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.
42 articles
Before every coaching call, I check with my bookkeeping team to get current on the client's status. That's not preparation — it's a tax. Every CAS practice pays it dozens of times a day: the invisible cost of moving context between people so someone can do the actual work.
Sequoia Capital says tax advisory is 80-90% intelligence work — rule-following, not judgment. Nate Jones argues most of what we call judgment is rules we've internalized so deeply we forgot they were rules. If they're right, the moat accountants keep defending on LinkedIn is real — but much narrower than the profession assumes.
AI matches experienced professionals 70-83% of the time. The profession's biggest complaint — that AI gets things wrong — is actually a description of where your professional value lives. The 17-30% where you catch the error, push back, and explain why? That's judgment. And it's the one skill nobody in the profession is developing deliberately.
The research was valuable. What happened next was more valuable — a 10-minute reflective conversation with the AI that turned a one-off project into a reusable methodology anyone in the firm can follow. That's context engineering. And it's how you stop losing what you learn.
A cross-border tax research project revealed a material legal error — not because AI got it wrong, but because the back-and-forth dialogue forced both sides to test every assumption. The best use of AI for complex professional work isn't asking questions. It's arguing until the answer survives.
Canopy is embedding AI bookkeeping directly into practice management — real-time GL visibility, issue detection, and month-end close automation inside the tool you already use. Plus OpenAI's $110 billion bet on agentic AI, Anthropic removing the last barrier to switching, and why 30,000 accounting firms watched one AI demo in three days.
Marketing teams are seeing 90% cost reductions. Customer success teams are doubling productivity. And Anthropic's own data shows financial roles have an 85% theoretical AI capability with only 20% actual adoption. The gap between other industries and CAS practices isn't closing. It's widening — and it's measurable.
Google Cloud says multi-agent orchestration is the architecture of 2026. Basis — now valued at over a billion dollars — is already running it for Top 25 accounting firms. The question isn't whether this model works. It's whether your practice will build it with your own specifications or let a vendor do it for you.
Anthropic measured what AI actually does across 800 occupations — not what it could theoretically do. Financial roles show 85% theoretical capability but only 20% actual adoption. That gap isn't reassurance. It's a closing window, and the firms moving now are the ones who'll own the other side of it.
Anthropic was designated a Pentagon supply chain risk. Oregon passed AI disclosure and safety legislation. Seventy-eight state bills are moving with no federal framework. Government decisions are reshaping AI vendor access faster than most firms' planning cycles — and the only hedge is building where no policy can reach.
Xero's updated developer terms now prohibit external AI agents, ban API data training, and impose $99–$895/month access costs — while launching their own proprietary AI. The message is clear: platforms will monetize AI access and restrict yours. The highest-leverage response is to stop waiting for platform access and start building in the gaps where vendors have no gatekeeping power.
Sequoia Capital named accounting a $50–80B disruption target. Their framework shows where CAS practices are exposed — and what's still defensible.