The State of Client Experience in Accounting: Closing the Experience Gap

Client experience. In HubSync's 2026 survey of 74 CPA firm leaders, 41% named client experience as their firm's biggest competitive differentiator going forward. AI adoption was a distant second at 16%. Firm leaders increasingly see client experience as a growth lever, not only a way to keep existing clients.

Chasing documents. Half of the 74 CPA firm leaders surveyed for HubSync's 2026 State of Client Experience in Accounting report said chasing client documents consumes more staff time than any other operational process. Manual data entry was a distant second at 22%. Document collection was also the most cited source of friction across the client journey.

Internal operations. About 40% of CPA firm leaders in HubSync's 2026 survey named operational inefficiency as the biggest obstacle to their growth goals. Manual processes and disconnected systems add a handoff at every stage of the engagement, and clients feel those handoffs as repeated requests, slow responses, and confusion about what to submit.

Most CPA firms are in the early or developing stages of AI adoption. In HubSync's 2026 survey of 74 firm leaders, fewer than 1 in 10 described their firm's AI adoption as leading, even though 53% named AI a top-three priority for the next 24 months. Firm leaders cite internal expertise, change management, data quality, and governance as the main barriers.

Yes. The 2026 State of Client Experience in Accounting report is free. Complete the short form on this page to get the full report, including the three trends shaping client experience, the data behind each finding, and a 10-question self-assessment for benchmarking your own firm against the survey results.

HubSync surveyed 74 managing partners, C-level executives, tax practice leaders, audit partners, and directors at CPA firms in the United States and Canada from August to October 2026. Respondents answered questions on firm priorities, client experience, operations, and AI adoption. The report is product-neutral, and its findings are self-reported, so read them as a directional benchmark rather than a statistically representative sample.