White paper

Preparing your CPA firm for the future with automation and integration

Are you ready to take your CPA firm into the future? As a firm leader, you're likely feeling pain on several fronts, from talent attraction and retention challenges to changing client needs, from new technology-powered competitors entering the market to transforming business models.

Responding to these challenges requires keeping up with the latest technologies and trends to stay ahead of the competition. Automation and integrations offer remarkable potential growth in any organization, including yours — but how can you ensure you're taking full advantage of these innovative tools? It's time to put your fears aside and embrace strategic changes that will revolutionize your firm's workflows while optimizing processes across all departments.

This white paper discusses the challenges facing firms today and why automation and integration are essential to preparing for your firm's future success.

The state of the accounting profession

The rapidly changing dynamics of today's business environment have significantly impacted a firm's ability to attract and retain talent. For years, the profession has faced a talent shortage and an exodus of skilled professionals searching for a better work-life balance.

As your firm strives to maintain a competitive edge, it is crucial to understand the factors driving these challenges and devise appropriate strategies to overcome them.

Demographic shifts and the aging workforce

The talent shortfall in the accounting profession isn't a new concept. Still, despite years of attention, few firms have found a solution to a problem that's only getting worse as members of the Baby Boomer generation continue to wind down their careers.

According to estimates from the AIPCA, 75% of today's CPAs will retire in the next 15 yearsi and there aren't enough college students and young professionals to fill that void.

Employee burnout and turnover

Along with supply-side challenges, firms are witnessing an alarming increase in employee burnout and turnover. According to a survey from FloQast, 99% of accountants report feeling some burnout,ii which often results in higher absenteeism, lower productivity, increased risk of mental health issues, and many CPAs leaving public accounting to seek better work-life balance. High turnover rates create additional talent gaps and can be financially detrimental when firms struggle to serve their existing clients and grow.

The Growing Importance of Non-Financial Benefits

Accounting firms have been forced to increase compensation to attract talent and improve retention. But factors beyond financial compensation increasingly influence employees' decisions to stay with or leave an organization.

Technology can be an essential factor in that decision. When firms give employees the tools and technologies they need to do their jobs efficiently, employees are happier and more engaged. Leveraging technology that supports remote or hybrid work can open up a wider pool of candidates beyond that in the local area or those willing to relocate for the job.

Addressing today's challenges: Strategies for firms

In the past, firms might simply hire additional staff to keep up with their growing workload, but in today's market, hiring your way out of capacity issues isn't always possible — even if it is financially feasible.

With the profession's talent pipeline problems and increased competition from firms beyond your geographic boundaries, hiring will continue to be challenging. Fortunately, integrated technologies, automation, offshoring, and outsourcing can help you overcome capacity issues without adding headcount.

The new talent entering the workforce today are digital natives — and they're pushing for automation and integration. It's essential to them; you'll have a tough time holding onto talent if you aren't leveraging both.

Integration

Despite significant technological investments, most firms have not realized their vision of integrated applications seamlessly sharing client and firm data. Most firms currently have a technology stack representing departmental requirements rather than integrated solutions. As a result, people waste time entering redundant data into multiple applications.

Maintaining multiple databases is time consuming and costly. In the past, firms quickly blamed solution providers for not offering an integrated suite of applications. However, today you don't need an integrated suite of applications to have different databases speak to one another. An application programming interface (API) allows various applications to talk to one another and share data within and across the organization.

Accounting firms employ a lot of cloud-based and on-premise applications and systems in their daily operations. These solutions gather large amounts of data, including client information, payroll records, transaction data, etc. If these solutions are integrated and able to "talk" to one another, your firm can maximize the data shared across systems, reducing errors and saving time employees would otherwise spend entering the same data in multiple locations.

Even better, firms with well-integrated technologies can drill down into the data, gaining valuable insights about their clients and the firm. This data can improve existing processes, maximize people and technologies, and stay ahead of the competition.

Automation

Firms that leverage integrated technologies to automate portions of their workflow will have a much easier time finding in-house or outsourced talent than those that continue to rely on manual processes.

Automation is a vital part of increasing efficiency and capacity. The amount of additional efficiency we can get from people is limited, but automation creates capacity so people can work at their best and highest levels.

Many firms make the mistake of jumping into technology to answer their capacity problems. However, starting with your firm's processes is essential — or at least addressing process and technology in tandem. Without a strategy in place for streamlining procedures, it simply isn't possible to automate inconsistent processes. Automation can be incredibly useful in achieving higher levels of efficiency, but if your underlying processes aren't consistent and reliable, it won't make much of a difference.

By streamlining your firm's processes, you can ensure your team can efficiently complete their work. Doing this can help alleviate stress on your team and allow them to take on more work while avoiding burnout.

The next step in addressing your capacity issues is automation. Robotic process automation (RPA) can help streamline many manual, repetitive processes, eliminating routine tasks that take up valuable time.

For some professionals, simply hearing the term "robotic process automation" conjures images of the humans in your office getting replaced by robots. Dystopian imagery aside, there is no reason to fear automation — it's quickly becoming inevitable. To remain relevant over the next five to 10 years, firms need to understand the opportunity RPA brings and begin leveraging it. Fearing the inevitable will only lead to inadequate preparation.

Harness what makes you human

The tasks that firms are automating aren't what clients value. Does anyone truly believe clients appreciate that your staff manually enters every number into a tax return or trial balance? Of course not. They expect their tax returns and financial statements to be accurate, yes. But they value your advice and guidance that helps them remain compliant and improve profitability.

We're nearing the end of the digital revolution, and what comes next is the era where relationships, creativity, and bedside manner take precedence. Firms can’t automate these areas, and they are the skills that clients value most.

When you let go of the fear of automation, you can recognize it as an opportunity to focus on higher-value work and spread the workload for less demanding busy seasons.

Recommended solutions from Thomson Reuters

Connected technology from Thomson Reuters and our trusted partners can help your firm automate each stage of the tax workflow and unleash your talent's real potential on what matters most: analyzing data, advising clients, and uncovering new opportunities.

Data collection

  • GoFileRoom APIs allow firms to automate critical aspects of data collection, including importing users and permissions and importing and exporting documents.
  • SurePrep's TaxCaddy helps firms automate the generation of tailored document request lists and the retrieval of documents — using Smart Links — while using APIs to automate integration with your tax, document, and workflow software.

Preparation

  • GoSystem Tax RS and ONESOURCE® APIs can automate creating returns; importing and exporting Excel workbook data; and completing, printing, and filing extensions.
  • SurePrep's 1040SCAN and SPbinder automate work paper preparation and data entry with an option to outsource data verification while integrating with GoSystem Tax RS, GoFileRoom, and FirmFlow.
  • Legible allows firms to automate cryptocurrency-related collaboration and compliance while quickly uncovering new planning and advisory opportunities.

Review

  • GoSystem Tax RS APIs help accountants isolate key amounts to compare against workpapers.
  • SurePrep's SPbinder automates the standardization of workpapers and facilitates high-level, materiality-based reviews.

Delivery

  • GoSystem Tax RS and ONESOURCE APIs allow firms to automate the printing and publishing of returns.
  • SafeSend Returns automates the assembly and streamlines the delivery and e-signing of returns while providing your clients with an intuitive experience guiding them through the process.
  • TaxCaddy makes delivering final tax returns, tax payment vouchers, and your firm’s invoice easy. Clients can render KBA e-signatures, make tax payments, and pay their invoices directly from the TaxCaddy app for iOS or Android.

E-file

  • GoSystem Tax RS and ONESOURCE APIs can automate creating and submitting e-files and retrieving statuses, enabling the creation of a custom e-file status dashboard.

Workflow

  • FirmFlow allows firms to automate creating and routing workflows and standardizing workflows firm wide, which provides extensive tracking, analyzing, and reporting while integrating with GoSystem Tax RS and GoFileRoom and your other software using its APIs.

Advisory

  • Using the APIs available in GoSystem Tax RS, ONESOURCE, GoFileRoom, and FirmFlow, you can automate data extraction and aggregation to form a data lake to use with your visualization and analytical tools.

Best of all, we provide an integrated ecosystem of tools with open API connectors that allow firms to easily integrate third-party vendors with Thomson Reuters technology to create a custom solution tailored to your firm's unique process. Your staff can then continue to work in their preferred solutions because you can keep your existing technology stack but leverage it better using integrations.

Conclusion

The firm of the future is focused on innovation and adopting best-in-breed solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of its clients. If one solution provider doesn't have the depth and breadth of what you need, APIs can help bridge that gap and allow your people to optimize processes, improve efficiency, and gain insights into your data.

As many firms have discovered in the past few years, there is no shortage of clients or work out there for you to do — the question is how to get it done with your existing resources without burning people out. The solution is to leverage integration and automation to do more with less.

By embracing automation and integration solutions, firms of all sizes can overcome the challenges posed by digital transformation and prepare for the future success of their organization.

Next steps:

  1. Assess your current systems and processes to identify areas for improvement.
  2. Determine which tasks or steps in your workflow you want to automate. Prime candidates for automation include anything highly repetitive, such as importing and exporting data from Excel spreadsheets and creating and submitting e-filings.
  3. Review and streamline your processes to ensure you have consistent processes that you can automate.
  4. Look for automation opportunities in your existing technology stack. If they aren't available, consider solutions that can integrate with your current systems through APIs.
  5. Monitor performance and make adjustments as needed. Technology is constantly changing, and processes can become outdated quickly if you're not continuously revisiting and improving them.

i Stan Sterna, JD and Amy Massaro, “Succession Planning: A Tale of Two Exit Strategies,” AICPA, published April 17, 2018, accessed March 15, 2023.

ii FloQast, “Controller’s Guidebook: Burnout in Accounting,” accessed March 15, 2023.

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