Fractional Chief AI Officer for CPA firms.
For $20M–$100M modern CPA firms hitting the talent ceiling. We embed as your AI leader, connect Karbon, Sage Intacct, and CCH into one source of truth, and deploy agents that reduce review bottlenecks, accelerate close, and surface advisory revenue — measurably, within 90 days.
The CPA capacity problem will not be solved by hiring. The talent shortage is structural — fewer accounting graduates, fewer staff willing to log busy-season hours, fewer reviewers willing to chase preparers. The firms that figure out how to deliver more without hiring more will own the next decade. The ones still trying to fix it with another job posting will keep losing partners to burnout.
That is the gap a fractional Chief AI Officer fills. Not another tool. Not another deck. An embedded operator who owns AI strategy, builds the source-of-truth layer, ships agents into production, and trains your team to use them.
What we automate inside CPA firms
Every CPA firm we talk to has the same nine workflows eating partner and senior time. None of them are technology problems. All of them are leadership-and-system problems.
- Review chasing — agent prepares the review pack, flags anomalies, drafts the partner note; partner approves.
- Close acceleration — agent reconciles, surfaces unbilled work, prepares the close summary; senior reviews.
- Advisory opportunity surfacing — agent monitors client books for moments worth a phone call (revenue spikes, margin compression, cash gaps).
- Engagement letter and SOW generation — agent drafts from your existing templates and the client's history.
- Client status updates — agent sends weekly status to clients with what was done, what is pending, what we need from them.
- New client and engagement intake — agent qualifies, routes, runs conflict checks, and prepares the kickoff packet.
- Knowledge retrieval — “we have done this before” search across past returns, schedules, and engagement work product.
- Capacity and utilization intelligence — partner dashboards that show realization, write-offs, and where leverage is leaking.
- AR follow-up — agent sends payment reminders, escalates aging invoices, prepares the collection conversation.
The systems we connect
We do not ask you to migrate. We connect to what you already run:
- Practice management: Karbon, Canopy
- Tax and compliance: CCH Axcess, Caseware, Thomson Reuters
- Accounting / ERP: Sage Intacct, NetSuite, QuickBooks Online
- Document management: SharePoint, Google Drive, SmartVault, ShareFile
- Communication: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Teams
- Payments: Bill.com, Stripe
The first deliverable is not an agent. It is a unified data layer the agents can trust. Without that, every agent on top is operating on fragments — and fragmented agents produce fragmented work, fast.
The wow query we run inside every CPA engagement
The pitch isn't a chatbot. It is the question your firm has never been able to ask. Once your systems are connected, we run a query like this on day one:
“Show me every client where revenue grew but our hours dropped over the last four quarters — that's where we are systematically under-billing.”
Most firms cannot answer that today. The data exists; it lives in three systems that have never been connected. The first time a managing partner sees that report, they understand what AI leadership is actually for.
How we work with you
The engagement starts with a two-week AI Readiness Audit ($7,500). We interview leadership and key operators, audit your current systems and workflows, and deliver a written report: maturity score, top ten pain points ranked by AI-leverage potential, specific agent and automation use cases mapped to your stack, a 90-day implementation roadmap, and ROI projections per use case.
If the audit converts (about 60–70% do), we move to the Fractional CAIO retainer — month-to-month, $15,000–$25,000/month — and start shipping. Every month produces visible work: a new connector live, an agent in production, a workflow automated, the team trained on what shipped. Cancellable like an employee, kept like a partner.
Frequently asked questions
What does a fractional Chief AI Officer actually do for a CPA firm?
We embed as your AI leader on a part-time retainer. That means quarterly AI strategy, hands-on system integration across your accounting and practice-management stack, deployed agents that reduce manual review work, and applied training for your team. You get senior AI leadership without hiring a full-time CAIO.
How is this different from hiring an AI consultant?
Consultants deliver decks and disappear. We embed, build, and ship. Every retainer month produces real implementation: a connected data layer, a deployed agent, a workflow automated. The audit is the strategy step. After that, we are accountable for what runs in production.
What size CPA firm is this for?
Modern CPA firms and advisory practices in the $20M–$100M revenue range. Larger than a five-partner shop, smaller than a Big Four. Firms hitting the talent ceiling where hiring alone cannot solve capacity, and where partners are still doing review work that should never reach their desk.
How does AI implementation work around our busy season?
We design implementation around your calendar. Discovery and connector work happen off-season. The first agent deployments target the workflows that bottleneck most during busy season — review chasing, status follow-ups, document intake — so the lift is felt when it matters.
What about client confidentiality and data security?
We deploy on infrastructure you control. Client data does not leave your environment for model training. We design suggest-and-approve loops for any agent that touches sensitive output — partners review before action — and document governance per workflow as a deliverable, not a footnote.