CPA Practice Advisor
CPA Practice Advisor is an American trade publication for practicing public accountants and tax professionals, listed in Hudson, New Hampshire, and published online at cpapracticeadvisor.com. For more than three decades it has served a single, clearly defined readership: the owners, partners and staff of small and mid-sized public accounting and tax practices who must choose technology, organise workflow and serve small-business and individual clients profitably. Rather than covering accounting theory or large-company corporate finance, the publication concentrates on the practical business of running a practice — which software to buy, how to price and staff work, how to manage busy season, and how new rules and tools change day-to-day client service. That narrow, practitioner-first focus has carried it through three names, a shift from print to digital, and the profession's transformation from desktop software to cloud platforms and artificial intelligence.
Origins as The CPA Software News in 1991
The magazine was founded in 1991 as The CPA Software News, at a moment when personal computers and packaged accounting software were reshaping how small firms prepared returns, kept books and communicated with clients. Its founding premise was straightforward: practitioners needed independent, comparative information about software written specifically for firms like theirs, not general business computing coverage. The publication began from a small office in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and grew into a national information resource with staff over time in Oklahoma, Chicago, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Arizona, plus contributors across the country. That geographic spread reflected its audience — independent local and regional firms distributed across the United States rather than concentrated in a single financial centre — and it shaped an editorial voice grounded in the realities of modest-sized practices.
From Technology Advisor to Practice Advisor
In 2004 the title was renamed CPA Technology Advisor, broadening the remit from software alone to the wider technology stack entering accounting firms: networks, document systems, portals, hardware and early online services. In February 2011 it was renamed again, as CPA Practice Advisor. The stated purpose of that second rebrand was to align the publication and its digital offerings more closely with the changing needs of the tax and accounting profession. The change signalled that technology could no longer be treated as a separate purchasing decision. Choosing a tax package, a workflow system or a client portal also determined staffing, pricing, security and client experience, so coverage of tools was deliberately fused with coverage of practice management, workflow design and firm profitability under editor Darren Root and publisher Jim Baker during that transition period.
Who Reads CPA Practice Advisor
The core audience is the practising public accountant and tax professional serving multiple clients, including sole practitioners, partners in small and mid-sized firms, enrolled agents recognised by the Internal Revenue Service to represent taxpayers, members of the National Society of Accountants, and professional accountants in public practice. Historically the magazine reported an audited circulation of more than 40,000 tax and accounting professionals. A related print edition was also distributed to members of certain professional organisations under the title NSA Practice Advisor, for the National Society of Accountants. Contributors to the publication have typically held exactly the credentials its readers hold — CPA, CPA.CITP for certified public accountants with an additional information technology qualification, EA, NSA membership or PA status — which gives its columns the character of peer advice rather than outside commentary.
Product Reviews and the Star Rating System
Comparative product reviews have been the publication's signature format since its software-news origins. Reviews have traditionally followed a one-to-five star format, with five stars as the top ranking a product can receive, and have compared categories central to firm operations: tax preparation and planning, write-up and client accounting, payroll, document management and storage, workflow, time and billing, portals, fixed assets and depreciation, expense management and firm management systems. Annual review groupings have also addressed specialist needs such as nonprofit accounting, retail point of sale and inventory, and hosting services. The editorial calendar has long organised this work month by month, pairing review categories with features on niche practices — among them medical, restaurant, farming and agriculture, trucking and transportation, real estate, franchises, government contractors and retail clients — so firms can benchmark both their tools and their chosen markets.
Daily News, Columns and Thought Leadership
Beyond reviews, CPA Practice Advisor publishes daily news of the accounting profession, topical features, technology updates, implementation advice and serial columns by respected members of the professional community. Its core staff in recent years has been listed as Publisher Barry Strobel, Editor-in-Chief Gail Perry, CPA, Managing Editor Isaac M. O'Bannon and Senior Staff Writer Jason Bramwell. Perry, a journalism graduate of Indiana University who later studied accounting at Illinois State University, earned her CPA, worked in Deloitte's Chicago tax department, taught accounting and personal finance, spent a decade on staff at the Indiana CPA Society and previously led AccountingWEB, brings a practitioner's background to the editor's chair and still maintains a small tax practice. Regular expert voices have included technology consultant Randy Johnston, an inaugural inductee into the publication's Tax and Accounting Hall of Fame in 2011, and workflow specialist Roman Kepczyk, reflecting a model in which recognised practitioners, not only staff journalists, carry much of the guidance.
Awards: Readers' Choice and Innovation Awards
The publication runs several long-standing awards programmes. The Readers' Choice Awards invite print and online readers to name the technologies they prefer across more than thirty types of practice services and small-business tools, from tax preparation and planning to write-up and cloud technologies. The Tax and Accounting Technology Innovation Awards, running for well over a decade, recognise vendors for outside-the-box thinking, breakthrough technologies, state-of-the-art design and implementation, and concepts that help professionals and their clients work more productively and profitably; winners have been selected by the editorial board and an awards committee of accounting thought leaders. Together the two programmes balance the judgement of everyday users against expert assessment, and both have become reference points that vendors cite and firms consult when shortlisting products.
40 Under 40, 20 Under 40 and Powerful Women
CPA Practice Advisor also honours people as well as products. Its 40 Under 40 programme spotlights practising public accountants, educators and thought leaders under forty who are visibly changing the profession through leadership, innovative thinking, collaboration across generations and community outreach beyond the workplace. A companion 20 Under 40 Influencers programme recognises professionals at technology vendors who develop the tools and firm processes that allow practitioners to be more productive, efficient and profitable. Candidates may nominate themselves or be nominated by peers and colleagues, and winners are asked to identify who influenced them and where they see the profession heading. A separate Most Powerful Women in the Accounting Profession award recognises influential women's leadership, achievements, determination and mentoring. These programmes give the publication a talent-spotting role in a profession concerned about succession, recruitment and generational change.
Podcasts, Webcasts and CPE Education
Although historically a print magazine — at one stage appearing in six print issues a year alongside eleven digital issues — CPA Practice Advisor describes itself today as an online-only technology media outlet, delivering content online, by email and through social media. Its digital offer includes online tools, apps and webcasts that qualify for continuing professional education credit required of CPAs, delivered under NASBA licensing, as well as podcasts. Product comparison coverage that once lived mainly in print now also runs through The Accounting Technology Lab podcast, where technologies and workflow practices are discussed for firms serving multiple clients. Webinars moderated by the editorial team extend the same mission: providing unbiased, independent information on technologies available to practising accountants, in formats busy practitioners can use during, not only outside, the working week and busy season.
Publisher and Ownership
For much of its life the magazine was published by Cygnus Business Media, then one of America's larger business-to-business media companies, with interests spanning aviation, building and construction, public safety and security, and agriculture. The title today sits within the Endeavor Business Media portfolio, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, a business-to-business publisher formed in late 2017 to acquire and operate trade publications, websites and events, whose stated markets include accounting alongside aviation, dental, industrial, medical, oil and gas, security, construction and other professional sectors. That ownership places a specialist accounting title inside a broad professional-media group, while its editorial identity — independent reviews, practitioner columnists and profession-specific awards — has remained distinct and continuous through the changes of owner.
Role in a Changing Profession
CPA Practice Advisor's three-decade arc mirrors the modernisation of American public accounting itself: from standalone software in 1991, through networked technology in the 2000s, to cloud workflow, client portals, automation and, most recently, responsible use of artificial intelligence, a topic its community of technology leaders has debated at executive roundtables in New York. Its consistent argument, across all three titles, is that technology decisions are practice decisions. By combining star-rated comparisons, daily profession news, CPE-bearing education, peer-written columns and awards for both products and people, it functions less as a conventional magazine and more as an operating resource for independent firms. For the small and mid-sized practices that prepare much of America's tax returns and advise much of its small business, it remains a definitive technology and practice management reference.
