If I read one more AI article, I’m going to pull what’s left of my hair out!

Seriously, I’m tired of the theoretical jargon, the words like AI pilot and digital transformation. I’m exhausted reading abstract articles about the potential of AI to revolutionize my business, followed by no practical steps of what to do right now.

I am just a practical, old-time, semi-retired, non-tech-savvy CPA who struggles to even use a TV remote control. Don’t waste my time with theory. Just give me answers to a few basic questions:

• What specific practical tasks can AI do today to make a CPA’s life easier?
• What specific practical steps can a CPA do today to use AI for the 2025 tax season?
• What dollars will this save CPA firms?

Last year, with my frustration and passive-aggressive nature in hand, I marched into the office of Chris Stephenson, our director of intelligent automation, and aired my AI grievances. He proceeded to explain the process for answering all three questions above. It’s called AI Discovery, and he’s done it for businesses in every industry, including hundreds of CPA firms. Here’s the story.

AI Discovery

Last year, Chris put together a Think Tank session with 200 top CPA firms nationwide. The goal was to gather feedback on how AI might help their practices. The No. 1 thing he heard from the audience was, “I don’t know where to start.”

CPAs understand the incredible potential with AI but they don’t know what to do with it, where they should put it, what it does best, how to scale it across a practice, and how to get it to do what you need it to do.

Through the AI Discovery process, organizations can identify where AI makes the most sense for them and how to get started. Here is what the process roughly looks like and the practical steps every firm can do right now.

1. Ideation Session: During the initial part of AI Discovery, holding a workshop with partners and staff will give everyone an opportunity to present their problems and ideas for possible AI solutions. Everyone on your team probably has AI ideas, the trick is getting all those ideas out in the open and figuring out what will have the most value for your firm.
2. Scoring: So, you have a bunch of ideas. Now what? This is where scoring is critical. Discovery often hinges on scoring each idea based on objective measures to determine their priority. Every firm is different, but scoring should take place on several dimensions, like which issues can get solved the fastest, which will have the biggest impact, which can be scaled for every department, etc. This way you can rank what ideas have the highest value and which you should start on.
3. Technology Infrastructure Assessment: Now you know which AI projects are going to have an impact on your business. But is your firm’s system ready for AI? Your technology infrastructure will need to be evaluated to determine its AI readiness, and to discover any shortcomings that may prevent you from getting started.
4. Roadmap: Finally, you will need a clear roadmap to lay out how you will deploy each solution. Do you need to buy a solution? Build custom AI? How about training employees? How do you measure the impact of your solution? A roadmap should lay out all of that for you.

At Chris’ Think Tank event, after the Ideation Session, where almost 500 ideas were generated, his team ran their scoring algorithm and identified five problems AI could help nearly every firm with:

1. Collecting payments from clients,
2. Requesting and processing documents from clients,
3. Moving trial balances to workpapers,
4. Responding to IRS letters, and
5. Developing a chatbox to handle internal queries, like HR questions.

With this information, AI solutions were created to address each of these problems.

Note that, although these were the most identified issues with this particular group of 200 CPAs, every firm is different. Not every firm will need one of these five solutions. CPA firms may have their own unique problems they would like to fix with an AI solution. So, don’t just jump to buy a package of AI add-ons from a vendor to solve issues that may not even exist in your firm. Instead, do your own AI Discovery to identify your firm’s biggest pain points and develop a plan of attack with AI.

How Much Could CPAs Save?

As Chris continued to share his story with me, the dollar signs started flashing in my head. I thought about the increasing bottom-line profits for CPAs!

I thought about all the time I used to spend with the client billing analysis Excel spreadsheets to analyze my time, project by project, to justify hours and bills, and put that into a client letter.

I thought about all those routine IRS Notice letters I had to write to explain why my client’s 1099-DIV did not match the tax return Schedule B.

I thought about a few other mundane tasks I used to do in public practice that bored me.

You may now be asking yourself how much CPA firms could save if AI were to do specific tasks. Some early statistics show that firms that adopt AI are earning 40% more per professional. Another statistic demonstrates that companies that are AI leaders are outperforming competitors by six times compared to those not doing AI. Firms that employ the document request tool and the trial balance to workpaper tool are seeing up to a 25% reduction in time preparing returns.

Would life have been better as a CPA 45 years ago when I started in public practice if AI existed back then? Should I even consider stepping out of my semi-retirement for a return to public accounting with AI in the picture?

The answer to the first question is an obvious “yes,” and the answer to the second question is an even more obvious “no.” But for those still in the game, let’s face it. It’s time to jump on the AI bandwagon to be more profitable and have less stress, more free time, and more fun.