said. “The pyramid model of accounting is going away. And that’s going to fundamentally change our profession, because that’s been the way everyone got into accounting for a hundred years.”

Blake predicted that within five to ten years, timesheets and time-based billing will disappear entirely. The firms that survive will abandon the old model of counting hours and bodies.

There is a silver lining for those who adapt. Blake shared his own experience. “I saw a 5x increase in my revenue just as a freelancer” after embracing cloud technology. His effective hourly rate went from $20 to $100, and his workload actually decreased.

The Escape Route Is Closing

John Summit celebrates his escape from accounting through music that resonates with millions who understand the cubicle grind. He drops tracks on Wednesdays because that was the hardest day to push through. He releases albums on Tax Day. He sells fake accounting firm swag as merchandise.

But the entry-level accounting experience he’s immortalizing—the fluorescent lights, the routine tasks, the path that led him from college to Big Four—is rapidly disappearing. Future accountants may never know that particular grind because the jobs simply won’t exist.

Accounting will likely survive with higher earnings for those who remain and adapt. But the traditional path into the profession will evolve.

As David suggested during the show, if you’re Summit CPAs—a real accounting firm that happens to share the name—you might want to figure out how to capitalize on all the traffic coming your way. Because in a profession being reshaped by AI, you need to grab opportunities wherever you find them.

For the complete discussion of John’s journey, the AI transformation of accounting, and what it means for the profession’s future, listen to the full episode of The Accounting Podcast.