Got a question? Text me!

75% of CPAs are nearing retirement — and it might not be the crisis everyone says it is.

In this episode of CAS Minute, Roman challenges the profession's favorite panic stat. The US has shed roughly 340,000 accountants in five years, three-quarters of CPAs are aging out, and software companies love to cite those numbers as the reason firms need to hand over the work. But Roman argues firms are solving the wrong problem: the CPA shortage isn't the real constraint.

Whether you're a firm owner rethinking your next hire, a CAS leader trying to expand capacity without expanding headcount, or an operations lead building a modern accounting team, this episode reframes the talent conversation around output and systems maturity instead of letters after a name — and shows how Full Send actually screens for it.

⏱️ Chapters
00:00 – Intro and a Claude Coincidence
01:42 – Is the CPA Shortage Really the Problem?
03:19 – The CPA Badge as a Decaying Trust Signal
03:45 – Competing for the Wrong Scarce Input
04:58 – Where the Credential Still Matters
05:15 – What This Means for Your Hiring
07:23 – How We Hire: Curiosity and Communication

✅ Key Takeaways

• The "75% nearing retirement" stat reads as an existential threat mostly because firms still measure capacity in credentialed headcount — a model AI is quietly dismantling.
• The CPA badge historically signaled trust; increasingly that trust is carried by clean data, working systems, and clear outcomes, not the credential itself.
• Chasing the CPA pipeline means bidding against every other firm for an input that's getting less scarce; the real bottleneck is systems, judgment, and communication talent.

Thanks for listening! Come Say Hi 👋

Full Send | Accounting & Data

LinkedIn: Roman Villard, CPA
X: @FullSendCPA
YouTube: Full Send - Accounting & Data
Data Podcast: Data Fuel

Got a question? Text me!

Should accounting firms build their own software instead of buying it? For years that was a joke for a firm this size—now we can stand up a working internal tool in an hour, and it changes the entire build-vs-buy question.

In this episode of CAS Minute, Roman picks up where episode 107 ("services are the new software") left off and asks what firms should actually do about growing vendor risk now that AI tools like Claude and Cursor have collapsed the cost of building and maintaining internal tooling.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Should Firms Build Their Own Software?
00:46 – People Are Coding Their Own Replacements Now
01:57 – Why Vendor Risk Makes This Urgent
03:32 – Commodity Infrastructure vs. Your IP Layer
06:43 – What "Building" Actually Means in 2026
07:54 – The Maintenance Tax
08:40 – The Build-vs-Buy Filter
10:54 – What This Means for Your Firm
12:19 – Build the Brain, Rent the Plumbing

✅ Key Takeaways

• Building your own tools went from irrational to viable—AI collapsed the cost of building and maintaining internal tooling by an order of magnitude.
• Rent the commodity infrastructure: QBO, Gusto, Mercury, bank feeds, and payroll compliance are still the gold standard and not worth rebuilding.
• Build the IP and context layer that makes your firm you—close logic, client-specific rules, exception handling, and how you deliver advisory.
• "Building" in 2026 means internal tools, agents, and scripts on top of rented infrastructure—not shipping a SaaS product or hiring a dev team.

Thanks for listening! Come Say Hi 👋

Full Send | Accounting & Data

LinkedIn: Roman Villard, CPA
X: @FullSendCPA
YouTube: Full Send - Accounting & Data
Data Podcast: Data Fuel

Got a question? Text me!

Is value-based pricing still the gold standard for CAS firms—or has the market changed? In this episode of CAS Minute, Roman explores why traditional value pricing may be challenged as AI reshapes accounting services. He discusses why many firms still price based on effort instead of outcomes, how fixed-fee pricing is evolving, and what a modern hybrid pricing model could look like.

Whether you’re struggling with scope creep, pricing consistency, or communicating your firm’s value, this episode offers a practical framework for building pricing that scales with both your clients and your business.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Is Value-Based Pricing Still Relevant?

02:15 – How AI Is Changing Pricing Expectations

05:24 – Why Traditional Value Pricing Often Fails

06:55 – Defining Outcomes Instead of Selling Hours

08:38 – Building a Modern Hybrid Pricing Model

10:03 – The Future of CAS Pricing

✅ Key Takeaways

• Value-based pricing isn’t dead—but vague definitions of “value” are becoming harder to defend.
• Many firms still estimate hours first and simply repackage them as value pricing.
• AI is compressing routine accounting work, making business outcomes more important than effort.
• Fixed-fee pricing creates greater consistency when paired with clearly defined deliverables, boundaries, and change-order policies.
• Strong pricing models clearly define outcomes, delivery cadence, access to advisors, and scope limitations.
• Hybrid pricing models that combine base recurring fees, advisory tiers, complexity factors, and project pricing may offer the greatest long-term flexibility.
• The firms that win won’t have the cleverest pricing—they’ll have the clearest pricing model that clients understand and trust.

Thanks for listening! Come Say Hi 👋

Full Send | Accounting & Data

LinkedIn: Roman Villard, CPA
X: @FullSendCPA
YouTube: Full Send - Accounting & Data
Data Podcast: Data Fuel