Blog/Authors
Peter McCarroll

Peter McCarroll

Founder of Fuel Accountants and The AI Accountant. With over 15 years in practice management and technology consulting for accounting firms, Peter is passionate about helping accountants embrace AI to transform their businesses.

110 articles

Weekly AI Roundup for Accountants: What I saw at Xerocon Denver
Weekly AI Roundup

Weekly AI Roundup for Accountants: What I saw at Xerocon Denver

I spent last week on the floor at Xerocon Denver, and I watched two movements happen at once: the platforms assembling and repricing the whole stack from above, and the firms quietly building their own software from below. Add BILL's pivot from seats to consumption pricing and OpenAI's answer to the client-data question, and the week's message is clear: the gap between falling AI prices and rising platform prices is where your next margin decision lives.

Peter McCarroll
Your AI disclosure position just got decided for you
Leading AI Adoption

Your AI disclosure position just got decided for you

In four weeks, AI disclosure went from ethics debate to infrastructure: Substack scans it, LinkedIn flags it, the EU legislates it, and Anthropic watermarks everything Claude writes. Your firm almost certainly faces no legal risk, but your work product now carries flags you can't remove. The only question left is whether the story that arrives with the flag is one you wrote.

Peter McCarroll
Weekly AI Roundup for Accountants: Intuit just put a bookkeeper in your client's file
Weekly AI Roundup

Weekly AI Roundup for Accountants: Intuit just put a bookkeeper in your client's file

Intuit is bundling its own human bookkeepers into QBO Advanced, one toggle away in your client's settings. The same week, a CPA-graded benchmark scored AI models higher for disclosing uncertainty than for being right, and the EU wrote human editorial responsibility into law. Disclosure just became the product, and the record of who stood behind the number is what's left to charge for.

Peter McCarroll
If it doesn't show up in busy season, did anything change?
Leading AI Adoption

If it doesn't show up in busy season, did anything change?

I have had the conversion moment twice. In 2024 I saw exactly what AI was going to do to this profession, spent six months learning it, and trained my team. Busy season came and everything went back to how it was. In early 2026 I did it again, with the same result. Here is what those two failures taught me about the only test of transformation that cannot be gamed.

Peter McCarroll
The return showed up. It just wasn't in hours.
The Advisory Edge

The return showed up. It just wasn't in hours.

In the late 1990s I helped build a global audit platform for a Big Six firm. The capability let us do some old things faster, and start doing things we should always have been doing and never could. Quality went up. The clock never moved. Leadership was watching the clock, saw nothing, and cut the budget. If you are measuring AI in hours saved, you are about to read the same zero.

Peter McCarroll
Buy vs. build, part 2: The pricing wrapper nobody reads
The Advisory Edge

Buy vs. build, part 2: The pricing wrapper nobody reads

Per-client and per-user app fees levy a decision tax accountants have paid since QuickBooks Desktop gave way to subscriptions. Part 2 of Buy vs. build reads the pricing wrapper the way an accountant should, as a risk contract: who carries the token volatility, who holds the repricing option, and what to watch as usage-based pricing arrives.

Peter McCarroll