Building the accounting firm of the future

Just 12 months since our launch last year, we’re excited to share more than 3,000 businesses have switched over to Kick.

Kick is built for the Bookkeeper

The goal when we started Kick was to apply AI to automate the boring stuff.

In the process we did something that may seem crazy upfront..

We dedicated one person’s time to the actual service of bookkeeping.

This started with yours truly..heck I’ve even changed my official title at Kick to “Bookkeeper.”

While I came in with the background of starting my own bookkeeping business in high school 20 years ago, I quickly ran into modern limitations — I needed to build Kick in order to handle more clients, without hiring more people.

In the industry, it’s common to see Bookkeeper to business ratio of 1:30.

But after more than 4 years of work I can share that today:

Kick has 1 Bookkeeper closing the books for 311 businesses.

Here’s what it took to go 10X what was possible:

1. Technical depth — We went deep and built Kick on our own secure multi-book ledger architecture, with direct integrations with the best products including Stripe, Gusto, Ramp, PayPal and others.
2. Automation — We focused on the core bookkeeping workflows of multi-step categorization and automated document import/reconciliation.
3. Narrowed scope — We narrowed our focus from a Monthly to an Annual close, and referred Business Owners to Firm partners in our network who wanted more frequent interaction or industry specific adjustments.

The result: a more valuable firm, that offers bookkeeping at half the price.

A glimpse into tomorrow’s firm

If you’re building a firm around traditional bookkeeping margins, these numbers should get your attention.

The dozens of firm owners we work with however are seeing a different trend.

While the traditional accounting firm maintained 20–30% margins and was valued at 1X Revenue, we’re now seeing firms with double these margins and valuation multiples of up to 3X Revenue.

It’s the firms who are embracing advances in AI not only from Kick, but across their technology stack, who will thrive and build more value for their clients.

Some other observations on the firm of the future:

• Domain expertise — As automation handles more routine work, specialization in a niche such as SaaS, Ecommerce or Construction becomes even more valuable.
• Full service — When you own the client relationship you have the unique ability to cross sell all the right solutions — from advisory to invoicing, tax, payroll, banking and even bookkeeping.
• Firm brands — As you introduce higher-margin advisory services, your reputation will become increasingly how you differentiate and justify those higher rates in your niche.
• Reviewer > Preparer — Just as we’ve seen at Kick, AI will be there for your first draft, and turn and evolve you and your team into reviewers, instead of preparers.
• Build and buy — Along with partnering with technology companies, firms will increasingly build their own products and agents themselves.
• Accelerated mastery — It used to take years of work to earn your way up the accounting career ladder. While it may be increasingly difficult to break into accounting for those early in their career, the undersupply of talent and AI tools can be used to accelerate learning time and early exposure to clients.

The future of accounting is here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.

Firms using a modern tech stack will command higher multiples, attract better talent, and serve more clients profitably.

Firms that don’t modernize will struggle to compete as client expectations rise and margins compress. We’re building for you.

Thankful for your support

Huge thanks to Echo Zhong and Anthony Sanchez (Zhong & Sanchez), Stephen Pennington (NFS), Scott Hoover (Hoover Financial), Eoin Coney and Andrew Weinhardt (Blubooks), Tapan Ramachandran (Otterz) and Ron Saharyan and Billie Anne Grigg (Profit First Professionals) who have turned to Kick to scale their firms.

Originally released on Medium.