TECH and FINTECH

Anne Napolitano: The Future of Accounting’s in Value, Not Time | The Disruptors

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“The balance sheet is where all the bodies lie.”

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

Anne Napolitano used to give advisory-level guidance without charging for it. “I was doing those advisory-type services without really getting compensated for it because I just felt it was what you were supposed to offer to your clients,” she says.  

But after learning about value pricing from various resources, including Ron Baker and Ed Kless, her thinking changed. “The better we got at something, the quicker we were, the less money we were making because we could do things faster,” she says.   

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That realization helped her understand that clients weren’t buying time; rather, they were buying the decades of experience she and her team had as accountants and the value that comes from that experience. And today, she charges a premium for that expertise.  

“We need to value ourselves correctly and appreciate the fact that we’re really doing some great work for our clients, and we should be compensated for that,” she explains.  

Her firm, Anne Napolitano Consulting, landed on its niche specialty of restaurants, bars, breweries, distilleries, and wineries, partly because of Napolitano’s love of cooking. 

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What Do You Have to Show for Implementing AI? | Accounting Voices

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Look at pricing, services, and client relationships to assess whether AI investments are reshaping the business.

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The step-by-step operating guide for CPA firms building, pricing, and scaling advisory services that clients value—and pay for.

Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

A tax return completed in three hours instead of five gives an accounting firm something valuable: time.

What happens to those two hours may reveal more about the firm’s AI strategy than the technology that saved them.

Does the firm take on more work? Give employees breathing room? Help a client understand an emerging business problem? Reconsider how it prices its services?

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In a solo episode of Accounting Voices, host Rob Brown examines a distinction that can get lost in the enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence: Adopting AI and changing a business are different accomplishments.

“Efficiency is not reshaping,” Brown says. “A little bit of doing things faster doesn’t change the model.”

The episode, part of the “AI Reality Inside Firms” series, offers leaders three ways to examine their progress: Look at the economics, consider the client relationship, and assess whether leadership is deliberately shaping the firm’s direction.

Together, those questions move the conversation from what a tool can do to what a firm intends to become.

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Entrepreneurship’s Biggest Enemies: Procrastination and Questioning Advice Before You’ve Tried It

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hand below light bulb

Ten Questions to Check Your Entrepreneurship

By Jackie Meyer

“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business – you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!” – Michael E. Gerber, “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It”

October 2010. The day is etched in my memory – cold and sharp, like the sting of betrayal. I was sitting in my car, gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white. Just moments before, I had been fired. Fired from a job I thought was secure, on a career path I believed I was destined for. The words from my boss were still ringing in my ears: “We’re going in a different direction.” I was stunned. What did that mean for my direction?

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It felt like the bottom had dropped out of my life. Years of studying, late nights, and climbing what I thought was the “right” ladder had led to this: humiliation, anger and a terrifying sense of … nothingness. But as I sat there, eyes burning with tears I refused to let fall, something unexpected began to stir beneath the surface of those raw emotions. A spark. A flicker of defiance. And the faintest whisper of an idea.
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42 Hot AI Firms Raise $1.23 Billion in New 2026 Funding

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Wall Street places big money on both sides of the bet for and against accounting firms.

The top ten of 42 firms identified by CPA Trendlines raise 75% of the new money so far this year.

By CPA Trendlines Research

With $1.23 billion invested so far this year, 42 new AI-powered tech companies, from pre-seed startups to growth-stage platforms, are vying for a place at the table where the future of tax and accounting will be decided.

MORE AITech and Adoption: Buying AI Is Easy. Rebuilding the Firm Is Hard. | Trent Yesberg: How AI Re-Builds Accounting Firms | The AI Demo Is Easy. The Rollout Gets Complicated. | If AI Is Saving Time, Why Are You Still Working Late? | Intuit, Thomson, Wolters Kluwer: Accountants Question AI Promises | David Marquis: AI Can Do More Work but Auditors Must Make the Call | AI Accountants Cut Costs per Task to 21 cents from $10.35 | Your Next Hire Might Not Be an Accountant | “Set It and Forget It” Is Not an AI Strategy | Kenji Kuramoto: When AI Does the Work, What Are Firms Selling?

They’ve captured the serious attention of both the fintech cognoscenti and the tax and accounting avant-garde. Some build the tools that help tax and accounting firms handle more work. Others are taking the other side of the bet, selling tax and accounting services themselves, rolling up firms that do, or selling bookkeeping with no human bookkeepers.

To be sure, the bets are anything but certain.

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