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AI for mid-market CPA firms.

Custom AI for 30-150 pro firms running CCH Axcess, UltraTax, ProSystem fx, and Karbon. Fixed fee. Working prototype before payment. Built to ship before the October extension crunch, not promised at the partner retreat next March.

Audience30-150 professionals
Revenue range$8M-$50M
Native toCCH Axcess, UltraTax, Karbon
Cycle4-6 week build, prototype in 7-10 days
I · The pattern

"Seven thousand chargeable partner hours per season. Three of them are automation candidates."

The mid-market CPA firm has shipped one transformation initiative every other year for the last decade, and the partners can recite the post-mortems verbatim. ProSystem to CCH. CCH to Axcess. On-prem to cloud. Workpaper standardization. Document management migration. Each one shipped late, came in over budget, and delivered a fraction of the promised hours back.

AI implementation, done the way most firms are doing it right now, is heading for the same post-mortem. Procurement-driven tool selection, no working prototype, partner buy-in by deck, training rollout by December, no measurable hours back by April. Repeat with another vendor in 2027.

The alternative is a custom AI system, commissioned to your firm's tax-return templates, your binders, your prior-year workpapers, and your CCH Axcess Open Integration API. Built in 4-6 weeks. Fixed-fee. Owned by your firm at handoff. The kind of thing that ships before the October extension crunch and pays for itself in one season.

II · Five patterns we see in 8 of 10 firms

Where the season actually goes.

Pattern recognition · twenty-six firm audits

Each pattern dollarized against firms in the $8M-$50M band.

01Prepared-by-client (PBC) chase, every January through April.Recovery range: 600-1,200 partner-equivalent hours per season. Senior staff and partners chasing missing 1099s, K-1s, brokerage statements, and engagement letters. Custom intake AI handles the chase, the categorization, the binder-build, and the partner alert when something material is missing. Twenty-six audited firms averaged 940 hours back, year one.01Of five
02Tie-out and review, manually, every return.Recovery range: 30-50% of preparer-to-reviewer cycle time. The custom-AI version is not a generic tax-research assistant; it is trained on your firm's tax-return templates, your tie-out checklists, your prior-year exceptions. Catches the same things your senior reviewer catches, an hour earlier, on every return that fits the pattern.02Of five
03Advisory work that doesn't ship because the season ate the calendar.Recovery range: 20-40% of advisory pipeline. The most profitable line of business in the modern CPA firm dies on the vine because partners cannot context-switch out of compliance. AI-assembled advisory deliverables (CFO reports, tax-planning briefs, client cash-flow forecasts) free the partner to deliver advice rather than assemble it.03Of five
04Knowledge migration on every CCH or UltraTax upgrade.Recovery range: A migration that takes 3 months instead of 18. Each platform upgrade buries six senior staff for a quarter. Custom retrieval over the firm's pre-upgrade workpaper archive, with permissions intact, lets the upgrade actually deliver the productivity win promised in the procurement memo.04Of five
05Onboarding new staff is two seasons of effective ramp.Recovery range: 9-15 months of effective ramp time per senior hire. Institutional tax knowledge lives in partners' heads and dead memo databases. A RAG layer over the firm's matter archive turns a year-one senior into a year-three contributor for retrieval-heavy compliance and research.05Of five
III · What we build, in this industry

Five system shapes.

Drawn from real engagements

Each shape is a 4-6 week build, fixed-fee, on your data, in your tenant. Specifics vary.

I.

PBC chase & binder-build automation

II.

Tax-return tie-out & review-pass AI (CCH Axcess, UltraTax)

III.

Advisory deliverable assembly (CFO reports, planning briefs)

IV.

Workpaper retrieval & knowledge ingestion

V.

Senior-staff onboarding RAG over your firm's archive

Evidence · last engagement

940 partner-equivalent hours returned in one tax season at a 38-pro firm.

5-week build. Fixed fee. Native to CCH Axcess. Owned by the firm at handoff.

See case studies →
IV · The teardown, free

See where your season goes.

8-min Loom + self-audit PDF

Partner-to-partner walkthrough of where a typical 30-partner firm's 7,000 chargeable season hours actually go.

The Tax Season Hours Teardown.

Where 7,000 partner hours actually go each season, broken down by category, ranked by automation candidacy. 8-minute Loom, self-audit PDF, no follow-up unless you ask.

Watch the teardown →
Free · 8 minutes
Partner-to-partner
Self-audit PDF
Email gates the PDF only
V · Frequently asked

Common questions.

Q1What size firms?30-150 professionals, $8M-$50M revenue. Not Big 4 or top-100 nationals (they have in-house programs).SizingFAQ
Q2Native to CCH Axcess and UltraTax?Yes. Built on top of CCH Axcess Open Integration API, UltraTax CS, ProSystem fx, Karbon, and the firm's DMS. The system reads your binders, your prior-year workpapers, your tax-return data. No platform migration required.StackFAQ
Q3Can you ship before tax season?Yes. We do not start CPA engagements between February 1 and April 15. Engagements scoped in May ship by July; scoped in August, ship by October extension.TimelineFAQ
Q4What about Karbon's State of AI in Accounting?Karbon's report is excellent vendor-marketing content. It is not a substitute for a system commissioned to your firm. Off-the-shelf tools are trained on the average firm; your firm is not the average.VendorsFAQ
Q5Engagement cost?$45K-$180K fixed-fee, scoped against the constraint we identify in the diagnosis call. Working prototype on real firm data within 7-10 days at no cost.PricingFAQ
Ready when you are

Book the 45-minute diagnosis.

No pitch. No fee. A written map of the season hours bleeding your firm, with the dollar figures.

Book your diagnosis → Or watch the teardown →