About
The accountant who kept trying to put himself out of a job.
CPA, CMA. Former software developer. Managing partner of a firm I've spent three decades automating. Most of what I know came from doing it badly first.
I joined my dad’s accounting firm in 1995 and immediately tried to automate it.
I’d been writing software. The firm ran on paper, desktop installs and a filing cabinet that everyone was slightly afraid of. The gap between those two worlds seemed obviously closeable, and I was confident it would take about a year.
Everyone told me the profession didn’t work that way. They were right for about a decade.
What changed things wasn’t a piece of software. It was accepting that a firm is a set of habits before it’s a set of tools, and that no system survives contact with a team that didn’t ask for it.
Thirty years later CPA4IT is paperless, cloud-native and largely automated. I spend most of my time now on the other side of that problem — with firm owners trying to make the same move, and with entrepreneurs who need their finances to stop being a monthly emergency.
- Managing Partner, CPA4IT
- Chartered Professional Accountant
- Certified Management Accountant
- Speaker, Intuit QuickBooks Get Connected
- Published in CPA Magazine
- Featured in XU Magazine
Writing, when it’s worth writing.
Four pieces on the things owners and firm owners keep asking about.