Top Accounting Trends for 2026: Insights from Geni Whitehouse 

Accounting is entering one of its most transformative phases in decades. The profession that once revolved around ledgers, compliance checklists, and year-end deadlines is now being reshaped by automation, AI, regulatory shifts, and new client expectations.  

As firms prepare for 2026, it has become essential to understand the forces reshaping the profession. In this expert-led session hosted by Ace Cloud Hosting, Seth Fineberg, founder of Accountants Forward, sits down with Geni Whitehouse.  

Geni is the President of the Information Technology Alliance (ITA), a winery consultant in Napa Valley, and a regular keynote presenter at CPA and technology conferences across the country. She has been recognized as a Top 100 Influencer by Accounting Today, one of the 25 Thought Leaders in Accounting, and one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Accounting by CPA Practice Advisor. Geni is also the author of How to Make a Boring Subject Interesting: 52 Ways Even a Nerd Can Be Heard. 

With her deep understanding of technology, advisory services, and firm operations, Geni brings a practical and forward-looking perspective to the discussion. Together, Seth and Geni explore the trends that will shape firm strategies in 2026 and the steps practitioners can take now to prepare for the year ahead. 

Video Transcript

Seth: Hi again. This is Seth Fineberg on behalf of Ace Cloud Hosting and also Accountants Forward. Once again, having another round of very pointed conversations with industry personalities and industry leaders. 

I can’t say enough about who I’m going to talk with here next. So, I’ll just introduce you to Geni Whitehouse. Really, it has been someone in the accounting community at large who still very much has her finger on the pulse of what’s going on. And, you know what is coming down the pike?   

Her role as President of the ITA alone really should be enough to say, look, she is leading a lot of the conversations and at least at the forefront of what is coming down the pike for the profession. Geni, thank you so much for carving out some time for us today.   

Geni: Thank you so much for having me, Seth. And I just want to say that keeping your finger on the pulse of the accounting profession is like a roller coaster ride.  

Seth: Oh, it truly is. And it does a loop, but it does a nice turn once in a while. And. But we try to bring it all together so that, firm leaders and those making decisions within their firms at least have some sense that, hey, I’m moving in the right direction, or, I didn’t really know that, or oh my God, we’re in the thick of it right now.  

So, the people who are talking about these things and also listening, I do a lot of talking about these things, but you also listen to the CIOs, you listen to the managing partners, you listen to the folks who are working within a firm, and ultimately have to deal with what is coming.   

So, let’s get into it. So, today’s topic really is on the top trends to watch for accounting in 2026. And of course, beyond, you know, because let’s face it, we’re all kind of planning now, not just for the next season, but just really, the future of the profession, the future of your firms.   

Geni is also fresh off the Fall Collaborative for ITA. So maybe we’ll kind of start there. What were some of the top things that firm leaders were, like what’s on the top of their mind?   

Geni: Well, I think it’s no surprise that AI was top of mind for a lot of people. And much of the conversation that we had was around. You know, there’s a lot of hype. And when are we going to see the actual applications in some of these tools that we’re using?  

The thing that’s most interesting to me and I also work with wineries in Napa Valley, so I’m a practicing CPA. I just do advisory work. And that’s part-time, as is my role at the ITA.   

And the ITA, by the way, stands for the Information Technology Alliance. It’s an association of Tech companies who are accounting adjacent, I would say. So we have CIOs who are in the top 50 CPA firms, CAS leaders of the top 100, and midmarket ERP implementers who are implementing accounting and ERP solutions.   

And then we also have the tech company vendors, and we’re all in the room together. And what I do is not drive the dialog. I facilitate the dialog. And these people come together and decide what they want to talk about.   

And so I have the good fortune of being involved in those conversations. But I think AI and all of us are feeling this. So there’s some AI-centric GL solutions coming out, which I think are one of the things that I really wanted to get in front of our membership, because we need to know what’s coming in these applications and how we can support them. 

I think implementation as the thing is going to change drastically when we go to those kinds of solutions, the real it is the digits, the puzzles, and there are all kinds of things out there that are going to change the way we think about software even more than, going to the cloud.  

I think we’re going to see people leveraging AI internally for tools like customer support. We’re seeing that in the wine industry, where you’re inquiring about specifics about a wine club or something, and we have chatbots that are getting smarter and smarter and doing that, freeing up the staff to do sales focus there.   

And so I think the same thing is happening inside firms when we’re doing both client support and internal staff support. I think we’re going to see AI help us really get better at our workflows and evaluate where we have bottlenecks and things like that.   

My concern is that what we’re seeing in both accounting firms and in my client industries is siloed AI. So just like we’re seeing with apps, I’ve got 500 apps. And now each one of those is our little AI thing that attaches to that.   

But I don’t have a centralized connection across all this stuff still. Yeah, I think the focus is going to be that. And I’m hearing from companies that do what they call AI operating systems, which is creating an overarching tool that will let you analyze the data.  

Now, the challenges are that the data is all difficult to get and not always clean. So, data integrity is where AI can help us on the front end, and then data cleanup. Hopefully, it can start to identify patterns and outliers so that we can do the analysis in a much more meaningful way.   

But that is always been a struggle. Getting the insights from the data, Seth, we’ve automated, automated, automated to get more and more data faster, but we still can’t make sense of it all.   

So yeah, that’s the promise of AI. But I don’t want it in a bucket. I don’t want one piece of AI over here and one over there and one over there, and one answer for this without context for the other things that I’m working on.   

So I think that’s what we are going to see, hopefully, in 2026. And I think you’ve worked with some companies, they’re looking at it that way. And I think there’s a lot.   

Seth: Yeah. Other.  

Geni: Yeah. Go ahead.  

Seth: Oh, I was, you know, I was going to say that. We don’t want to run the risk. Right now, in its early days, it’s a fast-moving roller coaster, and it’s only going to pick up speed, but we’re still at that.  

I feel like we’re still at that point in firm decision making where we have the ability to kind of cut off, like app overload, like we, you know, I think a lot of the industry kind of fell into that, just didn’t add, there were just too many things for AP. There were too many things for payroll. There are too many things for you, different service sets or tasks that you need to do. Yeah.   

Geni: Little bitty solution, Seth, like, K1 Solution that pulls the data out, which is great, but what about all the other stuff? I have to deal with this. Yeah. For tax automation, I think it’s going to be a huge area of improvement where AI should just logically dump all my stuff somewhere and have it all populate.   

So, I think those are concerns for the profession, but I think the other couple of big things, talent is huge because we had an economist come who spoke about the fact that there just aren’t going to be enough young people.   

The boomers are the big crowd, and they’re all going away. And then there aren’t enough people below us coming in. So we’re going to be strapped for people. And what we’re seeing across all of the areas.   

So we have three main categories of sessions that we do the CAS, which is client accounting service, client accounting, and advisory. And then we have the internal tech leaders, which is the CIO community, these big firm folks. And then we have the consulting reseller track.   

So three tracks, all of them are looking at talent. How do we upskill the next generation, and how do we work across these different generations who are trying to work together with very different views of the world?  

And I think we’re looking at that in a big way. And if we’re not, I think we’re going to miss the boat. And also, on the CAS side and on most of these sides, we need people with AI taking on some of the mundane work.  

We need people who can transition into client conversations, strategy, creativity, and innovation, which is not, however. 

Seth: Where the humans come in. Yeah, where you get the people. 

Geni: Which is not how we were traditionally wired as communities. The tech space is not very, you know, we’re rule followers, we’re pattern seekers. We are more creative, I think, on the tech side than traditionally the accounting community, who we were attracting.   

But I think we’re seeing a requirement to go outside of those traditional profiles and find other people. And whether those people want to come into accounting or not. It’s up to us how we define opportunities for those people.   

Seth: Yeah, but where would you find talent, even talent like that? Were there discussions, or have you been listening to discussions around? So we’re saying.  

Geni: You know, I think you’re not necessarily hiring for technical skills. You’re hiring for EQ, creativity, curiosity, and self-motivation. So you need people who are going to go figure something out because the something out is going to change every day. I mean, we’re seeing it right now.   

And people who are not afraid to just jump in there and do it, like most of us, most of the people that I know have been speaking in the profession, we’re weirdos. We’ve been jumping into stuff, you know, stuff we’ve all been running around trying this stuff. But the pretty traditional accountant is still trying to get the work done.   

So, they’re missing some of the opportunities to get ahead of this. And I think there’s a lot of concern that we don’t have much time to get this figured out, and we need to rely on those young people who don’t have the same work ethic, who have different definitions of what they want out of life, and all of that.   

I think the client visibility is going to be a higher thing. We got to find more face time so that we can actually demonstrate that we can do more than what you can get from your AI solution.   

We have great AI tools, but so do our clients. I mean, the advisory, if they can go put their financials in and ask it where they should be concerned and get it. And we’re doing the same thing. We got to not just tell them how bad it is, but help them figure out how to fix it. And again, we’ve got to get new skills to do that.   

Big thing if you’re looking at the CIOs versus CAS, and we have many of the firms who are members of ITA, have people there from both segments. CAS is still fighting for advocacy and dealing with this app overload, and also trying to figure out how to reskill people to be more advisory and less transactional.  

Seth: AI is kind of forcing that narrative, isn’t? It’s like, okay, great. You know, much like with cloud and automation in general, it’s like, okay, great. Now this is going to have this done. And, a matter of moments based on your query string.  

And, so now, you know, where do I go from here? Well, it’s now giving you all of at least enough to now have conversations with your client because you’re not producing as much anymore.   

The very nature of accounting is going to be less the doing of stuff and more the explaining, to a business or to, even, individuals, like, definitely on the tax side of things, what comes next?   

Geni: Well, I mean, that’s the dilemma, right? I mean, if I’m a traditional accountant, I didn’t sign up because I wanted to talk to people like you said. I wanted to be back in my closet doing my tax stuff, doing the numbers, and creating some spreadsheet.   

Seth: Yeah. But you’re telling me it’s going to get done.   

Geni: This is the fear. So, you know, I also have a business where I train accountants to do advisory. And a big part of what we teach is facilitation. And I ask people, how comfortable are you with that? And they’re like. 

Seth: Yeah.  

Geni: That’s the role we’re going to be playing. We’re going to show you how bad it is. We’re going to tell you what you need to fix, and then we’re going to train your teams on the steps they got to take to do it. That is a completely different skillset from me, printing a financial statement and telling you that these ratios are bad.   

Seth: Yeah,  

Geni: CAS community is in the forefront of that because they’re in the pain with the client. But again, you’ve got people used to producing closes every month, and now they’re supposed to call people, which also, generationally, this generation does not call people, they text or hey,  

Seth: Let’s set up a Zoom or Teams and let’s, you know, we’re going to discuss these things. We want to do text.  

Geni: They want to email or text. They want to call or actually face-to-face as much as think about it, that, well, they may be more Zoom-centric, but calling somebody is not their comfort zone. 

Seth: Right! 

Geni: So, we got to deal with that. But again, on the security side. So I got these CAS teams and these big firms who were trying to do this.  

Seth: Let’s get into it about the security side of things because that’s always going to be top of mind. It was when the cloud first was the new conversation to have the new direction. And now, the cloud is still everything that everyone does. Now, AI is another thing to get your mind around and your practice around. Where does security fit? 

Geni: Well, I think so, yeah. So if you look at these firms that have the CIOs and the CAS folks, the CAS folks are focused on client-facing stuff that opens up the dialog, right? CIOs are focused on keeping it closed.  

I got to secure the environment. I got to control my environment. I got to standardize everything. You got a natural friction there between those desires. And I mean, if I’m bringing a new app every week, which is what’s happening with many of us, it goes completely counter to what the CIOs are trying to do, which is maintain stability and order and security and protection.  

So, I think you’re seeing them trying to collaborate more. Also, people are deciding, this is my stack, and this is going to be the stack of tech tools that I use, and the clients are going to use that or not come to me, which is what you’ve eventually got to do in order to be successful.  

But the CIOs are dealing with internal security with incredibly smart AI-generated phishing scams and voice mimicry, and all this kind of stuff that we never thought we’d be dealing with.   

And so how do you really identify the fact that if I get an email from the CFO that says, I need you to transfer $10,000 to this bank account that’s really going on, do you do voice authentication, do the video authentication? I can replicate that. What do you do to do that? And so, I think they’re struggling just to keep up.  

But on top of that, these firms are merging. They’re acquiring; they’re growing. They’re rolling in companies, or just you see. 

Seth: That’s a whole other trend to watch for. I’m sure. And, you know, with private equity swirling about as well, it’s just kind of pushing that narrative.  

Geni: And so, I also think that security, these firm folks, the CIOs are going to be focused on, first of all, internal security, but also visibility to clients about what they’ve got in place for security.  

So, they’re going to have a client-facing role that becomes increasingly important. How can we validate the fact that our security is top-notch, so that the clients will trust us with their important data? 

And so, I think, the roles are all shifting dramatically. There’s a lot of focus on that. But really, centralizing the policies and managing all that is falling on the CIO. Now, if you’re a small firm and you don’t have a CIO. 

Seth: Which most are. 

Geni: Most of the profession is small for most of my clients in Wine Country, as they are small organizations, and they don’t have a CIO. They don’t have a CFO; they’ve got a hat. 

Seth: Unless they’ve outsourced that, or they have a fractional person who comes in. 

Geni: So, we’re seeing the kind of solutions that Ace Cloud Hosting offers, where I can outsource my infrastructure, becoming the norm for these smaller organizations, the ones that get it. 

We still have people doing internal servers, and there’s just no way. I mean, unless you’ve got somebody on staff who can even manage that. But it’s beyond what we can even manage these days on our own.  

We have to have external support from people who can maintain the highest standards of security and distribute that to people so that we don’t have to bear the complete burden ourselves.   

So, if I can go to an organization that has all the depth of infrastructure, knowledge, and security awareness, and all of that, and put my environment in their system, then that’s the only way I think you can achieve peace of mind today.  

Seth: And it’s time to, isn’t it change all of these things we’re talking about with automation, with, security even hiring, folks, it’s, you know, you want to be able to, at least have the knowledge or, or just see a way to put it on technology or put it on an organization, someone to kind of take that from you so that you can have the time to, just not have to worry about some of these things.  

That will ultimately take time for individuals to do. There’s just the accounting profession has been under this time pressure since I can, remember, just, there’s no, that’s why every year there’s always conversations of moving, moving the deadline, moving the deadline around.  

Like that’s not going to necessarily do a whole lot because you have to learn to do the most with the time that you have, kicking the can down the road isn’t going to necessarily help.   

Geni: You know, again, for my work. And I’ve been screaming bad about it for way too long. So when you were a baby, I started speaking about my stuff.  

Seth: I know it, and communication too 

Geni: And communication,  

Seth: Which is part of it. I mean, you know, it’s let’s be honest. It’s how you communicate these things that’s advisory thrive.  

Geni: And we’ve never been able to overcome. I have more work than I can do. It’s been a challenge all along, but it has to start at the prospecting step. It has to start with the initial pre-client conversation, where you tell them where you elevate your value or ask them questions that we aren’t traditionally asking.  

And then you raise your price and hire fewer of them. That’s the only way we stop this overload. You’ve got to be able to deliver the value, but you’ve also got to build in conversations that go beyond traditional metrics, which is what we think is advisory.  

Most people think that if I’m presenting ratios and metrics and giving them to the client, that I’m delivering advisory, well, that’s the same thing as handing them a financial statement with a scorecard of history, these clients are desperate for. What do I do tomorrow, and how do I get my team to help me do it, and all of that?   

And if I’m worried as an owner about security and transactional flow and all those basic things that I have to do to keep the company alive, I have no bandwidth to teach my team how to be proactive, and it’s the same problem that I have in the firm.  

Seth: Or maybe try to hire for that. I mean.  

Geni: Yeah 

Seth: You have experts out there who do this 24/7.  

Geni: That’s right. And tap into that knowledge because you cannot build it your own unless you have the capital and the capacity to do it. And I just don’t think we even know how much we don’t know when it comes to both optimization of systems and security and infrastructure stuff. And it’s becoming more and more complicated and more than critical,  

Seth: Too, right? So just to wrap up, Geni, so it sounds like we’ve touched on really the top three trends, more, you know, more about AI or the profession leading into it, figuring out ways that they can actually get a return on that investment and really make it work for them.  

Number two, I guess staffing, upskilling, even to prepare for what’s kind of coming on tech and just the business environment in general, you still have to be the expert in the room. This is why clients are hiring you. And you have to have a skilled team to understand where situations are right now and going forward with technology as well.   

And number three, of course, still remaining a very high priority, data security, figuring out what it is, internally that you can do and then looking outside of your own organization to have someone really, highly skills, highly prepared, has everything you know, kind of set up to take care of that for you so that it’s not as much of a concern.  

Geni: And, so, the private part of that, which we didn’t really touch on. But it’s a huge concern because we’ve had data everywhere now, and who owns it, and what they are doing with it.  

Seth: Where is it exactly? Yeah, exactly. Geni, always a pleasure to talk to you. And thank you so much for your insights today. Once again, I’m Seth Fineberg for Ace Cloud Hosting. This has been Geni Whitehouse from Wine Country.   

Geni: Thank you, Seth, for having me. It’s my pleasure.   

Seth: Thanks a lot. 

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