And then it wasn't. And now, years later, there is a measurable and widening gap between the firms that did that work and the firms that didn't. The firms that did it can take on more clients, service them better, and run a more predictable, less chaotic operation. The firms that didn't are still patching the same gaps with the same overtime hours.

Today, even with all the evidence, a significant number of accounting firms still haven't adopted modern practice management. The reason is almost always the same: the upfront investment of time feels too costly when there's client work to bill. The pullback feels like something they can't afford.

But in truth, the cost of inaction is higher than they realize. And we're about to learn that lesson again, at a much larger scale, with AI.

The real prize isn't just efficiency. It's the profession itself.

Here's where I think the conversation usually stops short. We talk about AI in accounting in terms of productivity, doing more work in less time. That's true and it matters. But it undersells what's actually at stake.

The accounting profession is struggling to attract the next generation of talent. And the reason isn't pay or prestige. It's the deal. The implicit bargain that a career in accounting has historically required: your nights, your weekends, your family dinners, your health, your January-through-April (for US firms, and the equivalent busy periods for other regions). Entire seasons of your life, every year, in exchange for a career.

Younger professionals have looked at that deal and said no. And honestly, they're right to.

The firms that rebuild now aren't just buying efficiency. They're buying the ability to offer their people a different deal.

When you've genuinely rebuilt your workflows around AI, when compliance work that used to take three hours takes twenty minutes, when client communication is automated without losing the human touch, when your team is doing more advisory work and less data entry, the math on that deal changes. The practice runs itself more. People run the practice less.

That's the propulsion. That's what's on the other end of the slingshot.

What's waiting on the other side

The firms pulling back right now are going to emerge with something qualitatively different from what they have today. Not just faster workflows, but actual agents working inside their practice. Doing client communication. Flagging exceptions. Answering questions about their own firm's performance in plain language. The pullback is clearing space for a foundational shift in how we work. 

You don't have to do this alone

The last thing I'll say, both from my own experience and from watching our customers navigate this, is that the rebuilding phase is significantly harder without the right partners.

At Karbon, we're in the slingshot ourselves. Our entire go-to-market approach, how we create content, how we enable our sales team, and how we communicate with customers, is being rebuilt from the ground up. And there are days when I look at the hours I'm investing in building workflows that don't yet match what I could produce manually, and I have to consciously remind myself: this is the pullback. This is the point.

The technology partners you choose right now matter enormously. Not just for what their software does today, but for what they're building toward and whether their roadmap is designed around how accounting firms actually work, not adapted from something built for someone else. The right partner absorbs much of the tension and pain of the pullback with you. The wrong one just adds to it.

The slingshot moment is real. And the propulsion, for the firms and teams willing to invest in the pullback now, is going to be something we haven't seen before.