AI

Is a 500% Productivity Increase with AI Possible for Accountants?  

A 500% increase in productivity sounds like the kind of claim accountants should question. 

And I think they should. 

So rather than debate the headline, let’s look at what actually happened. 

Less than 24 hours after one Practice Genius AI training session, an employee in Ian Crilly’s firm was completing a task in approximately 25% of the time it had taken before, while also progressing two accounting jobs in parallel.  

That is what makes this story worth paying attention to. 

Over the past six weeks, directors and partners using Practice Genius AI were invited to take part in a 30-day productivity challenge. The proposition was deliberately ambitious: use PGAI properly, with training and support, and test whether it could create a major productivity uplift inside the firm. 

At the top tier of the challenge, the target was a 500% increase in productivity, backed by a 100% money-back guarantee. Ian Crilly was one of the accountants who accepted the challenge.  

The result was not simply about doing the same work faster. It showed what can happen when you change how the work moves through the firm.

One training session changed the workflow 

Ian attended a brief training session with one of his employees. 

During the session, we demonstrated how the team could upload a profit and loss statement and balance sheet into a custom agentic employee tax agent inside Practice Genius AI. 

We also showed them how multiple browser windows could be used so that several accounting jobs could be progressed at the same time.  

Within less than 24 hours, Ian’s employee was already applying the workflow. 

According to Ian’s feedback, she was producing the result in approximately 25% of the time it had taken before and was completing two jobs in parallel. 

What caught my attention was not just the speed. 

The employee had not suddenly gained another decade of experience. Ian had not hired another accountant. The firm had not added more hours to the day. 

They had changed the way the work was being done. 
That is where the productivity gain started. 

What the 500% productivity claim really means

This is where we need to be careful. 

A 500% productivity increase does not mean every task in an accounting firm will suddenly become five times faster. 

Different jobs have different levels of complexity. Some require more judgement. Some require more review. Some are better suited to AI-assisted accounting workflows than others. 

Ian’s result should also not be reduced to one neat percentage without understanding what sits behind it. 

There were two productivity changes happening at the same time. 

First, the task itself was being completed in roughly a quarter of the previous time. 
Second, more than one accounting job could now be progressed in parallel. 

That changes throughput considerably. 

The exact percentage will always depend on the workflow; the baseline being measured and how productivity is calculated. 

But Ian’s experience shows something more useful than arguing over whether one result is exactly 400%, 500% or another number. 

It shows that very large productivity gains can become possible when you redesign the workflow rather than simply asking people to work faster. 

That is the part accounting firm owners should be interested in.

The bigger win was moving work off the partner’s desk

The most important part of Ian’s result was not the time saving. 
It was where the work ended up. 

The task was no longer sitting with the director or partner. An employee was now capable of moving that work forward with the support of Practice Genius AI.  

That matters because one of the biggest capacity problems inside accounting firms is not necessarily a lack of people. 

It is that too much work still depends on the most experienced and expensive people in the firm. 

A team member gets most of the way through a job and then needs the director. A question comes up and they need the partner. Something becomes slightly more technical, and the work moves back upstairs. 

The partner becomes the safety net for the entire production system. That is expensive, and eventually it becomes exhausting. 

If the partner simply uses AI to complete their own work faster, the firm gains some efficiency, but the bottleneck has not really moved. 

The partner is still the bottleneck. 

Ian’s example points to something more valuable. 

AI can help close the capability gap between the employee doing the work and the senior person who previously had to step in and finish it. 

That is where productivity starts becoming leverage.

How AI can improve accounting firm productivity without removing judgement

 There is an important distinction here. Practice Genius AI is not designed to remove the accountant from the process.

Professional judgement still matters. Review still matters. Quality control still matters.

The PGAI approach is to use AI as a support layer for work such as research, structuring, analysis and drafting, while the accountant remains responsible for professional judgement and final review.

That matters because productivity should never come at the expense of quality.

The goal is not to push inexperienced people into work they are not ready for. The goal is to give capable people better tools so they can get more work to a high-quality, reviewable stage without constantly depending on the partner.

That is a very different proposition.

When AI is used this way, the question stops being, “How much work can we automate?”

A better question is: How much more capable can we make the people already inside the firm?

That is a much more useful way to think about AI productivity for accountants.

How AI-assisted accounting workflows change the economics of the firm 

Most accounting workflows are still largely sequential. 

A person opens a job, starts the work, hits a roadblock, waits for information, asks someone a question, moves to something else and then comes back later trying to remember where they left off. 

There is a lot of hidden waste inside that stop-start cycle. 

Ian’s team was shown another model. 

While one AI-assisted workflow is progressing, the employee can move another job forward. Instead of attention being tied to one task from beginning to end, multiple structured pieces of work can progress together. 

That is where AI becomes more than a faster way to draft an email or research a technical question. 

It starts changing how work moves through the firm. 

You get better use of the team, less waiting, fewer unnecessary interruptions, more jobs reaching review stage and less dependence on one senior person to keep everything moving. 

For an accounting firm struggling with capacity, that can have a much bigger impact than simply shaving a few minutes off an individual task. 

It creates room for the partner to spend more time on review, client relationships, advisory work and the higher-value decisions that actually require their experience. 

The question every accounting firm should ask next 

So, is a 500% increase in productivity possible? 

In the right workflow, with the right person, the right training and the right way of measuring the result, substantial productivity gains are absolutely possible. 

Ian Crilly’s experience gives us a practical example of what that can look like: one training session, an employee applying the process within 24 hours, a task being completed in approximately 25% of the previous time, and two accounting jobs being progressed in parallel. 

But I think there is an even better question for firm owners to ask: 
Which work is still sitting with the wrong person? 

Look at the jobs that repeatedly come back to you. Look at the tasks your team can almost complete but still need you to rescue. Look at the work that is too low-value for a partner but still too difficult for an unsupported employee. 

That is where I would start. 

Pick one measurable workflow. Understand how long it takes today. Train one capable team member. Use AI to support the work. Then measure what changes in time, quality, throughput, and partner involvement. 

You do not need to transform the whole firm at once. 

Start with one job that needs to move. 

Because the real opportunity with AI is not simply to get the same work done faster. It is to build a firm where growth is no longer limited by how much work the partner can personally carry. 

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