Practice Pulse  →  Assessment
Canadian Practice Intelligence

Is your practice working for you — or are you working for it?

Most partners know something is off. They just don't have a clear way to see it. Practice Pulse asks the questions that don't change — what you earn for what you put in, whether the practice runs without you, whether you're building something or just running hard. Six minutes. Honest output. No vendor agenda.

Vendor None. Independent.
Sales follow-up Never.
Firm identity Collected. Named data is real data.
Your data Shapes what we write.

We ask for your firm name because named data is real data. Anonymous surveys produce anonymous answers. When a partner puts their name on something, they answer more carefully and more accurately — which makes the findings more useful to every firm in the dataset, including yours. Your individual firm data is never shared or published. Aggregate findings — with no firm identifiable — are what become The Curated's research. That research is what makes this publication worth reading.

The Firm Revenue Capacity Direction Technology
Section 01 of 05
The Firm
Basic shape of the practice — size, structure, where you operate, and who you're serving.
Your firm name
Named data is real data. When your firm name is on it, you answer more carefully — and the findings are more useful to everyone in the dataset, including you.
Your name
First name is enough. This stays in our research dataset — it's never published or shared.
Where is your firm located?
City and province. This helps us build Canadian regional benchmarks — a Vancouver firm and a Prince George firm are both BC but they're different markets.
How long have you been a partner or principal at your own firm?
Not years in accounting — years running or co-running the practice.
Under 3 years
3–7 years
8–15 years
Over 15 years
How many equity partners or principals does the firm have?
People with an ownership stake — not senior staff.
Just me — sole practitioner
2 partners
3–4 partners
5 or more
How many active client files does your firm manage?
Count entities, not individuals — a family with three corporations is three files.
150 client files
10300+600+
How many full-time equivalent staff does your firm have, including partners?
Full-time, part-time, and contractors — count in FTEs, not headcount.
6 FTEs
Solo~2040+
What best describes your primary client base?
Pick the one that drives the most revenue.
Owner-managed businesses
Professional services (medical, legal, dental)
Trades and construction
Real estate and property
Mixed — no clear concentration
Section 02 of 05
Revenue
How you price, what you earn, and what the mix looks like.
What is your firm's approximate annual gross revenue?
Best estimate is fine. Never linked to your name or firm.
$1.2M
<$250K$1M–$2M$5M+
How do you primarily price your services?
Pick the model that covers the majority of your billings.
Hourly billing
Fixed fees per engagement
Monthly subscription / retainer
Value-based pricing
Mix of hourly and fixed
What percentage of your revenue comes from advisory work versus compliance?
Compliance = tax, year-end, bookkeeping, payroll. Advisory = CFO services, forecasting, strategic planning, everything else.
20 % advisory
0% — all compliance50/50100% — all advisory
What did you personally draw from the practice last year?
Salary, distributions, and any other owner compensation combined. This is the number that tells us whether the practice is actually working for you — and it's the one no Canadian benchmarking instrument currently publishes broken down by firm size.
Under $150K
$150K – $250K
$250K – $400K
Over $400K
Prefer not to say
Roughly how many hours per week do you personally work in the practice?
Be honest — not the aspirational number, the actual one. Combined with what you draw, this tells us your effective hourly rate as the owner.
Under 40 hours
40–50 hours
50–60 hours
Over 60 hours
Section 03 of 05
Capacity & Operations
Where the actual friction is — talent, time, and systems.
What accounting platform does most of your client base run on?
Select all that are material — even a secondary platform is useful data.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Desktop
Xero
Sage 50
CaseWare
Spreadsheets / no platform
What is your biggest operational bottleneck right now?
Pick the one that actually keeps you up — not the one that sounds most strategic.
Finding and keeping good staff
Knowing what to charge — and holding the line
Getting the right clients in the door
Inconsistent systems and processes
Too much work, not enough time
Transitioning from compliance to advisory
How often are you personally doing work that a junior staff member should be doing?
Be honest. No one's watching.
Rarely — I've delegated well
Sometimes — mainly at peak season
Often — I don't have staff to absorb it
Always — I'm essentially doing two jobs
Section 04 of 05
Direction
Where the practice is headed — and whether you feel in control of that.
What best describes your firm's trajectory over the last 12 months?
Revenue, client count, profitability — whichever feels most true.
Growing faster than I expected
Growing steadily — on plan
Holding flat — revenue stable, not expanding
In transition — changing shape deliberately
Under pressure — revenue or client count shrinking
How confident are you in your succession plan?
Whether that's selling, bringing in a partner, or winding down — this is the question most partners avoid until they can't.
I have a clear plan and it's in motion
I've thought about it — nothing formalized yet
Vaguely — I know it needs to happen eventually
Not on my radar yet
If you stepped away for six weeks, how would the practice perform?
This is the single most diagnostic question about practice quality. Not a hypothetical — think about what would actually happen.
Run fine — the team handles it
Slow down but survive — some things would slip
Struggle significantly — clients would notice
It would be a crisis — I'm too embedded to step away
Do your clients have meaningful relationships with staff other than you?
Client portability is the core determinant of practice value at exit — and one of the most honest signals of whether you're building a firm or a job.
Yes — most clients know and trust the team
Some do, some deal mainly with me
Mostly they deal with me directly
All of them — the relationships are mine
What does success look like for your practice in three years?
Optional — but this is the most useful thing you can tell us. Your words, not a category. This is the 6am version of the question, before the phones start.
Section 05 of 05
Your Tech Stack
Check everything your firm currently pays for or actively uses — not tools you've tried once, not tools you're considering. Across every layer of the practice.
GL / Accounting software (client-side)
What your clients run their books on.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Desktop
Xero
Sage 50
Sage Business Cloud
Wave
FreshBooks
Spreadsheets / none
Tax preparation software
What your team actually uses to prepare T1s, T2s, and corporate returns.
TaxCycle
Profile (Thomson Reuters)
Cantax
DT Max
UFile for Business
Taxprep (Wolters Kluwer)
Other
Document capture & bookkeeping automation
Tools that ingest receipts, invoices, and bank feeds automatically.
Dext (formerly Receipt Bank)
AutoEntry (Sage)
Hubdoc
Synder
Datamolino
None — manual entry
Practice management & workflow
How your team tracks jobs, deadlines, and client work in progress.
Karbon
TaxDome
Canopy
Financial Cents
Jetpack Workflow
Aero Workflow
Spreadsheets / shared inbox
No formal system
Engagement & working papers
Where year-end files, compilations, and reviews actually live.
CaseWare Working Papers (desktop)
CaseWare Cloud
Countable
Excel / firm-built templates
Other
Client portal & document sharing
How clients send you documents and receive deliverables.
TaxDome (portal)
Liscio
ShareFile / Citrix
SmartVault
OneDrive / SharePoint
Google Drive
Email and PDF — no portal
Payroll software
What your firm uses to run or manage payroll for clients.
Wagepoint
Payworks
ADP
Ceridian / Dayforce
QuickBooks Payroll
Rise
We don't offer payroll
Payments & AR tools
How your clients pay — and how you help them pay their vendors.
Telpay
Plooto
Rotessa
Melio
Stripe
Square
Manual EFT / cheque
AI tools in active use
"Active use" means it has genuinely changed how work gets done — not a trial, not occasional curiosity.
ChatGPT
Claude (Anthropic)
Microsoft Copilot
Google Gemini
Luka (Countable AI)
MindBridge (AI audit)
TaxCycle AI features
Dext AI categorization
None in active use
What is your biggest hesitation about expanding AI use in the practice?
The honest answer, not the polished one.
I don't trust the output enough to rely on it
Professional liability — if it's wrong, I'm on the hook
Client data privacy — CRA / PIPEDA exposure
My team doesn't have the skills to implement it properly
Cost versus unclear ROI
No capacity to evaluate anything new right now
No real hesitations — we're already moving
Are your clients asking you about AI yet?
A proxy for advisory pressure arriving from the client side, not just the tech side.
Yes — regularly, and I feel prepared
Sometimes — I'm working out my answer as I go
Rarely — it hasn't come up much
Not yet — but I expect it will
Your Practice Pulse —

What we see in your practice

Your tech stack — gaps and observations

Stack gap analysis is based on common patterns at Canadian independent firms of your size and service mix. Named tools reflect market options — this is not a recommendation or endorsement.

You're in the founding cohort.

Practice Pulse is brand new. You're among the first Canadian CPA firm partners to complete it. When we reach 100 named submissions we'll publish the first Canadian Independent Firm Benchmark Report — real data, real firms, properly anonymised in the published findings — and send it to everyone who contributed. Subscribe to The Curated and you'll get it the moment it drops.

Your firm name never appears in published findings. The vendor consent above is separate from your editorial subscription — you control both independently.