Small firm, big leverage: Sam Brown, CPA, Inc. scales advisory and streamlines audits with AI

The Challenge

For years, the firm relied on an antiquated hodgepodge of Excel templates and manual steps to perform sampling, testing, and documentation. Cutting and pasting across spreadsheets led to over-auditing and made it hard to justify leaner sample sizes to peer reviewers. 

Meanwhile, creating engagement letters consumed partner time because standards change frequently; validating each template for the current language added friction to every new engagement. 

On the advisory side, the team wanted a scalable way to surface comprehensive opportunities — especially for legacy clients — without tying up senior capacity in data gathering and manual analysis. The firm also sought a better on-ramp for junior staff so they could contribute earlier and more consistently.

The solution

The firm implemented three complementary solutions from Thomson Reuters to standardize and scale its workflows.

CoCounsel now powers engagement letter generation and review. By creating reusable templates and relying on current, citation-backed language, the firm speeds drafting while maintaining confidence in compliance. "I'm pretty confident CoCounsel is pulling from the most recent information. Then I'm having it populate my information so it's a nice seamless process,” Brown says.

Ready to Advise provides an end-to-end advisory framework. AI-driven intake extracts data from client returns, matches strategies from a curated library, and produces client-ready plans with implementation steps and clear return-on-investment (ROI) callouts. Crucially, it enables delegation. According to Brown, "Adopting Ready to Advise has allowed me to bring staff into the whole process, let them analyze the clients, run them through this system, and they're learning the different areas and opportunities along with providing opportunities for our clients.”

Audit Intelligence Analyze replaces manual sampling worksheets and fragmented analysis with automated transaction analytics embedded in the firm's workflow. By focusing procedures on high‑risk areas and documenting selections as workpapers, the team meets peer review expectations with less testing and greater efficiency.

The outcome

With CoCounsel, the firm has reduced the time and cognitive overhead of drafting engagement letters while staying aligned to the latest standards. "With CoCounsel, I'm saving time — at least a half an hour to an hour on the engagement letters — because I'm not having to go back and research if I've got the most up-to-date engagement letter sample,” Brown explains.

Ready to Advise has turned advisory into a scalable, team sport — junior staff run scenarios, assemble plans, and bring findings for partner review. This shift preserves senior capacity and improves margins while elevating staff skills. Brown says, "Since adopting Ready to Advise, we've been able to add more staff into the program. I have my junior staff running the clients through the program to help alleviate the workload on me and my senior staff." 

Client response has been positive and action-oriented. "I have not had any of our clients who have been proposed a plan not move forward with at least part of it and have been happy with as many options and opportunities for them to look at," Brown says.

On the audit side, Audit Intelligence Analyze has measurably cut effort while strengthening defensibility. Brown says they "are realizing at least five to six man-hours saved per audit," and the team is no longer over‑auditing to feel confident throughout the process. 

Across the practice, these tools have created consistent deliverables, reduced rework, and freed capacity to serve more clients without raising fees.

Company overview

In 2015, Sam Brown founded his tax and accounting firm in Troy, Ohio, with a focus on providing professionalism, responsiveness, and quality to his clients. Since then, Sam Brown, CPA, Inc., has offered comprehensive tax management, accounting, and audit services to individuals, businesses, and nonprofits nationwide.