On a day during which CAs were advised to be both “excited and terrified” by AI, ICAS President David Cruickshank CA set the scene by framing “a period of unprecedented velocity of change” for the profession. “We have to be positive about AI because many of our clients look to us to provide guidance to deal with the changes that are taking place,” he said. “But AI can’t replace professional judgement when it comes to complex business and ethical decisions.” And that, he believes, is where the opportunity for CAs lies.

Chris Downing, Director of Product Management for Accountants and Bookkeepers at Sage, then kicked off the agenda in energetic fashion, picking up on longstanding concerns for CA practices, such as the “hidden hours” that drain the profitability of servicing clients, and the friction and bottlenecks of working processes. “A lack of capacity is not only a commercial problem,” he said. “It’s a wellbeing one.”

“Capacity is not about doing less for clients – it’s about creating the space to do more of what clients actually value”

Chris Downing, Sage

Technology alone is not the solution, said Downing – the key is to align and streamline your working methods, then use technology to support them. “If your systems are not standardised, automation will just create more chaos,” he said. “They’ll make things which are slightly broken break faster. Sometimes, we need to consider how to go back to basics and simplify what we are doing.”

Downing urged CAs to push back on clients who continue to submit their tax returns in January. “Spread the work and flatten the mountains,” he said. “You can’t be deadline merchants.”

 He then provided a four-step process for creating capacity by design:
• Standardise – make the process repeatable
• Simplify – remove friction
• Automate – hand repetitive tasks over to AI
• Elevate – free your people to support clients with their professional judgement

“Capacity is not about doing less for clients,” he said. “It’s about creating the space to do more of what clients actually value.”

This theme segued neatly into a presentation on ‘profitable pricing’ by Will Farnell, Founder of Norwich-based TC Farnell Clarke, and the author of two books, The Digital Firm and The Human Firm. In a typically candid presentation, Farnell discussed how his practice had struggled in the early years due to an inadequate pricing model and an aversion to raising fees.

However, after embracing the thinking of US economist Michael Porter that “you can either be the cheapest or you can be different”, Farnell invested in cloud technology to free up more time to work with his clients and help them with what mattered most, while charging realistically. The business now has regular ‘client renewal meetings’, which prevent fees stagnating and hours creeping up, while also providing the opportunity to help the client with insights and offer additional services.

“In a 12-month period with 600 clients, we added £140,000 to our bottom line,” he said. “We lost 12 clients but, if I’d written a list of 12 clients that I was happy to lose, it would probably have been them.”

He urged practices to develop a firm understanding of their ‘why, what and how’ and promote outcomes and impact rather than the standard delivery of compliance products. “We’re not charities,” he said. “We’ve got to stop being accountancy practices and start being accountancy businesses.”

Farnell was followed by James Sundin, co-founder and Chief Evangelist at Represent, a business that promises to ‘build better accountancy practices’. He talked about the importance of “creating the right foundation to attract clients”, consistent marketing and seeking out “ideal”, rather than simply “more”, clients. “My clients don’t care about my services, they care about what the services do for them,” he said. “What do your clients care about?”

Richard Sergeant, Managing Director of Principle Point, then chaired a panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities offered by AI, with Melissa Fogwill, Chief Technology Officer at Henderson Loggie, Ian Mackie CA, Director of Hall Morrice, and Kirsty Yuill, Director of Johnston Carmichael.

Key messages to emerge were:
• Create an AI policy and governance framework before encouraging its widespread use.
• Use AI to remove low-value admin work, and redirect that time into higher-value client services.
• Encourage leaders to champion measured AI adoption.
• Regard AI as a tool that can enhance professional judgement but not replace it.
• Question whether new AI tools deliver genuine value or simply add complexity.    

Entrepreneur Alexis Kingsbury then presented the story of Accrual Intentions, “the world’s first 100% AI accountancy practice”. Initially created as a joke, Kingsbury realised he could learn a lot from the project – enough to make him both “excited and terrified” about where AI will take us.

“Rejecting AI for a mistake is like rejecting a junior employee for something they’ve done wrong”

Alexis Kingsbury, entrepreneur and author

His presentation saw him in conversation with several ‘colleagues’ from the practice, such as Technical Accounting Lead, Debbie Double-Entry, and Audit & Compliance Lead, Reginald Rules. His conclusion from the experiment was that firms can gain a lot from exploring agentic AI to develop a practice in which the CAs focus on building stronger, higher-value relationships with their clients. His main message was a simple one: “Be more human,” said the AI pioneer.

Kingsbury also urged CAs to be wary of simply following the crowd. “If you rely on AI developments in Zoom, Silverfin, etc, you’ll end up exactly the same as just about everyone else,” he said. And don’t dismiss AI just because it spits out the occasional error. “Rejecting AI for a mistake is like rejecting a junior employee for something they’ve done wrong,” he said.

The day’s closing speaker was Jordan Vickery, Co-founder of Vinyl, an AI meeting assistant designed specifically for accountancy firms. Vickery explained how Vinyl helps accountants to identify topics from client conversations that provide opportunities to offer additional support and services. “You’re not guessing what their needs are, you’re not trying to sell them a service they don’t need,” he said. “You’re offering them something they are telling you about in the conversations you’re already having.”

For more resources visit the ICAS practice advisory service