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Blake Oliver

Why Most Accounting AI Will Hit an Auditability Wall

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Every day, another AI agent promises to revolutionize accounting. But there’s a fundamental problem most tech companies don’t understand: AI accounting will hit what FloQast CEO Mike Whitmire calls “the auditability wall.”

While Silicon Valley churns out press releases about AI agents that can handle complex accounting tasks, a reality check awaits. In this episode of the Earmark Podcast, host Blake Oliver sits down with Mike Whitmire, founder and CEO of FloQast, to explore why accounting AI is fundamentally different from AI in other business functions. Rather than getting swept up in the AI marketing frenzy, FloQast stepped back to solve the core problem: how to harness AI’s power while maintaining complete audit trails and human oversight.

As Whitmire warns, “A series of companies will come out with AI agents that can do a lot of this work fairly accurately. Then they hit this auditability wall, and it creates a big problem for companies trying to scale.”

The Auditability Problem That’s Breaking Accounting AI

Unlike other business functions where AI mistakes can be shrugged off, accounting operates under rules most tech companies don’t understand. When a sales AI messes up a lead, the stakes are minimal. But in accounting, every transaction must be traceable, every decision documented, and every process capable of withstanding regulatory scrutiny.

This creates a fundamental conflict between how most AI systems work and what accounting requires. “AI is really about automating work, and agents are doing non-deterministic work,” Whitmire explains. “So that becomes a little scary when you’re thinking about auditability.” Most AI systems function as “black boxes.” They can produce results, but they can’t explain their decision-making process in the detailed, step-by-step manner that auditors and regulators demand.

The problem is about to hit the industry hard. When AI systems can’t provide proper documentation and audit trails, auditors are forced to recreate all the work, defeating the entire purpose of automation.

Rather than getting swept up in the AI marketing that dominates press releases from major ERP vendors, FloQast took a different approach. “We tried to avoid the noise and think about how AI should be applied to accounting,” Whitmire says. They started with their experience as former auditors and accountants, asking: How do you combine AI automation with traditional software code and human oversight to create something that actually works?

The answer required rethinking the entire approach to accounting AI, leading to a solution that preserves audit trails and human oversight while still delivering efficiency gains.

FloQast Transform: Building AI Auditors Can Actually Trust

Rather than chase the latest AI trends, FloQast built something different: an AI system that auditors can actually work with. The FloQast Transform product harnesses AI’s power while maintaining the audit trails financial reporting demands.

The approach is simple: let accountants describe their processes in plain English, then use that narrative to generate automated scripts and complete audit documentation. “You build your agents,” Whitmire explains. “You chat with the product and explain your process in pretty extreme detail.”

As accountants describe their workflow step by step, the system populates what looks like a familiar Excel workbook. “This Excel workbook will ultimately be the audit evidence,” Whitmire notes. This isn’t just a user interface choice. It’s a deliberate design decision to ensure every AI-driven process produces the documentation auditors expect to see.

Take FloQast’s benefit allocation journal entry example. The process starts with integrating with UKG Payroll to pull down employee data. The accountant describes each step: “integrate with UKG,” then “pull down information around names, dollar amounts, state,” then “populate column A with this, populate column B with this, and bold and make the header gray because that’s the format I like.”

The system combines different types of automation. For routine tasks, it generates deterministic code that produces consistent results every time. But when the AI encounters something new, like when FloQast hired its first Kentucky employee, it doesn’t guess. Instead, “it surfaces the question to the reviewer of that work,” Whitmire explains. The accountant can approve the change, and going forward, Kentucky will be handled properly.

This approach changes the accountant’s role. Instead of being the preparer who manually processes transactions, they become the reviewer who oversees AI agents and approves exceptions. “Our goal is to empower accountants to automate the really repetitive, rote part of this job. Elevate them into the reviewer of the more complicated work that the agent’s now doing,” Whitmire says.

The system preserves every prompt sent to the AI, every output generated, and every decision made. When auditors come knocking, they can trace exactly how each transaction was processed and where humans intervened. It’s the kind of comprehensive audit trail that makes regulatory compliance possible while still delivering efficiency gains.

Beyond transaction processing, FloQast applies AI to other areas like variance analysis. When account balances trigger materiality thresholds, the system analyzes the biggest transactions causing the change and drafts explanations. “It’s like balance went up because of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” Whitmire says. “It’s not these wonderful essays on how things change. It’s like a list of transactions.”

The Future of Accounting: Cyborgs, Not Replacements

The auditability challenge yields a surprising conclusion: rather than replacing accountants, AI will transform their role in ways that could solve the profession’s biggest problems. But this transformation requires rethinking what it means to be an accountant.

Whitmire envisions accountants becoming “accounting transformation information managers,” professionals who combine accounting knowledge with software engineering capabilities. “It will be much more like the merging of an accountant with a software engineer,” he explains. “So you have the accounting knowledge, supplemented by software engineering tools like FloQast, where they can take their accounting knowledge, use our product, and automate their work.”

This isn’t just about learning new software. It’s about fundamentally changing the structure of accounting work. Instead of spending hours manually processing transactions, accountants would deploy AI agents to handle routine work so they can focus on reviewing exceptions, making judgment calls, and ensuring compliance.

The career implications depend on where you are professionally. For younger professionals, Whitmire recommends “Get really good at technology, learn these tools as they come out, and continue to learn about accounting. You’re going to be a very, very valuable employee going forward.” For experienced professionals, “You need to be really great at reviewing the work. Continue to be really great leaders, and run great organizations.”

This evolution could address the profession’s talent shortage. By making accountants more productive and the work more intellectually engaging, AI could help attract and retain talent. “My hope is that it does a really good job of plugging the talent gap we talk about so much,” Whitmire notes.

But there’s a learning concern. Whitmire worries about newer professionals who might skip foundational manual work and jump straight to reviewing AI-generated results. “I feel like the old man saying this, but I did learn a lot doing the work manually and struggling through it,” he admits. He recalls learning about jet lease accounting by struggling through contracts and GAAP guidance—work that an AI could now handle instantly.

The solution may require restructuring how accountants learn their craft. Perhaps starting in accounting roles where they do manual work before moving into audit, rather than the current model, where most start as auditors reviewing work they’ve never performed.

As Oliver puts it, “I would rather manage AIs than manage people.” It reflects both the appeal and reality of this AI-augmented future. Managing AI agents eliminates many interpersonal challenges while allowing professionals to focus on technical and analytical work.

The accounting profession is heading toward becoming a hybrid of human judgment and AI automation. The question is whether professionals and firms will adapt quickly enough to thrive.

Regulatory Changes on the Horizon

The discussion also touched on significant regulatory changes that could reshape the profession. There are efforts in Congress to eliminate the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and transfer its responsibilities back to the SEC without additional funding, effectively ending independent audit oversight.

“When I was at EY, we were always scared of a PCAOB audit. So it was a thing that drove behavior,” Whitmire reflects. The fear-based incentive improved audit quality, even if the overall effectiveness is debatable.

Without the PCAOB, the industry would likely return to peer review, where accounting firms review each other’s work. As Oliver notes, “You’re not so afraid of your buddies reviewing your work.” That’s the same dynamic that led to audit failures before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

This regulatory uncertainty adds another layer of complexity to the AI transformation. Firms implementing AI systems need to consider current audit requirements and how oversight might change in the coming years.

The Path Forward: Auditability as Competitive Advantage

The accounting profession’s rigid requirement for auditability is often seen as a weakness. But it may become its greatest competitive advantage in the AI revolution. While tech companies rush to market with AI agents that promise to automate everything, firms that understand and embrace the auditability challenge will build sustainable, scalable solutions.

FloQast Transform demonstrates that the future isn’t about choosing between human judgment and AI automation. It’s about creating systems where they work together seamlessly. By preserving audit trails, maintaining human oversight for exceptions, and generating documentation that auditors can use, they’ve solved the fundamental problem that will likely sink many AI accounting startups.

For accounting professionals, this is a career evolution opportunity. The future belongs to those who combine accounting expertise with technology capabilities. These professionals will be empowered by AI to focus on higher-level analysis, judgment calls, and strategic work. The professionals who master these systems now will find themselves in increasingly valuable positions as the technology matures.

To hear the complete conversation about FloQast’s approach to accounting AI, including detailed technical examples and Whitmire’s predictions for the profession’s future, listen to the full episode above.

How Smart Small Businesses Turn Economic Headwinds into Competitive Advantages

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Small businesses are navigating a unique economic moment in 2025. They’re still serving customers and meeting market demands, but they’re doing it while managing changing costs and ongoing policy uncertainty. Despite these challenges, they’re not shutting down or laying people off. Instead, they’re finding creative ways to adapt.

Nicholas Tremper, senior economist at Gusto, shared this insight in a recent Earmark Podcast episode. Tremper tracks data from hundreds of thousands of small businesses through Gusto’s platform, so he has a unique view into how small businesses respond to today’s economic challenges.

The picture Tremper paints is more complex than the headlines suggest. While businesses face real pressures from tariffs, labor shortages, and economic uncertainty, many thrive by combining two essential strategies: utilizing AI to boost productivity and offering more appealing benefits to attract workers. For accounting professionals, this creates new opportunities to become strategic advisors rather than just compliance providers.

Economic Headwinds Create Planning Challenges

In the current economic environment, several interconnected challenges reshape how small businesses operate. Tariffs have reached a weighted average of about 18% across all imports—a significant jump from single digits in previous years. While this level is manageable for most businesses, the bigger problem is uncertainty.

“Small businesses don’t necessarily know how to think about what their costs will be three or six months from now,” Tremper explains. This uncertainty affects everything from inventory planning to contract bidding. For example, if you’re a retailer trying to stock up for the holidays or a contractor giving price estimates months in advance, not knowing future costs makes planning nearly impossible.

The labor market adds another layer of complexity. Unemployment sits at a relatively low 4.3%, but the July jobs report showed weakness with only 73,000 jobs added versus 100,000 expected. More concerning was the massive downward revision of 258,000 jobs from previous estimates for May and June. (Updated numbers released after the show was recorded are +22,000 jobs for August.)

This reflects what Tremper calls an economy that’s “idling”—staying in place rather than growing or contracting. Businesses aren’t laying people off, but they’re not hiring aggressively either. The combination of an aging population and tighter immigration policies creates structural labor shortages, especially in construction and hospitality sectors that traditionally relied on both groups.

These pressures force businesses to delay growth plans. As Tremper puts it, “You may not be able to work on that fourth development. You may have to stop at the three.” When you can’t reliably access more labor, expansion is much more complicated.

Entrepreneurship Boom Continues Despite Challenges

Despite these headwinds, there’s been an entrepreneurship renaissance in the United States. The number of new business applications skyrocketed during the summer of 2020, and as of June 2025, new businesses were still 57% higher than June 2019 levels.

The resilience of small business formation helps explain why the economy has remained relatively stable. “One of the reasons that the economy has been so resilient is because these new businesses have been bringing creative ideas to market,” Tremper notes.

What’s particularly interesting is who’s starting these businesses. For the first time, almost half of new businesses were started by women, compared to 30% in 2019. There’s also been an increase in businesses started by nonwhite entrepreneurs, showing entrepreneurship is spreading across demographics.

These new business owners face similar challenges regardless of their background. When asked about their top three challenges, they consistently mention cash flow, time management, and acquiring customers and employees. At least two of these are areas where accountants can provide significant value.

AI Boosts Productivity Without Replacing Workers

Here’s a statistic that might surprise you: 95% of small businesses using AI aren’t cutting their workforce. Instead, they’re making their existing employees more productive. This contradicts the common narrative that AI inevitably leads to job losses.

The productivity gains are substantial. According to Gusto’s research, 80% of small businesses using AI report productivity increases of 20% or more. But the key insight isn’t just that AI works; it’s how it works.

“Rather than an AI doing somebody’s job, what the person’s doing is they’re like, I’m the expert and you’re going to be a teammate to help me accomplish this quickly,” Tremper explains.

Businesses use AI for routine tasks like summarizing information and conducting market research—the necessary work that doesn’t require deep expertise. Meanwhile, humans focus on applying their knowledge, making judgment calls, and building client relationships.

This approach creates an unexpected benefit in hiring. Businesses that allow employees to use AI report 45% less difficulty finding new workers. It turns out people want to work for companies that give them tools to focus on meaningful work instead of tedious tasks.

The most successful AI implementations happen when businesses develop clear plans about when to use human expertise versus when to leverage AI for efficiency. This strategic approach creates a cycle where better tools lead to more satisfied employees, which makes companies more attractive to potential hires.

Benefits Become Essential for Talent Competition

While AI tackles productivity, smart businesses simultaneously invest in benefits to attract and retain workers. In today’s tight labor market, benefits are competitive necessities.

Offering healthcare benefits increases employee retention by 40% in the first year. Retirement plans show similar effects. What’s interesting is that half of the businesses offering retirement benefits don’t do any company matching. They get significant retention benefits just by offering the benefit.

This creates opportunities for businesses willing to think strategically about their total compensation packages. While competitors focus solely on wages—an expensive and difficult race to win—smart businesses create comprehensive value propositions that extend beyond the paycheck.

For accountants, a communication gap represents a missed opportunity. Fifty percent of small businesses don’t know if their accountant offers benefits guidance, and two-thirds of those simply never thought to ask. When small businesses receive benefits guidance from their accountants, 60% say it influences their benefit decisions. For businesses under two years old, that number jumps to 85%.

Accountants as Strategic Partners

This economic environment creates new opportunities for accounting professionals to evolve beyond traditional compliance work. The share of businesses reporting productivity gains from their accountants has jumped dramatically—from 52% in 2021 to two-thirds in 2025.

“Small businesses view their accountants as business partners. These aren’t number crunchers. These are people who are actively helping me figure out what I’m going to do next,” Tremper explains.

Businesses navigating today’s challenges need more than bookkeeping and tax prep. They need guidance on cash flow analysis, scenario planning, and strategic decision-making. When small businesses can’t predict their costs or easily access more labor, having an advisor who can help them model different scenarios is invaluable.

Cash flow, time management, and hiring are all areas where accountants can provide significant value. Whether it’s helping a client switch to upfront billing to improve cash flow or advising on benefits strategies to attract workers, these services directly address the problems keeping business owners up at night.

Interest rates remaining higher than business owners would like make this financial guidance even more critical. As Tremper notes, “It’s so important to really understand the return on investment on those borrowing costs.” Businesses need help evaluating whether investments will generate enough return to justify higher borrowing costs.

Cautious Optimism for Small Business Future

Despite the challenges, Tremper remains optimistic about small businesses’ prospects based on their track record of resilience. Over the past five years, small businesses have navigated a pandemic, an inflation crisis with rates hitting 8-9%, a major labor market reshuffling, and now uncertain tariff policies. Through it all, more people keep choosing to start businesses.

“They’ve got this grit, this creativity,” Tremper observes. “These things make me most optimistic about small businesses.”

The economic fundamentals, while softening, aren’t collapsing. Consumer spending continues to increase, albeit more slowly. People are choosier about purchases, but demand hasn’t fallen off a cliff. This provides a foundation for businesses that can adapt to changing conditions.

The businesses succeeding in this environment understand that sustainable competitive advantage comes from combining cutting-edge tools with meaningful employee value propositions. They’re not choosing between technology and people; they’re investing in both simultaneously and strategically to create resilience against future uncertainty. By maximizing productivity per employee and creating strong retention through benefits and culture, these businesses position themselves to weather whatever economic storms may come.

For accounting professionals, this transformation represents a challenge and an opportunity. Clients need more strategic guidance than ever, and they’re willing to pay for and value that guidance in ways they haven’t before. The firms that master this new approach can build sustainable competitive advantages that compound over time.

Listen to the full conversation with Nich Tremper to discover specific strategies for advising your clients through this period of transformation and learn how to position your practice as an indispensable strategic partner in their success.

Stop Talking About Culture and Start Fixing These Three Problems

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“There’s nothing worse we can do for our people and our organizations than doing it the way we’ve always done it,” says Erin Daiber, CPA and founder of Well Balanced Accountants. In this episode of the Earmark Podcast, Daiber joins host Blake Oliver to tackle one of accounting’s biggest challenges: how to actually change firm culture instead of just talking about it.

From Big Four Burnout to Culture Coach

Daiber’s story starts with an ironic twist. When she entered business school, she told her parents she’d do “anything but accounting.” Yet a professor convinced her she was good at it, and at 19 or 20 years old, she took that advice to heart. “Being at that moldable stage, I thought, well, okay, I guess that’s what I need to do,” she recalls.

While she doesn’t regret her path, Daiber discovered a fundamental mismatch between her personality and the detailed work required at the staff and senior levels. “I’m not naturally detail oriented,” she admits. “I would get review notes back from my manager and the partners, and I just had nothing left to give. I really couldn’t care less about some of those details, as important as they may have been.”

What kept her going was the people. “I loved interacting with my colleagues on a day-to-day basis,” she explains. But when the managers she connected with left the firm, things unraveled. By the time she reached senior level—about three and a half years in—burnout had taken hold. “I was driving to work, looking at other people doing their jobs and thinking, gosh, that looks nice. Even the guys that were mowing the lawn on the side of the highway, I’m like, at least they get to be outdoors and breathing fresh air every day.”

After leaving for industry work that didn’t solve her problems, Daiber enrolled in a coach training program for self-discovery. Eventually, she found her way back to serving the accounting profession, but with a different mission: helping firms navigate the challenges that drove her away.

The Gap Between What We Say and What We Do

When discussing firm culture, Daiber cuts straight to the heart of the problem. “There’s often the one that we say we have, and then there’s the one that we actually have,” she states. Culture isn’t about the values on your website, it’s about “the values we live by, the behaviors that show up and are accepted and tolerated and encouraged inside of a firm.”

She shares an exercise from her firm retreats: projecting the firm’s stated values on a slide without commentary. “Oftentimes they don’t recognize them because they are not living those values every single day,” she observes. These values become “almost a mythical thing out there that we’re working towards, but not very intentionally.”

To expose this disconnect, Daiber challenges firms with a thought experiment: “If I was observing your organization from the outside in and could hear and see what’s going on, what would I say your values are? Is it profit first? Is it billable hour is king?”

Oliver agrees, sharing his preference for honesty over hypocrisy. “I would almost prefer it if the firms that are not people-first were just open about it,” he says, comparing it to Wall Street investment banks that make no pretense about prioritizing profits. “At least that’s honest.”

What Keeps Firms Stuck in Old Patterns

The conversation reveals three main forces preventing real culture change in accounting firms.

First is the scarcity mindset that infects decision-making. Oliver openly shares his struggle with saying yes to too many speaking engagements, even though he knows it prevents him from focusing on long-term goals and family time. “I say yes to these things, even though I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t, but then I do it anyway,” he admits.

Daiber sees the same pattern with client acceptance. She walks firm owners through their fears. “Usually within five or six steps we can get a firm owner to, well, we’ll be bankrupt. We won’t exist anymore.” The reality? “They’re so far away from that, that’s not really going to happen.”

Second is the resistance to change itself. “When I hear of firms that say, ‘we’re just doing it the way we’ve always done it,’ that is like Kryptonite,” Daiber emphasizes. “Nothing in the world is the same as it was even five years ago. How can you justify not changing how you’ve done things and how you’re serving your clients?”

Third is simple busyness. “As soon as we step back into our day-to-day, there is an almost insurmountable inertia that keeps you in that sway of busyness,” Daiber explains. Without creating what she calls “white space” in the day, there’s no capacity to implement changes.

The conversation also touches on structural problems like billable hours (“every hour is not created equal”) and micromanagement that develops when leaders lack diverse management tools. As Daiber notes about micromanaging leaders, “They actually don’t have to take responsibility for it, because you’re going to check in with them all the time.”

Making Change Actually Happen

Moving from theory to practice requires specific actions and uncomfortable decisions. Here’s what Daiber recommends:

Start by saying no

This includes “cleaning up your own mess” by transitioning out clients who don’t align with your values. “Finish out your term of working with that client, but let them know we’re not going to continue,” Daiber advises. Firms need what she calls a “red velvet rope policy” that only accepts clients who “treat our people with respect, value our services, and are willing to pay.”

Create structural changes that force new behaviors

One firm Daiber mentions implemented mental health days with a twist. “If you said, I’m taking a mental health day and anyone was caught making a request of that person on that day, they were the ones in trouble.” Oliver suggests an even more radical experiment: turning off firm email during certain weekend hours.

Build real accountability

“The firms that are really successful with this are willing to call each other out in a respectful way,” Daiber states. This means partners holding each other to commitments. “Hey, that was one of the things we said we were going to not do. Let’s fix that going forward.”

Show genuine appreciation

This goes beyond generic praise. “Catching people doing a good job is so simple. It’s free,” Daiber notes. But it also means “checking in on someone, not just about their progress on a task. How are they feeling? Do they feel like they’ve grown?”

Exit interviews reveal what happens without genuine appreciation. People say, “I don’t feel like I’m a valuable or valued member of the team. No one’s training me. No one’s taking me under their wing,” Daiber shares. “I’m going to go somewhere where I feel like somebody cares about my development.”

Most importantly, leaders must model the values they claim. “Encourage them to take time off and unplug during their time off, don’t email them on the weekend,” Daiber emphasizes. “All of those things that we wish people would do for us, we need to do for them.”

The Choice Every Firm Must Make

As the conversation wraps up, both Oliver and Daiber acknowledge that changing firm culture isn’t mysterious; it’s just uncomfortable. It requires letting go of profitable but problematic clients, breaking long-held habits, and having difficult conversations with colleagues.

“We have to start creating a culture of ownership and responsibility,” Daiber explains. But this can’t happen while clinging to old metrics and methods. Each leader must take personal responsibility for “working through their own blocks and concerns or scarcity or fears around letting go of this old way of doing things.”

The accounting profession faces a clear choice: continue losing talented people to outdated practices and fear-based management, or do the hard work of aligning daily operations with stated values. As Daiber’s own journey shows, when good accountants leave the profession entirely, everyone loses.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about Daiber’s framework for culture transformation, including additional exercises for exposing true firm values and strategies for breaking the micromanagement cycle. Whether you’re a partner watching good people leave, a manager caught between competing demands, or staff wondering if change is possible, the conversation offers a practical roadmap for moving from culture as concept to culture as daily experience.

The Math Is Brutal: Every CPA Must Triple Their Productivity by 2035 or Face Professional Extinction

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“When you chart out demand versus supply of people over time, what that math tells you is that ten years from now, 2035, every CPA in the profession will have to be 2.7 times more productive on a revenue per employee basis than they are today. That is crazy.”

David Wurtzbacher shared this projection on a recent episode of the Earmark Podcast. As the founder and CEO of Ascend, a private equity-backed platform that’s completed over three dozen firm acquisitions in just over two years, Wurtzbacher offers an outsider’s perspective on the profession.

His background scaling Lightwave Dental from 7 to 80 locations taught him how private equity can either destroy professional cultures or transform them for the better. Now he’s applying those lessons to accounting, where the numbers paint a sobering picture: demand for services keeps climbing while fewer people enter the profession each year.

To put this in perspective, a typical well-performing firm today generates around $200,000 in revenue per employee. Wurtzbacher’s projection means that number needs to approach $600,000 per person within a decade. Even scarier? By 2035, roughly 85% of the profession will consist of people with ten years or less of experience in an industry where most say you can’t even make partner in that timeframe.

But Wurtzbacher isn’t just highlighting the problem. Through Ascend’s model of preserving firm independence while providing enterprise-scale resources, he’s showing how firms can achieve these seemingly impossible productivity gains through three key transformations.

The Leadership Evolution: From Managing Partner to True CEO

The biggest barrier to 2.7x productivity isn’t technology or talent. It’s how firm leaders spend their time. Most managing partners remain trapped doing client work while trying to run their businesses, creating a fundamental ceiling on growth.

“The very first place we go is to the leader of the firm,” Wurtzbacher explains. “We want to help them through a transition to become a true CEO, defined as them having one client, which is the firm.”

This leadership trap stems from what Wurtzbacher calls the “fiercely independent” culture of accounting. During his research, he consistently heard from entrepreneurial CPAs who valued their independence: the name on the door, community reputation, caring for people and clients their way. But this independence prevents the changes necessary for breakthrough growth.

The problem runs deeper than time management. The client service orientation that defines quality accounting actually caps leadership development. With seasonal demands and constant client pressure, managing partners find limited windows for strategic work throughout the year.

The real breakthrough requires confronting a limiting belief. “When you’re close with your clients, you believe nobody can do the work but you,” Wurtzbacher observes. “No one else can have this client relationship.”

Consider Lee Cohen from LMC in New York, who exemplifies this transformation. Cohen was initially stressed, unhappy, and heavily involved in client work. Through Ascend’s CEO transition process, “Cohen literally became a different person. He would tell you that,” Wurtzbacher says.

Fifty percent of Cohen’s transformation came from a mindset shift. The other fifty percent came from bringing in a Chief Growth Officer—not a traditional business development role, but a general manager from outside the profession. “A lot of them have MBAs, but they are hungry, humble, smart people that come in and create visibility for that leader about what’s going on in the business and where there are opportunities.”

This operational support, combined with the mindset shift away from client dependency, sets leaders free to focus on what only they can do: building and directing their firms.

Creating an “Irresistible Offer” for Top Talent

Even the best leadership transformation can’t solve the profession’s talent crisis through traditional methods. When quality candidates routinely field six, seven, or eight job offers, firms need something fundamentally different.

Wurtzbacher’s solution centers on creating an “irresistible offer,” and it starts with better recruiting. “So many firm recruiters grew up in the profession, and they’re trapped with the baggage of old ways of doing things,” he explains. Ascend built a team of professional recruiters from outside accounting who understand best practices for finding candidates and closing deals.

But the real breakthrough is compensation innovation. While the profession is “very base salary heavy,” Ascend developed an off-the-shelf bonus program that lets firms pay more cash than competitors. They also extended equity ownership far beyond traditional partner levels.

“We have well over 100 people across all our firms that are managers or senior managers that are investors in Ascend. They own Ascend stock,” Wurtzbacher reveals. These employees invest $10,000 to $50,000 annually in company stock—typically funded through the enhanced bonus program—essentially dollar-cost averaging into equity appreciation throughout their careers.

This creates what Wurtzbacher calls “a different cultural energy.” When people understand how equity value creation works outside the traditional partnership model, they connect their daily work to long-term wealth building. The psychological shift from employee to owner fundamentally changes commitment levels.

The design also solves a collaboration problem. Because everyone owns Ascend stock regardless of which firm they work for, “it creates a one team attitude across all our firms” that unlocks knowledge sharing across the platform.

The results speak for themselves. Firms that described capacity as their “#1 issue” now consider that problem solved. “Our big issue now is how do we go and get all the right kinds of new business that we want to keep our great people excited and motivated,” Wurtzbacher notes.

Technology at Enterprise Scale

Achieving nearly triple productivity requires more than incremental improvements. It demands systematic transformation through AI, global teams, and automation that individual firms cannot afford alone.

But there’s a gap between AI hype and reality. “There is so much more hype and future forecasting than there is reality in this area,” Wurtzbacher observes. For firms feeling behind, “that’s just not the case.” Most firms implementing AI are saving perhaps two hours per person per week, and that’s only for the most advanced adopters.

This creates both opportunity and strategic imperative. While individual firms struggle with overwhelming AI options, they lack technical expertise and capital for truly transformative capabilities. The solution requires enterprise scale.

Ascend illustrates this advantage in action. They’re building a 30-person software engineering and AI team by year-end. “No medium-sized or smaller firm is going to be able to do that,” Wurtzbacher explains.

Their strategy operates on two fronts: strategic buying versus building. For general needs, they purchase existing products. For capabilities essential to their workflows, they invest millions annually developing proprietary AI solutions.

One promising area addresses what Wurtzbacher calls the client context problem. Years of relationships generate institutional knowledge typically trapped “in your head, in spreadsheets, in work papers, in your inbox, and some other tool.” Their AI team works on aggregating this context into accessible systems that transform practitioners from information gatherers into true advisors.

Global talent represents another productivity component. Ascend’s acquisition and transformation of Sentient Solutions, a global capability center exclusively serving US accounting firms in Hyderabad, India, demonstrates sophisticated global team integration. But this isn’t simple outsourcing; it requires developing playbooks that elevate rather than replace domestic work.

Even basic infrastructure offers huge opportunities. Practice management systems in accounting are “so messed up,” Wurtzbacher notes. Before AI delivers transformation, firms need fundamental technological foundations for tracking work and maintaining institutional knowledge.

The Choice Facing Every Firm

Survival depends on three interconnected transformations happening simultaneously: leaders evolving from client servers to strategic CEOs, revolutionary talent approaches through equity ownership, and enterprise-scale technology investments individual firms cannot achieve.

This is a watershed moment for professional services. The mathematical reality of 2.7x productivity gains will separate surviving firms from those becoming obsolete. When 85% of the profession will have a decade or less experience by 2035, traditional models don’t just fail; they become mathematically impossible.

But there’s reason for optimism. Firms embracing these changes discover that freeing leaders from client work unleashes strategic energy, equity ownership creates cultural transformation beyond salary increases, and enterprise-scale technology delivers impossible productivity gains.

Wurtzbacher’s personal timeline reinforces this long-term vision. At 37, he tells people “this very well could be the last thing I do. So I’m thinking of Ascend in terms of decades.” While typical private equity investments last three to four years, his commitment spans the time needed for real transformation.

For accounting professionals, this is an existential threat and an unprecedented opportunity. The mathematical moment of truth has arrived. The question isn’t whether change is coming. It’s whether you’ll lead it or be overwhelmed by it.

Listen to the full conversation with David Wurtzbacher on the Earmark Podcast to hear more about Ascend’s approach to transforming accounting firms while preserving their independence.

Why Your Clients Keep Losing Good Employees and How You Can Fix It

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Small businesses are losing talent and money through employee turnover while a proven solution sits right under their noses—one that their accountants could easily provide, but rarely do. The numbers are stark: companies lose productivity, face constant recruiting costs, and struggle to compete for quality employees. Yet most business owners don’t know that offering benefits could dramatically reduce these problems, and their trusted financial advisors aren’t telling them.

That’s the message from a recent Earmark Podcast episode featuring Justin Kurn, Chief Revenue Officer of Dark Horse CPAs, a firm that doubled revenue from $6 million to $12 million in just one year, and Julia Miller, GM and Head of Product – Benefits at Gusto. Their conversation revealed a massive disconnect between what small businesses desperately need and what they currently receive from their professional service providers.

The Hidden Cost of Employee Turnover and the Benefits Solution

Small businesses lose money due to a problem they don’t fully understand while ignoring a solution that’s both affordable and proven. Employee turnover quietly erodes the bottom line, yet most business owners don’t realize that benefits can solve this crisis.

Research at Gusto reveals numbers that should make every small business owner and their accountant pay attention. “Small businesses that offer 401(k) have 40% lower employee attrition in the first year of employment than small businesses that don’t,” she explains. “Small businesses that offer health insurance have 25% lower attrition in the first year.”

These aren’t small improvements. Employee retention directly impacts profitability. When employees leave within their first year, businesses lose productivity, institutional knowledge, and momentum. They face constant training cycles, disrupted team dynamics, and the opportunity cost of what that departing employee could have contributed.

Yet most small business owners approach benefits with a fundamental misconception that costs them dearly. “Businesses think of benefits as an immediate cost increase to their business when it actually is not,” Kurn observes from his experience working with hundreds of small businesses. The knee-jerk reaction is always the same: business owners assume they’ll need to pay 20, 30, or 40% more in payroll costs to cover employee health insurance and retirement contributions.

But most don’t realize that simply providing access to benefits, even when employees pay the premiums themselves, can be transformative. The value isn’t necessarily in what the employer contributes, but in what they make possible. As Justin points out, when you run the numbers, “if the options are I either give them a raise or I add benefits, benefits is probably the right option,” once you factor in payroll taxes and other considerations.

Perhaps more importantly, offering benefits widens the talent pool available to small businesses. “It’s not that the same candidate stays longer, it’s that a different candidate you didn’t even explore before is coming to you and staying longer,” Justin explains. Skilled employees who can demand and receive comprehensive compensation packages simply won’t consider positions that don’t offer benefits. By not providing these options, small businesses automatically exclude themselves from competing for top talent.

This creates a cycle: without benefits, businesses can only attract employees who can’t demand better packages elsewhere. These employees are often less committed, less skilled, and more likely to leave quickly when something better comes along. Meanwhile, companies offering benefits access an entirely different candidate pool of professionals who think strategically about their total compensation and career stability.

The Massive Advisory Gap and Competitive Opportunity

It’s shocking how few small businesses get the guidance they need. “Ten percent of our customers get benefits-related advice from their accountants,” Miller reveals. “Just imagine what we could do for the small business community in this country if that 10% went to 50%.”

Think about that for a moment. Nine out of ten small businesses struggle with employee retention, losing money through turnover, and missing out on accessing better talent pools, all while their trusted advisors remain silent on a solution that could transform their companies. This is a huge opportunity for accountants who recognize what’s happening.

Dark Horse CPAs understood this shift and built their explosive growth around it. The firm began building its advisory services at the tail end of 2022. They added benefits to their service menu and fundamentally changed how they engage with clients, moving from reactive compliance work to proactive strategic guidance.

Recognizing the trigger points and knowing how to act on them is crucial. Kurn’s team watches for three critical signals: revenue growth, staff growth, and high employee turnover. When they spot these patterns, “it’s a question of, not if, but when,” Justin emphasizes. “If you plant the seed of when, it’s like, ‘well, this is a necessary step in my growth and development as a business.’”

This subtle shift in messaging completely changes the client’s mindset. Instead of viewing benefits as an optional expense they might never need, clients begin to see it as an inevitable step in their business evolution. The conversation moves from “Do I really need this?” to “When should we implement this?”

The beauty of this approach is that it doesn’t require accountants to become benefits experts overnight. “If you focus just on compliance and blocking and tackling, these are not conversations that you’re privy to,” Justin notes. “But if you’re in the seat of the advisor, these conversations do come up either directly or indirectly.” The key is positioning yourself to hear these conversations and knowing when to act on them.

What makes this opportunity even more compelling is most accounting firms aren’t even trying to capture it. While Dark Horse doubled its revenue by embracing advisory services, their competitors remain stuck in the traditional compliance mindset. This creates a massive first-mover advantage for firms willing to make the shift now.

The Practical Path to Benefits Advisory Success

Shifting from transactional payroll processing to strategic benefits advisory doesn’t require accountants to become licensed insurance brokers overnight. Instead, you need to understand how to facilitate the process while positioning yourself as the trusted advisor throughout the journey. Dark Horse’s model leverages both technology and authenticity to create genuine value for clients.

Gusto’s platform enables what Kurn calls “self-discovery.” Rather than requiring accountants to lead every conversation and manage every detail, roughly 60% of Dark Horse’s clients actually discover and explore benefits options independently through the platform, then return to their accountants for validation and guidance. “They can self-assess quite often and look for validation from the accountant’s side, and then support during the process,” Kurn explains.

This model works because Gusto’s user experience encourages exploration rather than intimidating users. “Clients dump it onto their accountant because it’s like, ‘I don’t even want to go in here. I don’t even know how to get in here.’ Gusto is different,” Kurn notes. The platform follows an intuitive path that allows business owners to understand their options without feeling overwhelmed by complexity.

But the secret weapon that makes Dark Horse’s approach so effective is authenticity. “The best sales tool or the best advisory tool comes from a place of authenticity,” Kurn emphasizes. Dark Horse uses Gusto benefits for the firm, which means every team member experiences the platform as an end user. When clients have questions about the employee experience, Kurn can show them what they’ll see because he uses it himself.

This authenticity eliminates the biggest barrier many accountants face when considering benefits advisory work: the fear they’ll need to become benefits experts and “sell” something they don’t fully understand. Instead, it becomes a natural conversation: “Do you want to see? I could actually show you what the experience is as an employee. Like, this is what I see because I use it myself,” Kurn explains.

When clients are ready to move forward, Gusto provides licensed human advisors who can partner with accountants to help answer complex questions and guide clients through the selection process. This means accountants don’t have to become benefits experts. They just need to recognize when clients need this guidance and facilitate the connection.

The implementation process minimizes the burden on accountants and business owners. For new benefits offerings, Miller explains that while clients typically shop a few months ahead, the actual implementation can be compressed to about four weeks when necessary. The business owner’s involvement can be minimal. They need to understand what they’re signing up for and sign the necessary documents, but Gusto handles the heavy lifting of carrier coordination, employee communication, and enrollment management.

Most importantly, this advisory approach translates directly into significantly higher revenue for accounting firms willing to make the shift. Kurn’s pricing strategy is straightforward. The firm treats benefits implementation as project-based work with ongoing advisory fees that typically run two to three times higher than transactional services.

“There’s a three times delta between these two things. That’s the value to the firm if you can get into the seat of the advisor,” Kurn emphasizes. This isn’t about charging more for the same service. It’s about providing valuable, strategic guidance that justifies premium pricing.

The Time to Act is Now

This perfect storm of opportunity won’t last forever. Small businesses are struggling with employee retention, losing talented workers they can’t afford to lose. Offering benefits can slash turnover rates by 25% to 40%. Yet nine out of ten businesses don’t get this crucial guidance from their trusted advisors.

For the accounting profession, this is a chance to transform how we serve clients and position our firms in the marketplace. Dark Horse CPAs didn’t just stumble into doubling their revenue; they recognized their clients’ need for strategic guidance.

But this window won’t stay open indefinitely. As more accounting firms recognize this opportunity and begin offering benefits advisory services, the competitive advantage will diminish. The firms that act now, while 90% of their competitors remain stuck in transactional mode, stand to capture significant market share and establish themselves as the go-to advisors for growing businesses.

Start by implementing Gusto benefits for your firm to gain authentic experience with the platform. Begin watching for those trigger points Kurn identified: revenue growth, staff growth, and high employee turnover. When you spot these signals, initiate the conversation using “when” language rather than “if” language.

Most importantly, don’t let fear of the unknown hold you back. You don’t need to become a benefits expert overnight. You need to become the trusted advisor who recognizes when clients need this guidance and connects them with the right resources. The expertise already exists through platforms like Gusto’s licensed advisors. Your role is to facilitate access to it while providing the strategic oversight your clients depend on.

The small businesses in your portfolio are waiting for this guidance, whether they realize it or not. They’re struggling with employee retention, losing sleep over recruiting costs, and missing out on talented candidates who won’t even consider positions without benefits.

Don’t let this massive opportunity pass by. Listen to the full Earmark Podcast episode to hear Justin Kurn and Julia Miller’s complete playbook for transforming your practice through benefits advisory services. Your clients need this guidance, the data proves its effectiveness, and your competitors might not be providing it yet. Will you be among the first to capture it? Or among the last to realize what you missed?