Every October, we have the same conversation with accounting firm owners. Last tax season was rough. The fall deadlines are getting worse. And then they ask: Is it just us?
It isn't. But “everyone's in the same boat” is no help. What helps is knowing what better looks like.
When Tom started working with us, his firm was a four-partner practice doing about $1.6M. Over the following tax seasons, they let go of 500 to 600 clients. When we interviewed him on one of our member calls, someone asked whether revenue dropped as a result.
“Did we see any kind of a reduction as a result of the client pruning that we did? No. And did we become more profitable? Yes.”
The firm grew to around $2.8M from 244 client groups, averaging about $11,000 each. Tom went from six client appointments a day during tax season to very few.
One important part of his story is this: When we first told the firm to set a minimum price of $750, they settled on a lower price. In Tom's words: “One of the worst things that we did. We should have done exactly what Renew said.”
A few years later, Renew firms average well over $1,000 as a minimum. Firms that have been with Renew for more than three years average $2,311.
The pattern we see most often is that partners don't regret going too far. They regret going too slowly.
Every firm that works with us runs our Pareto for Profit™ analysis when they join and again every year. The data enables us to create our annual Benchmark Report. Today, we’re making the 2026 report available so you can see how your firm compares.
Download the Renew 2026 Benchmark Report
Here are some of the key numbers we track with firms over their first three years of working with Renew:
If your biggest problem is finding and keeping good people—like most of the profession—look closely at that attrition number.
The firms at 7.9% are not better recruiters. They have fewer clients nobody wants to serve, prices that enable team members to be properly rewarded for the value they help create, and partners who are not working at 11 p.m. in March.
In fact, many of our firms are attracting tax candidates because they promote on their websites that they have a defined target client and focus on working with clients who will work with the firm throughout the year.
Vague goals are why most firms end up repeating tax season. “Work less” and “better clients” aren't targets. These are:
Some accountants read that list and say it can't be done in their market. Tom's firm is in a rural area. The market isn't the issue. Not making the firm the #1 client is.
Tom's story didn't stop at a better firm. More recently, we used our Transition services to help him merge with another local firm that had been acquired by a national “consolidator.”
That only happened because of the work that came before it. A firm with around 244 client groups at $11,000 each, sensible hours and a solid team has options. A firm with 600 clients at $1,500 each, extreme tax and fall deadline-season hours, and a model held together by partners billing lots of hours finds its options limited.
That's how we work with firms from end to end: fix the model first, grow on the right foundation, and, when the time comes, transition on your terms and your timeline.
Download the 2026 Benchmark Report. Compare your own numbers to ours and to the targets above.
Then pick the number that is furthest from target. That gap is your tax season, and the decisions that matter—which clients to transition out, your minimum price and how you re-engage clients—need to be made this quarter.
Leave them until December and you are on track to repeat tax season.
Download the Renew 2026 Benchmark Report
Text us at 317.496.2192
if you want to talk it through.
