If you bill by the hour and AI halves the job, it halves the invoice. The question was never how much time you get back. It is what that time is worth once you have it. We build the systems that turn recovered hours into work clients will pay for.
Show Me What This Looks LikeAligned Intelligence builds AI workflows for small accounting and tax firms: an AI governance file for Circular 230, an automated document chase, client-ready draft prep, and reconciliation triage. Work starts with the AI Ignition Package, which averages about $3,500 and runs about four weeks, then continues against a prioritized roadmap in 90-day cycles. Delivery is fully remote and async-first, for US firms of roughly 5 to 20 people.
Ask a business owner what happens if AI lets their accountant finish in half the time, and most say the fee should stay flat or come down.
Ask a different question and the answer flips.
81% say their accountant is more valuable when AI handles the routine work and the time goes into monthly strategy conversations. 51% would rather have it back in three days with a risk review than in two weeks the old way.
Selling speed loses. Selling what you do with the time wins.
That is a pricing decision before it is a software decision, and it is the one worth getting right first.
Karbon, Future of Client Trust in the Age of AI, July 2026, 350 US business owners. Vendor-commissioned, reported by Accounting Today.
In June the Office of Professional Responsibility issued its first guidance on AI in federal tax practice. It applies Circular 230 to how you use these tools, and one part is about money.
The guidance says practitioners should disclose the AI activities performed and fairly credit clients for cost reductions. It also warns about billing for time you did not actually work, or double billing for AI-assisted tasks. Where there is a pattern, that may fall foul of the fee rules.
Three months before it landed, 28% of tax practitioners using AI said they planned to keep their hourly rates and simply keep the time they saved.
Most of them have not read the alert.
IRS Office of Professional Responsibility, Alert 2026-19, 24 June 2026. Introductory guidelines interpreting existing rules, federal tax practice only. Commentators differ on how far the fee expectation goes, and there is no enforcement history yet.
Policy, tool register, verification log. Three documents.
Circular 230 puts the supervising practitioner on the hook for firm procedures. Applied to AI, that means knowing which tools touch client data and what you have told clients. It also means showing that a human reviewed the output.
We build the three artifacts and the process that keeps them current. Most firms have none of it, and 90% of tax practitioners are running client work through consumer chatbots that were never covered by an agreement.
The biggest time drain in the practice, and the one nobody enjoys.
Getting documents out of clients now ranks as the single biggest workflow problem in small firms, ahead of manual admin.
We build the chase as a system. It knows what is outstanding and from whom. It escalates on a schedule, stops the moment something arrives, and hands off to you before the tone gets sharp. It meets clients in email and text rather than behind a portal login, because the login is where these things die.
One thing we will not promise: automation compresses your effort, not theirs. An unresponsive client stays unresponsive. What changes is that chasing them stops costing you evenings.
They ran it through a chatbot and it disagreed with you.
Seven in ten practitioners have had a client challenge their advice using AI output. Some of them are now spending hours a month on it, unbilled.
We build the rebuttal library. The answers consumer models reliably get wrong on common positions, each with the correct treatment and the authority behind it, ready when a client raises one. Plus the engagement letter language covering AI in both directions, yours and theirs.
The position it puts you in is the right one. The chatbot is a starting point. You are the one signing the return.
More than half of firms fired clients last year.
The cheapest way to fix a client list is to stop adding to it. Most practices work this out by hand, in a call, after the relationship has already started.
We score inbound enquiries against what your genuinely profitable clients look like, then route them. Accept, decline with a referral, or flag for a closer look. Declining well is part of the build, because a good referral keeps the relationship.
Research got faster. Checking it did not.
AI use in tax research nearly doubled in a year. The problem arrived with it: models invent authorities that sound right, and the diligence rules say verification cannot be delegated.
We build research that cannot answer without a citation, and a verification step that confirms every authority actually exists and says what the draft claims. Anything it cannot source, it hands to you rather than guessing. The log it produces is also the evidence that you reviewed the work.
The AI Ignition Package. One scoped engagement to get started.
Your tools, your workflow, your data, where the time goes. You get it in writing.
Ranked by payoff and effort. The roadmap is yours either way.
Live, tested, handed over.
You finish with a plan and with proof it works in your practice.
Delivery is async, which matters more here than most places. You will not lose an afternoon to a status call in March. Documentation comes standard, so the systems stay yours. We take on a small number of clients at a time and scope accordingly.
A week, per recruiter. A six step intake workflow that absorbed the repetitive front end of hiring.
A week of data entry, gone. Automatic record enrichment and scoring inside a CRM.
Less manual research. An enrichment pipeline that replaced hand-built lists.
Every number here comes from a system we built and measured. None of them are from an accounting practice yet, and we would rather say so than borrow someone else's. Read the builds →
The document chase. Getting records out of clients is the biggest workflow drain in most small firms, ahead of manual admin. A chase built as a system knows what is outstanding, escalates on a schedule, and stops the moment something arrives. Right behind it sits an AI governance file, because Circular 230 puts firm procedures on the supervising practitioner.
Yes. In June 2026 the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility issued introductory guidance applying Circular 230 to AI use in federal tax practice. It expects practitioners to keep a human in the loop, protect client data, and reflect AI cost savings in billing. It did not create a standalone AI disclosure rule for accountants.
Only if you sell speed. Business owners say an accountant is more valuable when saved time goes into strategy conversations, not when the invoice shrinks. The systems here are built so recovered hours move to advisory work clients will pay for.
That is scoped before any build. Most firms are running client work through consumer chatbots that were never covered by an agreement. Part of the engagement is moving that work onto tools with the right data terms and a verification log that shows a human reviewed the output.
The AI Ignition Package averages about $3,500, runs about four weeks, and covers an AI Readiness Review, an AI Opportunity Audit, and one live workflow. Larger quarterly engagements are quoted after that audit sets the scope.
Describe how the practice runs and what eats your week. We will send back a short breakdown of what we would build first, what it would take, and what it would not fix.
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