Manual exports. Endless spreadsheets. Tight deadlines. They’re costing CPA firms time, accuracy, and sanity. Every engagement, from audits to financial due diligence to lease accounting, demands perfection under tighter timelines, shrinking headcount, and growing client expectations.
But the problem isn’t the work itself. It’s the workflow. Manual processes create roadblocks that overextend even the most capable teams.
Enter CPA firm automation. By reducing manual effort and eliminating redundancies, automation empowers firms to scale efficiently, enhance accuracy, and unlock their team’s true advisory potential.
In this blog, we’ll explore how CPA firm automation streamlines audits, due diligence, and lease accounting, and how adopting automation today lays the foundation for tomorrow’s AI-powered processes.
For most CPA firms, inefficient workflows drain productivity. Inconsistent client data and manual exports slow engagements and squeeze margins. It’s no wonder 92% of accounting professionals say they spend too much time on manual tasks.
CPA firm automation changes that. By standardizing workflows and eliminating repetitive tasks from the start, firms reclaim valuable hours that would otherwise be lost to administrative drag.
The results speak for themselves: firms using AI-powered workflow automation report time savings of 30–70% across key processes.
The payoff is easy to see for CPA firms. They see increased staff capacity, faster turnaround times, and stronger client relationships.
Traditional audits rely on a patchwork of manual data requests and never-ending email threads. Review cycles drag on as teams spend more time collecting and validating information than analyzing it. This leads to delayed deliverables and staff being stretched thin.
Through audit automation with data-extraction tools, auditors can securely pull trial balances, general ledgers, and more directly from client systems without wasting hours chasing data or reformatting. Standardized outputs mean audit teams start with clean, consistent data ready for testing. That not only saves time but enhances accuracy and audit quality.
Firms that embrace automation see faster sampling, shorter review cycles, and happier teams. Freed from busywork, auditors can focus on risk areas and professional judgment.
When Maxwell Locke & Ritter faced bottlenecks caused by late or incomplete client data, Partner Lesley Hargraves led the charge to automate. By adopting Crunchafi’s Data Extraction software, her team cut hours of manual prep and reduced client requests from dozens to just a few clicks.
“Crunchafi keeps us out of our clients’ systems but gives us the data we need in the format we’re great at,” she explains.
The result: faster audits and a smoother client experience. ML&R now even highlights its use of automation in proposals, turning efficiency into a competitive edge.
For financial due diligence (FDD) teams, time is money, and messy data burns both. Analysts often spend weeks collecting incomplete or inconsistent financials from sellers. Each missing document or mis-formatted export delays the process and adds hours of manual cleanup. By the time a clean databook is ready, the deal clock is already ticking down.
Instead of chasing files, teams can pull financials directly from client accounting systems in minutes through due diligence automation. Data extraction tools automatically standardize and validate information across platforms, producing Excel workbooks that are ready for immediate analysis with less reformatting and rework.
With due diligence automation, analysts start every engagement with clean, reliable data. Managers spend less time reviewing and more time advising clients on what the numbers mean and how they shape the transaction. Firms can handle higher volume without adding headcount and improving the quality and consistency of their outputs.
Riveron, a 1,000-person national advisory firm, sought to speed up deal prep and deepen its client analysis. According to their Transaction Services Manager:
“One of our largest pain points was data aggregation and processing—we’d spend hours on the front end of every deal performing mundane, data-related tasks.”
By adopting Crunchafi’s Data Extraction software, Riveron now saves hours on every project. Data aggregation that once took hours is now a single click, producing standardized Excel outputs for both Riveron and their clients. The result is faster deals, sharper insights, and a more collaborative client experience.
Lease accounting under ASC 842 (and GASB 87/96 for government entities) is complex and spreadsheet-based. Each formula, link, or version saved to the wrong folder introduces risk. One broken formula can derail disclosures and cause delays.
Lease accounting automation replaces manual chaos with structure and accuracy. Purpose-built lease accounting automation software automatically generates journal entries, amortization schedules, and quantitative footnote disclosures. Centralized lease data keeps every period and calculation consistent. There are no hidden tabs or broken links to worry about. With automated validation and audit-ready outputs, firms dramatically reduce human error while strengthening compliance.
The result is faster calculations and absolute confidence that every disclosure is airtight. Teams can spend less time troubleshooting formulas and more time advising clients on the strategic impact of lease obligations.
Rea & Associates, a Top 100 CPA and business advisory firm, knew spreadsheets weren’t sustainable for clients implementing ASC 842.
“If a client uses spreadsheets for lease accounting, it increases our workload and testing—spreadsheets are more susceptible to human error,” explains the Principal at Rea.
After evaluating options, Rea chose Crunchafi’s Lease Accounting software for its ease of use, guided tooltips, and unmatched support. The platform’s cloud-based accessibility and intuitive interface allow the firm to manage all client portfolios in one place, reducing errors and ensuring compliance across industries.
Now, Rea’s clients are not only compliant but confident. The firm, in turn, delivers faster results and a higher standard of service.
Artificial intelligence is only as good as the data it learns from, and that’s why automation is a necessity. Automation creates standardized and clean data, the essential foundation that AI needs to deliver accurate insights.
Firms that automate their workflows today are future-proofing their operations. By removing manual inconsistencies and centralizing financial data, they’re building the digital infrastructure that allows AI to analyze, predict, and optimize in ways humans simply can’t at scale.
When the time comes to integrate AI into audit analytics, due diligence modeling, or lease calculations, these firms will already have the quality data and standardized processes required for seamless adoption.
For any CPA firm, automation is the future. By automating audits, due diligence, and lease accounting, firms gain not only speed and accuracy but also the freedom to focus on strategy and growth.
With purpose-built tools like Crunchafi’s Data Extraction and Lease Accounting software, CPA firms can eliminate manual bottlenecks, simplify compliance, and start every engagement with clean, audit-ready data. You’ll get more efficient workflows and teams that are free to deliver deeper insights instead of rechecking spreadsheets.
If you want to see how Crunchafi can simplify complex workflows and automate processes for your CPA firm, schedule a demo today!
