An audit looks at where your team's week actually goes, from onboarding that's different every time to the documents that never quite arrive before the meeting, and puts a figure on each change, worked out from your own hours and rates, with a registered agent still signing off everything that matters.
Most of these started as a sensible habit when the firm was a couple of partners who knew every client by name, and they tend to stop working somewhere around the point the firm doubles.
Two accountants bring on the same kind of client in two different ways, so the welcome email, the document list and the timing all depend on who happened to pick it up.
Requests go out ad hoc, the reminders are manual (and sometimes doubled up), and the first advisory meeting gets spent asking for the paperwork instead of talking about the business.
Everyone keeps their own checklist or spreadsheet, so there's no one place that shows where a job's up to, and the knowledge lives in people's inboxes.
A client can go quiet for a fortnight and nobody notices until they chase you, because there's no easy way to see what's stalled and who owns it.
The engagement summary, the "here's what we need from you" note and the end of job update, written from scratch or from whatever was sent last time.
Client questions, ATO correspondence and portal notifications all land in the same inboxes, and somebody has to sort out what's urgent and whose it is.
Most practices I talk to are already well set up: Xero Practice Manager or MYOB, FYI or a document portal, Microsoft 365 and a CRM of some kind. The gap is usually a standard way of working on top of the tools, not more tools, and the audit doesn't ask you to change any of them.
The line that doesn't move: AI in a practice drafts, chases and organises, and a registered agent decides. It never takes a tax position, never signs anything off and never lodges, identity checks stay with your people and your existing controls, and nothing it drafts goes to a client without someone reading it first.
It's built from one of my demonstration projects, and the money at the end uses the same arithmetic as the 6-minute check.
Three partners, three service lines (business advisory, tax compliance and bookkeeping), and a firm that's doubled in size in three years, with the systems already in place and the process still in people's heads.
* Figures are illustrative, worked out from the assumptions above and the same 46 working weeks and 20% to 40% that the 6-minute check uses.
Accountants tend to see the admin problem in a client's business before the client does. If one of yours comes to mind, email me and I'll send you a link to the check with your firm's name on it, that way I know they came from you, and I'll tell you how it went once they've been through it.
No, and the audit won't recommend anything that does. AI can draft the request, chase the documents and organise the file, and a registered agent does the work that needs one and signs it off.
The audit doesn't change your systems at all. It looks at what your team does around them, and any recommendation has to work with the practice management and document tools you're already using.
Anything I recommend has to keep client information inside tools that are approved for it, and the audit says plainly where a job shouldn't go anywhere near an AI tool at all.
Where the week goes, written up from the interviews, then each workflow that's worth changing with a figure on it, worked out from your own hours and rates, the ones AI should stay away from and why, and a plan for the next few months ranked by effort and by what each change is worth.
No. The report's yours, and it's written so that you or anyone else can run with it. If you do bring me back for a build inside 60 days, the audit fee comes off it.
No. Plenty of the firms I talk to are using it in bits and pieces or not at all, and that's fine, because the audit starts from where your week goes and not from the tools.
That mostly depends on your diary and how many of the team I'm talking to, so I'll give you dates on the call rather than guess here and get it wrong.
The interviews are recorded so that nothing gets lost, the recordings and notes are only used for your audit, and nothing about your business gets published without your written OK, the case study included.
The 15-minute call tells you whether an audit's worth doing at all. The audit tells you what to change, and what each change is worth on your own figures.
$1,500
+ GST · Founding audit
Three founding audits at $1,500 + GST. Once they're gone, audits move to standard rates.
The three founding audits have gone. Ask me about the standard rate.
That covers the interviews, one written report and one debrief. In return I ask for an anonymised case study and half an hour of feedback on how it went, and if you go ahead with a build inside 60 days the fee comes off it.
It suits a business where the principals are still close enough to the work to know where the week's going, where the same jobs keep coming round, and where somebody's already wondering whether AI could take some of it off the team's plate.
I build and run my own businesses on this (noomoo, CarbonCut, and the sales and marketing system that runs across them), so when I suggest a change to the way your team works I've a fair idea of what it takes to keep it running once I've gone.
The audit is me doing the interviews, me writing the report and me in the room for the debrief, and every figure in it is worked out from what you and your team tell me, not from somebody else's survey.
The check takes about six minutes and shows you what the repeat work is costing before you spend anything on AI. The call is free, and I'll tell you straight whether there's anything worth doing.