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The ROI of automation: Quantify your time to measure value

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Right now, every conversation about technology seems to revolve around artificial intelligence. However, AI is a broad category — it includes machine learning, robotic process automation, and workflow automation tools, all of which promise efficiency gains for accounting firms.

Despite this, many firm leaders struggle to quantify the value of these technologies. How do you determine whether AI, automation, or any emerging tool is worth the investment? The answer isn’t as complicated as it seems.

It’s less about the technology itself and more about how we value our time. If you understand the value of time within your firm, you can easily assess whether automation delivers a meaningful return on investment.

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At Boomer Consulting, we gather and analyze key financial and operational metrics from our member firms, which include many of the Top 50 and Top 100 Firms from around the country. One of the most critical data points? The value of time.

On average, time in most firms is worth about $242 per hour per professional. That means 10 minutes is worth roughly $40, and one hour saved per week translates to $12,584 per year per person.

This is the simplest way to measure ROI for automation tools. If a solution saves even a few minutes per day per person, the financial return is undeniable.

An ROI example

Let’s look at a pretty typical example. Microsoft CoPilot is an AI-powered assistant for Office 365 applications. Its price tag is around $30 per user per month ($360 per year). That may seem like just another software expense. But let’s quantify the value.

As anyone who’s played around with CoPilot can attest, time savings are not hard to achieve. Its efficiency gains come from small but meaningful enhancements in everyday workflows. For example, it can auto-generate and suggest improvements to text in Word. It analyzes data, creates PivotTables and identifies trends in Excel spreadsheets. In Outlook, CoPilot can draft emails, summarize threads, and extract unanswered questions. It creates slides from Word docs and Excel data for your PowerPoint presentations and adjusts formatting. 

How much could you save each day with that kind of help? One hour? Two or three hours?

If CoPilot saves each person in your firm just 10 minutes per day:

  • The daily savings per person is $40 (10 minutes at $240/hour)
  • The annual savings per person equal $10,400 ($40 x 260 workdays).
  • For a 150-person firm, that adds up to $1.56 million in potential savings.
  • Less the cost of licenses ($54,000), the net benefit is $1.5 million.

In other words, CoPilot breaks even if it saves just 10 minutes per month. That’s an incredibly low threshold for such a high return.

Applying this mindset to other automation investments

The same analysis applies across audit, tax, and advisory functions.

For example, say you’re evaluating an AI-powered audit tool that costs $50,000 annually and reduces audit time by 10%. If your firm performs 50 audits per year and each audit consumes 200 hours, that’s 1,000 hours saved annually.

At $242 per hour, those 1,000 saved hours are worth $242,000. That’s a profitable investment.

The key to evaluating any automation investment is asking two questions:

  1. How much time does it save?
  2. How will we reinvest that time into higher-value activities?

If automation allows your team to shift from compliance work to higher-margin advisory services, the ROI extends beyond just cost savings — it directly fuels firm growth.

The biggest risk is not automating at all

Some firm leaders hesitate to invest in AI and automation because it feels expensive upfront. But the real risk isn’t overspending; it’s failing to capitalize on time savings.

Firms that optimize efficiency through automation can increase capacity without increasing headcount, free up time for more strategic, revenue-generating work, reduce burnout and improve employee retention.

Your competitors are exploring how they can leverage AI and automation in their firms. Firms that don’t automate will struggle to remain profitable. The ROI of automation isn’t theoretical — it’s measurable, significant and essential for long-term success.

So the only question is, what’s stopping you?

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Accounting

Accountants on IRS and PwC layoffs, accounting students and more

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Complimentary Access Pill

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

This week’s stats focus in part on the job titles seeing the greatest losses at the IRS during layoffs; as well as the states that have proposed or passed alternatives to the 150-hour rule; the percentage of master’s in accounting program applicants since 2020; the number of PwC employees laid off in May; the projected size of Deloitte’s new New York City headquarters; and the amount of 2026 HSA annual contribution limits, depending on coverage.

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Accounting

CrowdStrike says DOJ, SEC sent inquiries on firm accounting

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CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. said U.S. officials have asked for information related to the accounting of deals it’s made with some customers and said the cybersecurity firm is cooperating with the inquiry.

The Austin, Texas-based company said in a filing Wednesday that it has gotten “requests for information” from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission “relating to the company’s recognition of revenue and reporting of ARR for transactions with certain customers.” ARR refers to annual recurring revenue, a measure of earnings from subscriptions.

The company said the federal officials have also sought information related to a CrowdStrike update last year that crashed Windows operating systems around the world.

“The company is cooperating and providing information in response to these requests,” the filing states.

U.S. prosecutors and regulators have been investigating a $32 million deal between CrowdStrike and a technology distributor, Carahsoft Technology Corp., to provide cybersecurity tools to the Internal Revenue Service, Bloomberg News first reported in February. The IRS never purchased or received the products, Bloomberg News earlier reported.

The investigators are probing what senior CrowdStrike executives may have known about the $32 million deal and are examining other transactions made by the cybersecurity firm, Bloomberg News reported in May.

Asked for comment about the filing, CrowdStrike spokesperson Brian Merrill said, “As we have told Bloomberg repeatedly, this is old news and we stand by the accounting of the transaction.” 

A lawyer for Carahsoft previously declined to comment on the federal investigations, and representatives didn’t respond to subsequent requests for comment about them.

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Accounting

Elon Musk urges Americans take action to ‘kill’ Trump tax cut bill

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Tech titan Elon Musk ratcheted up his offensive against Donald Trump’s signature tax bill on Wednesday, urging that Americans contact their lawmakers to “KILL” the legislation.

“Call your Senator, Call your Congressman,” Musk wrote in a social media post. “Bankrupting America is NOT ok!”

The post came one day after Musk lashed out at the tax bill, describing it as a budget-busting “disgusting abomination” as Republican fiscal hawks stepped up criticism of the massive fiscal package. 

Trump hasn’t publicly responded to Musk’s comments, but the White House put out a statement Wednesday saying the legislation “unleashes an era of unprecedented economic growth.” 

And House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that Musk is “dead wrong” about the bill and that the tax cuts will pay for themselves through economic growth.

Musk’s public condemnation pits him against the president at a critical time as Trump is personally lobbying holdouts on the bill. His campaign against the legislation threatens to stiffen resistance and delay enactment of the tax cuts and debt ceiling increase. 

Musk has attacked the legislation days after leaving a temporary assignment leading the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative to cut federal spending. The Tesla Inc. chief executive officer’s high-profile role in the Trump administration eroded his business brand and sales of his company’s electric vehicles plunged. 

The House-passed version of the tax and spending bill would add $2.4 trillion to U.S. budget deficits over the next decade, according to an estimate released Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO’s calculation reflects a $3.67 trillion decrease in expected revenues and a $1.25 trillion decline in spending over the decade through 2034, relative to baseline projections. The score doesn’t account for any potential boost to the economy from the bill, which Johnson and Trump argue would offset the revenue losses. 

Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth of about $377 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has become a crucial financial backer of the Republican party. After making modest donations most years, Musk became the biggest U.S. political donor in 2024, giving more than $290 million.

Johnson said Musk had promised to help reelect Republicans just a day before savaging Trump’s bill. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. 

Most of Musk’s giving was aimed at electing Trump but he also supported congressional candidates. America PAC, the super political action committee that Musk largely funded, spent $18.5 million in 17 separate House races. Though that total pales in comparison to the roughly $255 million he spent backing Trump, the spending means a lot in a congressional election, where challengers on average raise less than $1 million.

Control of the House will likely be decided by the outcome of fewer than two dozen close races in the 2026 midterm elections. The GOP’s chances of holding their majority would suffer a major blow if Musk were to withdraw his financial support.

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