The word has modernized, so is accounting. 

Future books is an idea of a two person (+ AI agents) accounting firm, serving (insert very specific niche) businesses based in BC, Canada. This idea was created by Reid Schretlen, you can connect with him on LinkedIn. The purpose of this landing page is to act as an “elevator pitch” to explain the business model concept and to help find a CPA cofounder / business partner. This land page is not:

  • a business plan.

  • a GTM (go to market) plan.

  • a marketing, sales, or client facing asset.

  • a name or brand that clients will see or interact with.

All of those items will be built out once the partnership is formalized. This landing page also has assumptions, claims, guesses, and other statements that need to be properly researched and validated. That will all happen as part of formalizing a partnership agreement and creating a first 12 months business plan. If any of the following content jumps out as wildly inaccurate please feel free to message Reid on LinkedIn and tell him how wrong he is 😅

Why This,Why Now?

Two market forces are reshaping accounting right now. If we can get in the middle of both of them there’s an opportunity to make an impact for us and our clients: 

Outdated Client Experiences
Many BC based SMBs frustrated with the outdated client experiences they receive from their accountant or tax professional. Business owners and operators use modern tech in their personal life, but their accounting systems and their accountant still run on what is now very old technology. Keeping with the status quo is also leading some accountants to deliver a lacklustre, reactive, experience. There is an opportunity to delver accounting services in a more modern, tech enabled way and wow clients with proactive care.

AI Technology
The COGS (cost of goods sold) of accounting services is plummeting. AI isn’t coming, it’s here. We are at start of what will be a multi year market transition, modern accountants are already using AI to turn work that used to take hours or days into work that takes minutes. Put another way, the demand for and value of accounting work remains strong, but the cost to deliver that work has been forever changed (greatly reduced). This will lead to strong profit margins for firms who can effectively deploy AI.

In short, I think there is a opportunity to launch an accounting firm that is focused on creating industry leading client experiences while also leveraging AI technology to keep costs low. The way we will win is by mixing a high quality client experience with high quality service delivery, built on an AI native foundation of business processes and operations. This won’t be easy, but I think it will be worth it.

What follows is a high level plan, my attempt to articulate how I think we’ll actually pull this off.

What Will We Sell?

Monthly Accounting services for entrepreneurs and SMBs. The financial recording and record keeping all businesses need. The accurate financial data that underpins all other accounting and tax services.

Tax services for entrepreneurs and SMBs. Prepare and file all tax things (GST, tax returns, etc) and provide tax planning and tax strategies.

Advisory services for entrepreneurs and SMBs. This is pretty open ended, and is a really exciting aspect of running a modern accounting firm. This is all of the value added things we can do based on being good at monthly accounting and tax. For example, advanced cashflow modeling, multi-scenario business strategy modeling, predictive analytics, AI training for SMBs (how to start with AI, practical use cases for AI), how to secure grants to help fund the growth of your tech startup, how to secure debt financing, how to secure venture capital, how to expand to the US market, best practices for ecommerce and crypto currency accounting, non profit financial governance, strata corporation accounting, tax credits for hobby farms, managing cashflow for a seasonal tourism business in the Okanagan region. The world is our oyster here, we can specialize in anything we want to, as long as it brings value to our clients and we can deliver it at a profit.

Billing & Payments
We will aim to bill fixed fees, on the first of each month. Our minimum monthly fee will be $1,000 per month. If a client’s can’t afford that they aren’t a good fit. We will also monitor for scope creep and bill ad-hoc as needed to cover out of scope work. Advisory projects that don’t make sense to bill monthly will be billed via a deposit and then at set milestones throughout the project. All payments will be collected online via either credit card or PAD, and if a client pays via credit card we will surcharge the credit card processing fee. Every client will also get a price increase every 12 months if they are paying monthly for services.

Who We’ll Sell It To

We will pick a single, very specific industry niche for the first 12 months. For example: 

  • Physiotherapy practices in BC who use Jane app with 2 to 10 practitioners in the firm and annual revenues of $500K to $5M.

  • SaaS companies who are registered in BC with Series A or Series B funded, with $1M to $15M in annual revenue and 5 to 50 employees.

  • SaaS companies who are bootstrapped with $1M to $10M in annual revenue and now need to secure financing or investment to grow to the next level.

  • Residential/Commercial electrical trades businesses based in BC, with 2 to 20 employees, and annual revenues of $500K to $5M. 

  • Photo/Video production companies based in BC with 1-10 employees and $750K to $5M in annual revenue.

  • Interior design firms based in BC with 1-10 employees and $750K to $5M in annual revenue.

  • Traffic control, signage, and equipment companies based in BC with 2 to 50 employees, and $750K to $5M in annual revenue.

  • Music artists based in Canada, with 5M+ monthly listeners on Spotify, with $500K to $5M in annual revenue from streaming, licensing, and ticket sales.

  • Medical device companies based in BC, with 2-25 employees and $1M to $5M in annual revenue.

  • Denture clinics based in BC with 1-20 employees and $750K to $5M in annual revenue.

  • Registered Clinical Counsellor clinics in BC who use Jane App, with 1-20 practitioners and $750K to $5M in annual revenue.

  • Law firms based in BC with 1-10 lawyers, who use Clio, with $1M to $5M in annual revenue.

Open to suggestions here, but you get the idea, we will be focused on just one industry niche and ideally one segment within that niche. This allows us to become industry experts more quickly, making future sales easier. It also allows for stronger profit margins because we sell and deliver the same services in the same way to the same types of clients. One thing that kills profitability and burns out accounting staff is doing everything a little bit differently for every client. We’ll aim to avoid that as much as humanly possible by being very discerning on who we take on as clients and what we offer to do for them.

How We’ll Do It

Paperless, remote. We will not accept, process, or deliver anything on paper (unless the client is willing to pay an extra paper processing fee). We will not rent an office, but we will offer to occasionally meet clients at their office when needed and/or rent a coworking space meeting room as needed for in person connections.

This business needs two top tier operators to succeed: 

The CPA - this is you, a licensed CPA in the province of BC. Someone who has a love for accounting, tax, and advisory. Turning data, regulations, accounting principles/practices, and tax law into insights and business strategies for our clients. You need to also be a self starter, there are no managers or partners here, just two humans and their little team of AI agents.

The Everything Else - this is me, the receptionist, administrative assistant, junior bookkeeper, junior tax preparer, marketer, sales rep, client success manager, operations manager, billing manager, angry client manager, IT manager, firing bad client’s manager, brand manager, website manager, social media manager, AI skill builder, and AI agent builder. I’ll do everything and anything you don’t need to do or don’t want to do so you can focus on what you do best. And I’ll volunteer to do our internal bookkeeping and as much of our business tax prep as possible so that I can learn the human way of doing things before we deploy an AI agent to do most of it for us.

We’ll both be there to support each other with friction points and frustrations, and to share ideas and learnings. This is a partnership in every sense of the word. It only works if we both work well on our own and as a team.

Mentors - we’ll look to find at least one mentor for both of us to meet with together, and it’s encouraged to find our own personal mentors as well.

Some things we’ll do together, such as: 

  • wow our clients with service they’ve never seen before from an accounting firm.

  • learn and deploy new technologies (hello AI agents) and new processes based on our launch and learn approach.

  • attend conferences and events to learn from our peers and connect with the accounting community.

  • come up with ideas of advisory services we can sell.

  • attend monthly business review sessions where we review the prior month business activities, review attainment of key metrics, decide what to keep, what to kill, and what to grow in the upcoming month.

We’ll be careful to make sure we don’t do certain things. Such as:

  • take on a client just because they are friends or family.

  • take on a client below our minimum price.

  • let a client abuse us or cause undue stress, we’ll fire them and replace them with someone better.

  • let our clients step outside of our boundaries, for example they may not get our personal cell phone numbers.

  • work so hard that we burn ourselves out because we’ve bitten off more than we can chew or succumb to scope creep because we said yes to every client request.

  • invest in capital intensive strategies that put stress on our cashflow or profit margins (at least in the first year).

  • hire employees or contractors within the first year. The goal here is to see if we can run a two human (+ AI agents) firm. 

Technology

We will only use cloud based technology, and only apps that have both an open API and MCP server. Which means we’ll also be AI native from day 0. That is, we’ll layer AI into everything we do and all systems/processes.

This will offer two benefits: a modern and mind blowing client experience, and efficient internal workflows to maximize our time realization.

In terms of core tech we need to start with, for the first 15 months we’ll aim to keep it as simple as possible:

  • Google suite (Gmail, Docs, Drive)

  • A cloud GL with robust app marketplace for our clients and ourselves (QBO or Xero)

  • Zoom

  • Vinyl (or another meeting recorder)

  • Slack

  • Ignition

  • Claude AI

  • 2 laptops (we can each bring our own)

  • 2 phones (we can each bring our own)

How We’ll Start

We’ll start simple and start small. Neither of us will have to make any life changing commitments. To start we’ll just commit to a 12 month partnership and only work with a handful of clients. We’ll take a “launch and learn” approach, adapting as we go based on what works and what doesn’t. The goal is to give us a low stress, low cost, low commitment pathway to pilot the business model. Think of it like a one year trial or one year test drive. Here is roughly what I’m thinking 👇

First 15 Months

Oct to Dec 2026

  • Find the two humans who will do this, well actually we found one already (me), so we just need to find you.

  • Feel each other out, make sure we both pass the vibes check. Life is too short to work with someone you don’t enjoy working with. 

  • Put together and sign off on a 12 month partnership agreement including exit clauses. We’ll hire a lawyer to assist with this.

  • Explore possible niches to start with. A good niche will be business models that have a monthly/quarterly need for accounting and tax services, and don’t have their data locked up in legacy software systems.

  • Create a 12 month business plan including a SWAT analysis, pro forma financial statements, and key targets/milestones.

Jan to Dec 2027

  • We keep our day jobs and side hustle this.

  • Find and serve our first client. Start with monthly accounting and/or tax services (billed monthly). Once one client is up and running and we are happy with how it’s all going, we find one more, then one more, and keep going until we have a handful of clients so we can protect our mental wellness while balancing this new business, our day jobs, and everything else in our personal lives.

  • In Q4 2027, launch and learn advisory. See if we can upsell a few of our clients to buy more from us, experiment with a couple of advisory services to drive higher profits without the hassle of finding more new clients. 

  • In Dec 2027 have a chat, if we are happy we keep going by making another 12 month business plan and signing an ongoing partnership agreement. Or, if we are not happy we close out our handful of clients and walk away.

Estimated Revenue & Active Clients

  • January 2027

    • 0 clients

    • $0 revenue

  • February 2027

    • 0 clients

    • $0 revenue

  • March 2027

    • 1 client

    • $1,000 revenue

  • April 2027

    • 2 clients

    • $2,000 revenue

  • May 2027

    • 3 clients

    • $3,000 revenue

  • June 2027

    • 4 clients

    • $4,000 revenue

  • July 2027

    • 5 clients

    • $5,000 revenue

  • September 2027

    • 5 clients

    • $5,000 revenue

  • October 2027

    • 5 clients

    • $5,000 revenue

  • November 2027

    • 5 clients

    • $6,000 revenue

  • December 2027

    • 5 clients

    • $7,000 revenue

Total revenue in 2027 = $38,000. The goal in 2027 will be to break even with $0 paid in owner salaries or distributions to the owners (us). Yes, that means we will be working for free in 2027, that’s the price we pay to slowly grow and test this business model out. But that should be ok, as we can still rely on our day jobs to sustain us financially.

BHAG

BHAG = big hairy audacious goal

If we get to Dec 2027 and decide that we want to continue with this business here is what the next 12 months could look like:

  • grow from 5 to 20 clients.

  • grow revenue per client per month from $1,000 to $5,000 (by selling more advisory services).

If we can achieve 20 active clients at $5k per client per month by Dec 2028 we’d have a business with:

  • $100,000 MRR

  • $1,200,000 ARR

If we can then also achieve a:

  • 30% profit margin, we each take home $180,000 per year personal income from the business (50% of the annual profit).

  • 40% profit margin, we each take home $240,000 per year personal income from the business (50% of the annual profit).

  • 50% profit margin, we each take home $300,000 per year personal income from the business (50% of the annual profit).

Yes, these are all “ifs” and this won’t be easy to achieve. But this scenario isn’t wildly unrealistic if we sell high margin services to loyal clients.

What I Can Bring To The Table?

Accounting Firm Experience
I have spent the past nine years working with some of the most modern and most profitable accounting firms in Canada and the US. Everything from one person booking and tax firms to full service enterprise firms. I’ve spent 9 years learning how to:

  • scope, price, and sell accounting, tax, and advisory services.

  • run an accounting firm with healthy profit margins and $0 in A/R.

  • find and bill for scope creep.

  • say yes to the right clients, say no to the wrong clients, and fire clients who looked like a good fit but turned out to be a nightmare.

  • engage clients with professional proposals.

  • build and manage an end to end tech stack for an accounting firm all the way from marketing to sales to proposal to onboarding to getting the work done to billing.

  • optimize an accounting firm tech stack via Zapier, APIs, and MCP servers.

  • upsell existing accounting clients during renewals.

  • deploy regular price increases across a large and diverse client base.

Startup Experience
Over the past 20 years I’ve worked at four startups that failed:

  • Oxia (B2C health products)

  • HuStream (B2B Video SaaS)

  • InHouse (B2B Video Production)

  • Biznas (B2B Software Development Services)

and one startup, where I currently work, that has succeeded:

  • Ignition (B2B SaaS for accounting firms)

I’ve be founder adjacent and spent time watching and learning from senior leaders, people managers, and individual contributors across these different businesses. I’ve seen first hand why startups fail, learned how to manage the chaos, and know how to stay grounded in a fast paced environment.

Relationship Builder
In my role as a Key Account Manager at Ignition I have developed relationships with over 500 accounting and professional service firms. My job is to meet new customers on day one of their subscription and work with them to onboard and scale up with Ignition. At any given time I am managing 200+ accounts, providing an AI enabled, white glove, customer experience. Doing this for 9 years has taught me how to start and grow B2B relationships, and will prove to be valuable in our accounting firm as accounting firms live and die by the quality of their clients and the quality of their client relationships.

Sales Negotiation
I have spent multiple years takes sales and negotiation training, and have used those learnings to hone my sales skills. Skills that I’ve used to help close and renew enterprise contracts, close and renew SMB contracts, drive expansion revenue within enterprise and SMB accounts, and curate long term customer loyalty. I have also come very close to, met, or exceeded my sales targets each quarter for many years in a row.

AI Enabled
I am an Ignition MCP educator, heavy AI user in my day job, and trainer who has helped over 50 accounting professionals deploy AI in their work and firms. I am a fully AI enabled business professional who is a go to resource for AI questions and best practices, trusted by my colleagues and customers alike. I will be able help our customers cut through the AI noise and find tangible and approachable ways to use AI. I can also ensure we use AI effectively inside our firm.

Communication and Content Creation
I posses strong verbal skills for presenting to senior stakeholders and handling objections without taking feedback personally, plus strong written skills for building customer-facing documentation, articles, and webinar content that scales beyond one-to-one attention.

Network & Community
I’m connected to the Okanagan tech community in Kelowna, BC. I also have connections to a number of other industries in and around the Okanagan. I have a large number of second level connections to the Vancouver tech community and a number of different industries in and around greater Vancouver. I have 2,000+ connections on LinkedIn and post regularly on AI related topics. I have alumni connections to both BCIT and Okanagan College having graduated with a Diploma of Technology from BCIT (2006) and BBA from Okanagan College (2013). I also have connections to the most progressive accounting entrepreneurs in Canada and the US, direct access to some amazing potential mentors.

*special bonus…I also bring a mullet and moustache personal UI which is great for breaking the ice on Zoom calls 👀

Next Steps

If you’re a CPA licensed in BC and you think this idea sounds like fun I'd love to connect. Please connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message 👋 Thanks!