Accounting Firm Operations: Amy McCarty, AJ Zepeda & Melanie on Fixing Workflow Bottlenecks

Growing an accounting firm creates an interesting problem.

The systems that worked when you had a handful of clients usually do not work forever.

More clients create more recurring work. More employees create more handoffs. More services create more complexity. Before long, firm owners start asking the same questions:

Where is work getting stuck?

Who has too much on their plate?

Why is onboarding taking so long?

Are clients getting responses quickly enough?

What should we automate?

And at what point do we actually need someone dedicated to operations?

I recently sat down with three people who spend a lot of time thinking about exactly these questions: Amy McCarty, Director of Operations at Dillon Business Advisors; AJ Zepeda, co-founder and COO of Maverick; and Melanie from Sorren.

The conversation covered accounting firm workflow management, capacity planning, client onboarding, AI, operational KPIs, and one of the hardest transitions for a growing firm: handing operational responsibility to someone other than the owner.

What stood out to me was that none of them had one magic system.

Instead, they had built habits that make operational problems visible before those problems become crises.

And that is probably the biggest lesson from the entire discussion.

You cannot improve a workflow you cannot see.

Start With Workflow Visibility

I asked the panel what habits they use to identify bottlenecks.

Amy’s answer was simple: watch whether work is moving.

At Dillon Business Advisors, the team uses its practice management system to see what is sitting on everyone’s plate. Amy reviews workflow weekly and looks for work that is getting stuck or employees who may be overloaded.

That distinction matters.

Knowing that you have 200 open tasks is useful. Knowing that 30 of those tasks have not moved in three weeks is much more actionable.

Aging work can reveal:

• Capacity problems
• Missing client information
• Unclear ownership
• Broken handoffs
• Training gaps
• Poorly designed processes

Instead of asking only, “What is overdue?”, start asking:

Give Recurring Work a Consistent Cadence

AJ shared a practical example from Maverick.

Whenever a new client begins onboarding, the firm creates a temporary Slack channel. That makes the new engagement highly visible and gives AJ one place to follow its progress.

Their onboarding manager also has Tuesdays dedicated to onboarding. Every onboarding client gets touched and moved forward on a predictable cadence.

The specific day is not important.

The principle is:

Recurring work needs a recurring cadence.

The same applies to monthly bookkeeping, tax preparation, client follow-ups, payroll, review work, and hundreds of other activities inside an accounting firm.

Your Team Can Reveal Problems Your Dashboard Cannot

Melanie uses another valuable feedback mechanism: office hours.

Every other week, she holds a 30-minute session where employees can bring operational questions and problems. Those conversations sometimes uncover surprisingly simple issues.

In one case, team members were struggling to see what their teams were working on inside their practice management system.

The solution was not another software tool.

They simply needed to learn how to use an existing work view. A few minutes of training solved the problem.

That is worth remembering as firms continue adding technology.

Sometimes you do not need another tool.

You need to use the tool you already have better.

AI Can Help, But Judgment Still Matters

We also talked extensively about AI.

I shared a story about my garage door breaking. I gave ChatGPT photos, explained the problem, and worked through its recommendations.

Eventually, I called a professional.

Within about a minute, he asked whether I had checked the breaker.

I had not.

That was the problem.

There is an important lesson for accounting firms here.

AI can research, summarize, organize, and automate an enormous amount of work.

But context, experience, and professional judgment still matter.

The goal should not be to remove humans from every process.

It should be to determine where technology creates leverage.

How Accounting Firms Are Using AI in Operations

The panel shared several practical examples.

Melanie uses Microsoft Copilot for meeting notes, action items, follow-ups, call summaries, and retrieving information from previous conversations.

AJ uses Claude to help identify inconsistencies across the firm’s systems. Instead of trying to clean everything at once, he gives AI narrow problems, such as finding clients with missing EINs and checking other systems for the information.

Amy’s team has also been experimenting with Claude. Team members are identifying repeatable use cases that could become standardized skills, including responding to IRS notices and automating parts of workpaper preparation.

The common pattern is important.

These firms are not asking AI to “run the accounting firm.”

They are giving it defined operational problems.

Do Not Automate a Process You Do Not Understand

Melanie shared one of my favorite lessons from the panel.

During a practice management rollout, her instinct was to automatically move recurring work from existing systems into the new platform.

Instead, teams were asked to manually review their work.

That slower process uncovered clients receiving work outside their scope, engagements that needed additional time, pricing issues, and processes that needed to be reconsidered.

As Melanie put it:

AI makes automation easier.

That makes process discipline more important, not less.

If the underlying workflow is broken, automating it may simply help you make the same mistake faster.

Do Not Rush Client Onboarding

AJ applies a similar philosophy to onboarding.

Maverick tells clients onboarding may take eight to twelve weeks. The team collects the necessary information in stages before accounting work begins.

Operations handles the initial process. Once everything is ready, the engagement moves to accounting and eventually into the recurring workflow. Clients receive weekly or biweekly touchpoints along the way.

I liked the principle behind AJ’s approach:

Start when ready.

If you need ten things to complete the work correctly and the client has provided eight, starting anyway does not necessarily make you faster.

It often moves the bottleneck somewhere else.

Track Operational KPIs That Lead to Action

Good workflow management also requires knowing what to measure.

The panel highlighted metrics including:

Amy also made an important point about capacity planning.

Do not look only at the five returns currently sitting on someone’s plate if another 25 are moving toward them.

You need visibility into current and future workload.

That is the difference between reacting to a capacity problem and seeing it coming.

When Should You Hire an Operations Leader?

As firms grow, owners eventually reach another bottleneck: themselves.

AJ pointed out that hiring a full-time operations executive is not the only option. Firms can initially use fractional or contract operations professionals to reduce the owner’s workload, improve systems, and determine what type of permanent role the firm actually needs.

Melanie suggested looking internally too.

The person who enjoys improving processes, experimenting with technology, and solving implementation problems may already be on your team. That is how her own accounting background eventually led her toward an operations role.

But Amy added the piece owners cannot overlook.

Once you find that person, you have to let them operate.

Hiring an operations leader while requiring owner approval for every decision simply creates another bottleneck.

Better Workflows Create Capacity

The biggest takeaway from our conversation is that capacity is not just about headcount.

Better workflows can create capacity.

Better onboarding can create capacity.

Clearer ownership can create capacity.

Training can create capacity.

Automation can create capacity.

And better visibility can help you use the capacity you already have.

That is why accounting firm workflow management becomes increasingly important as a firm grows.

You need to know what needs to happen, who owns it, when it is due, what is coming next, and where work is getting stuck.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is accounting firm workflow management?

Accounting firm workflow management is the process of organizing, assigning, tracking, and improving recurring client work so teams know what needs to happen, who owns it, and when it is due.

How can accounting firms identify workflow bottlenecks?

Look for aging work, overdue tasks, repeated client dependencies, overloaded employees, slow handoffs, and work that has stopped progressing.

How can AI improve accounting firm operations?

AI can support meeting summaries, follow-ups, data cleanup, information retrieval, process documentation, and repetitive administrative work. Firms should first make sure the underlying workflow is clear and standardized.

What operational KPIs should accounting firms track?

Useful metrics include aging work, upcoming workload, on-time completion, client response time, utilization, outstanding work, and employee retention.

When should an accounting firm hire an operations leader?

Consider dedicated operations support when managing workflows, capacity, systems, and process improvements is consuming too much owner or leadership time. Firms can start with an internal team member or fractional operations support before making a senior full-time hire.

The Bottom Line

Scaling an accounting firm does not start with adding more people or buying more software.

It starts with making the work visible.

Know what is moving. Know what is stuck. Know what is coming next. Standardize what works before you automate it. And when you give someone responsibility for operations, give them enough authority to actually improve it.

AI will change how much administrative work teams need to perform.

But the firms that benefit most will still need strong workflows underneath it.

Before you automate the work, you need to understand how the work should move through the firm.

Last Updated: September 2026

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