600+ Nominations. 8 Categories. The 2026 Karbon Excellence Award Winners Revealed.

Every year, the Karbon Excellence Awards is a reminder that the accounting profession is full of extraordinary people doing extraordinary work.

Karbon received over 600 nominations across 8 categories this year, representing 195 firms around the world. That’s up from 579 nominations in 2025. Each one of these nominations told a story of a firm pushing harder, thinking bigger, and refusing to settle.

The 2026 winners were announced live during a gala ceremony at Karbon Next, a gathering of the most progressive accounting leaders from around the world, held at Coronado Bay, California. It was the perfect setting to honor firms that are, in every sense, leading the profession forward.

Congratulations to the 2026 Karbon Excellence Award winners.

Karbon Excellence Award for Sustainability

This award recognizes a firm leading with purpose and responsibility, making a measurable impact through community engagement, ethical practices, and environmental stewardship.

Winner: Wild Bookkeeping, United Kingdom

Penelope Allard founded Wild Bookkeeping as an open-water swimmer who saw coastal pollution firsthand and decided to do something about it. She helped coordinate nine water summits with local MPs, major water supplier Anglian Water, and community groups. This contributed to securing £105 million in infrastructure investment for the region.

She also played a key role in establishing WaterWatch UK as a registered charity in September 2025, and kept its accounts pro bono throughout. Through the B1G1 platform, every VAT return and tax filing Wild Bookkeeping lodges triggers a donation to bookkeeping education for women in Malawi and Uganda. For Wild Bookkeeping, social responsibility is woven into every client relationship and service delivered.

Finalists:

• Protea Financial LLC, United States of America

• Wild Bookkeeping Ltd, United Kingdom

• Portt & Co, United Kingdom

• Leelyn Smith, United States of America

• DL Accounts Ltd, United Kingdom

• MAD Wealth, Australia

Karbon Excellence Award for Diversity & Authenticity

This award recognizes a firm championing diversity, equity, and inclusion across the accounting profession in ways that are genuine, approachable, and inspiring to others.

Winner: Premier Group, United States of America

Premier Group is a minority-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned CPA firm where 85 to 90% of the team represents diverse backgrounds.

Their work is intentionally designed to expand access to high-quality financial guidance for minority business owners and entrepreneurs who have historically faced barriers to that kind of support.

Premier Group helps clients build financially sound businesses and create long-term wealth. They participate in initiatives like the Prince George's County National Disability Employment Awareness Job Fair, actively creating career pathways for underrepresented professionals.

Finalists:

• Nextcellent Consulting LLC, United States of America

• Liz is All Biz, United States of America

• BPM LLP, United States of America

• Abbadi Professional Corporation, Canada

• Premier Group, United States of America

• Syncopate CPA Professional Corporation, Canada

Karbon Excellence Award for Balance & Culture

This award recognizes a firm fostering healthy work habits, team motivation, and a culture of balance and belonging that empowers their people to thrive.

Winner: Protea Financial LLC, United States of America

Balance is engineered into Protea Financial’s operating model. Staff are intentionally planned at 80% capacity, and if someone consistently works more than five hours of overtime, workloads are reassessed immediately.

Monthly HR check-ins and weekly 15Five pulse surveys mean pressure is caught early across their fully remote, 40-person team spanning two continents. The result speaks for itself: an average staff tenure of 5.1 years, with 6 team members at the ten-year mark.

Finalists:

• Ookkee, United Kingdom

• Pursuit CPA, Canada

• Blueprint Accounting, Canada

• Bechtel CPA, United States of America

• LiveCA LLP, Canada

• Blackwood Bookkeeping Solutions Pty Ltd, Australia

• Protea Financial LLC, United States of America

Karbon Excellence Award for AI Innovation

This award recognizes a firm embracing AI to transform workflows, elevate client experiences, and lead the accounting profession into the future.

Winners: GrowthLab Financial, United States of America

GrowthLab Financial won the Karbon Excellence Award for Practice Excellence in 2022, recognizing their strong foundations. Four years later, they’re back and their story has evolved.

GrowthLab built a governed AI ecosystem anchored by their GL AI Console—a proprietary cockpit applying a ‘Know Your Agent’ framework to monitor and control over 15 active AI agents across the firm, including data visibility and access permissions for each.

Their Customer Experience & Revenue agent reviews every client meeting from the prior day, surfacing cross-sell and expansion opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed. The 2022 win showed they could build a great firm, and their 2026 win shows that they are not afraid to evolve.

Finalists:

• Fridman & Associates, United States of America

• GrowthLab Financial, United States of America

• Hiline, United States of America

• HD Growth Partners, United States of America

• Hot Toast Consulting, Australia

• BPM LLP, United States of America

• Novii CPA, United States of America

Karbon Excellence Award for Connectivity

This award recognizes a firm enhancing collaboration and transparency through innovative use of technology, automation, and integrated systems that connect teams and clients.

Winner: Air Accounting, Australia

Air Accounting built a custom API-driven ecosystem with Karbon at the center, where performance, deadlines, and work quality are visible across the firm in real time.

When a reviewer raises a query, it posts directly to the Karbon timeline via API. Time variances on completed work items trigger automatic prompts to feed back into pricing. Their in-house workpapers platform, AP automation workflow, Client Manager toolkit, and peer recognition system are all connected through the same architecture, built on tools like Glide, n8n, and Snowflake, and using Karbon’s API as the integration layer.

They've grown from zero to $5 million in revenue, with Karbon as the operational backbone at every stage.

This is Air Accounting's second Karbon Excellence Award, after winning the Client Excellence award in 2023/2024.

Finalists:

• Chaney & Associates, United States of America

• Bement & Company, United States of America

• Hiline, United States of America

• Accounts All Sorted, Australia

• Bright Line Financial Services, Canada

• Indinero, United States of America

• Air Accounting, Australia

• Iridium, South Africa

Karbon Excellence Award for Client Excellence

This award recognizes a firm delivering exceptional client service through innovation, trusted relationships, and consistent, measurable results that drive long-term success.

Winner: BPM LLP, United States of America

Delivering consistently exceptional client service is hard. Doing it at scale, across a large firm is even harder. But BPM is proof it can be done.

82% of their clients rate their service 9 or 10 out of 10, and 95.5% say BPM's relationship actively improves their business. Their NPS sits at around 80%, which is more than double the accounting profession's average.

Those numbers are backed by external recognition from ClearlyRated, Forbes, and Accounting Today year-after-year, and by the BPM1™ Service Model that keeps client feedback embedded in how the firm operates.

Finalists:

• Fridman & Associates, United States of America

• Acctivate Business Accountants, Australia

• Propeller Advisory, Australia

• RidgeWood CPA, Canada

• BPM LLP, United States of America

• Blackwood Bookkeeping Solutions, Australia

Karbon Excellence Award for Breakthrough Firm of the Year

This award recognizes a firm that has implemented Karbon within the past year and demonstrated remarkable results across innovation, operations, team culture, and client outcomes.

Winner: Blubooks, Canada

Blubooks implemented Karbon in October 2025 to solve a specific problem: they were partnering with major vertical SaaS companies on white-labeled bookkeeping at scale, but their systems couldn't keep pace.

Within months, one partner had more than doubled their active client base to 155 clients and was growing at 15 to 30 per month, and a second partner is tracking toward 300 new clients.

The team are former Bench Accounting employees who saw firsthand what bookkeeping at scale looks like, and what happens when the infrastructure fails. With Karbon as the foundation, they're building something that holds.

Finalists:

• Elevate Financial, Canada

• Birch & Co Limited, New Zealand

• Bement & Company, United States of America

• Blubooks, Canada

• Centurion Firm, United States of America

• Shapes, United Kingdom

Karbon Excellence Award for Practice Excellence

This is a major award that recognizes a firm that achieved extraordinary outcomes through visionary leadership, innovation, and sustained success that set new standards of excellence in the profession.

Winner: HD Growth Partners, United States of America

HD Growth Partners has had quite the journey with the Karbon Excellence Awards, showing that firms can continue to grow year-after-year. During the 2023/2024 Karbon Excellence Awards, HD Growth Partners won Breakthrough Firm of the Year. Then, in 2025, they won the Balance & Culture award.

This year, they’re the Karbon Excellence Award Practice Excellence winner. An impressive story of growth.

From four employees to over 80 through 14 strategic acquisitions, with a trajectory toward $15 million in revenue, HD Growth Partners scores 78% on Karbon’s Practice Excellence Scorecard, placing them in the Leader quartile globally, with perfect scores in Strategy Adoption, Organizational Management, and Change Management.

Their Level Up Program gives every team member transparent, real-time career goals with pathways to equity. On-time delivery runs at 90% against an industry average of 76%, NPS sits at +61 against an industry average of +38, and employee retention is 94%. Not only that, HD Growth Partners gives back to the profession by speaking at conferences, guiding peers, and sharing their knowledge with firms across the country.

Finalists:

• HD Growth Partners, United States of America

• Ookkee, United Kingdom

• Blueprint Accounting, Canada

• YBL, Canada

• Accounts All Sorted, Australia

• Protea Financial LLC, United States of America

• BNA CPAs & Advisors, United States of America

• Hawkins Priday Ltd, United Kingdom

• Novii CPA, United States of America

• Hiline, United States of America

Congratulations to all 2026 winners and finalists

The nominations this year were stronger than ever, and every firm that made it to the shortlist is doing work that deserves to be seen. Thank you for pushing the profession forward and inspiring Karbon to serve you better.

To learn more about the Karbon Excellence Awards, read and hear stories from past winners, and stay updated on the next awards cycle, visit the Karbon Excellence Awards hub.