Welcome to “Get Work Done,” where we discuss the complexities of efficiently running accounting and bookkeeping firms. This newsletter is brought to you by Financial Cents and delivered to your inbox every 2 weeks.
Small Change, Big Results
Extension season is bearing down, the summer lull is officially over, and somewhere in your inbox is an unread newsletter insisting that your firm needs an “AI transformation roadmap” by Q4.
Our piping-hot take? 🍵
No, you don’t. (Or at least, you shouldn’t.)
Look, no one who’s actively trying to sell you a complex AI strategy is going to admit you don’t need one. But you can always count on us to give it to you straight, and in this case that means taking all this chatter over AI implementation, transformation, and what-have-you-fication with an extra-large grain of salt.
You already have enough tasks in your to-do pile. Getting your firm AI-ramped shouldn’t come with a whole new laundry list of action items you don’t have time for.
That’s exactly why we built our AI solutions to be totally effortless. Our AI agents take busywork off your plate from day one. They are built seamlessly into the workflows you already use—no rollout, no new system to learn, no additional headaches. And most importantly, your judgment always stays in control.
Here’s a quick rundown of our effortless AI offerings at Financial Cents:
AI File Renaming: Turns document names like “scan-final(2).pdf” into clean, consistent names the moment a client completes an upload, all based on your firm’s pre-set naming convention.
AI File Validator: Checks each upload against what you actually requested and flags incorrect ones before your team has to go back to the client again.
AI checklist templates: Generate a full workflow checklist from a single prompt, then fine-tune it step-by-step.
AI email drafts: Write client reminders, status updates, and awkward follow-ups in seconds, right where your client work already lives.
That’s what useful AI looks like: less work for your team, right out of the gate (not another project for the pile). You choose how hands-off each agent is, exceptions stay visible, and your team always gets the final say.
The best part? It’s completely free on every Financial Cents plan (including trials), so you can jump in and give it a whirl ASAP.
👉 Learn more about effortless AI →
Want to watch it work in a real firm’s workflow setup? We’re hosting a live AI Demo Day on September 16 where we’ll give a more detailed walkthrough of the agents (with plenty of time for audience Q&A).
Community 🫶
Grow your career and your confidence with AFWA
Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance (AFWA) is the kind of network you wish you’d found sooner. It’s a warm, supportive community dedicated to uplifting women in accounting and finance through mentorship, professional growth, and leadership opportunities—offering the connections and encouragement you need to break barriers and reach your full potential, in your career and beyond. If you’ve been looking for peers who truly get it, this is a wonderful place to land.
Start earning what you’re worth with Universal Accounting Center
If you’re great at the work but not sure you’re getting paid what it’s worth, then this one’s for you. Universal Accounting Center has been in the corner of accounting, bookkeeping, and tax pros since 1979, with training, certifications, coaching, and ongoing support built around a simple promise: the confidence and competence to excel in your career—and to actually earn what you’re worth. Whether you’re sharpening your own skills or building up your team’s, it’s a great place to grow.
H🔥t Today
AI won’t kill accounting, but it might kill the hourly bill
A recent CPA Practice Advisor piece points to Accenture’s brutal one-day stock slide this summer as an early warning shot: buyers have started to balk at hourly pricing for consulting, and time is ticking for firms still billing compliance work by the clock. The argument isn’t that revenue is about to fall off a cliff, but rather that the way firms generate said revenue is due for a revamp. Because in today’s age, the most valuable thing you offer clients is your judgment and guidance around the questions they don’t always know to ask. So if your pricing still rewards hours over outcomes, consider this your nudge to revisit fixed or value-based pricing before your clients bring it up first.
Your next client might just come from AI
With Forrester finding that roughly 94% of business buyers now lean on AI somewhere in their buying process, CPA Practice Advisor warns firms that don’t surface when someone asks a model for “a bookkeeper who handles X” risk getting cut out of the search altogether, and that industry consolidation is making AI search visibility even harder for smaller firms. The takeaway for you: a well-defined niche, current reviews, and a well-structured web presence are crucial to showing up in AI answers.
Agents are no match for human expertise
As AI agents take on more data processing work, the demand for human oversight goes up, not down. The author of this CPA Practice Advisory piece calls it the rise of the “Chief Assurance Officer” (a.k.a. the person who cross-checks the machine’s work and gives the final sign-off). To maximize the value of AI, many firms are letting agents handle the lower-level technical and administrative work while humans maintain control of important decisions and judgment calls. (Which, not coincidentally, is exactly how we built our AI agents at Financial Cents.)
Swipe this workflow template
Swipe this Monthly 1099 and W9 Review template from Aimee Garneau.
Get more templates from firm owners like you in our community template library.
Meme
Relatable? 😆 (Pssst…prevent moments like this in your firm with FC’s new AI File Validator.)
Firm Spotl💡ght
How Envision Business Services finally ended the month-end scramble (and all the client friction that came with it)
When Kristin Thompson started Envision Business Services in 2020, she was a team of one. Today she leads six remote bookkeepers across British Columbia, serving small and mid-sized businesses that want a true partner on their team, not just someone to handle the books.
For years she ran the firm on a DIY Microsoft 365 system she’d built herself, and it worked beautifully right up until she hit the three-employee mark, when chasing missing client info each month turned into an “inquiry inbox” that piled up faster than her team could clear it (and wasn’t much fun on the client’s side either).
That all changed when Kristin and the team at Envision adopted Month-End Close in Financial Cents. Instead of typing out every missing detail, they can code a transaction to a designated account, and the request routes to the client automatically. Multi-entity clients see everything on one screen instead of juggling logins, and batched reminders go out on a set schedule so no one has to painstakingly ping people transaction by transaction. After only two months using this feature, Kristin’s verdict was strong and simple: less manual work on her side, and noticeably less friction for clients.
Check out Kristin’s full story →
Events
📍 IRS Nationwide Tax Forum — September 15–17 (San Diego, CA)
The Tax Forum swings through San Diego later this month at the Town & Country Resort, with the same lineup of federal tax law updates, IRS procedure sessions, and CE credits (up to 18) featured at this summer’s previous tax forum events. Standard registration is $409.
👉 Learn more →
📍 Financial Cents AI Demo Day — September 16, 2026 (Virtual)
See how Financial Cents is making AI effortless with our new built-in agents. Join the FC team for a live, 30-minute walkthrough where you can watch client uploads get renamed to your firm’s convention the moment they land, see documents checked against the request type and period they were actually sent for, and get a clear look at where your team approves, overrides, and stays in control. Plus, get a sneak-peek at what’s coming next. Free, recorded, and capped off with a live Q&A.
📍CPB IGNITE Conference — September 22–25, 2026 (Montreal, QC)
Certified Professional Bookkeepers of Canada’s premier annual event lands in Montreal this year, bringing bookkeepers, accountants, and finance pros from across the country together for four days of sessions, a bustling trade show floor, and networking that actually leads somewhere. If you’re north of the border and looking for a software-agnostic gathering built specifically for Canadian bookkeeping pros, this is it.
👉 Learn more →
📍 Intuit Connect 2026 — October 26–28 (Las Vegas, NV)
Intuit’s flagship gathering returns to Las Vegas for three days of CPE-accredited sessions, hands-on product demos, and big-stage keynotes (this year’s lineup includes Lupita Nyong’o and Grit author Angela Duckworth). It’s built for multi-service firms who want a front-row look at what’s next on the Intuit platform, a chance to shore up their tech stack, and a few thousand peers to compare notes with. Group passes drop the per-seat price if you’re bringing the team, and CPE credits are available throughout.
Noteworthy
Nominations are open for the inaugural Small & Mighty Awards
Hot off the presses, we’re officially accepting nominations for the very first Small & Mighty Awards recognizing accounting and bookkeeping pros who have stayed small on purpose, led with intention, and gone deep in their industry or speciality. Presented as part of WorkflowCon 2026’s “Focus is the New Flex” theme, the Small & Mighty Awards feature four separate categories: Rising Voice, Underserved Market Champion, Community Builder, and Workflow Innovator.
Any firm size is eligible, you don’t need to be a Financial Cents customer to win, and you can nominate a peer or yourself (both judged the same way). The form takes about 10 minutes to complete, nominations close October 10, and every category winner takes home $1,000 (or $2,000 paid forward to a nonprofit of their choice), coaching sessions, and a complimentary in-person conference registration (with all expenses paid). Winners will be revealed live on stage at WorkflowCon on November 10.
Know someone who deserves it? Do your thing, fam.👇
That’s all for now. See you in two weeks. 💚
The "Chief Assurance Officer" item is the one I'd underline. As agents take more of the processing, the scarce role becomes whoever can tell you the machine was wrong.
The field data backs it up. The Stanford GSB / MIT Sloan study published in the Journal of Accounting Research this year found the more experienced the accountant, the more they intervened - specifically when the model signalled low confidence. The value came from knowing when to step in, not from leaving it alone.
We learned the inverse expensively. We rolled OCR across our whole client book with nothing measuring quality client by client, and the failures surfaced months later as corrections that looked like ordinary bookkeeping noise.
Agree with the overall take that firms don't need a transformation roadmap. The one thing worth building deliberately is the assurance layer, because it doesn't arrive with the tool.