Small accounting firms struggle to compete amid talent shortage

“I’m experiencing it as a business owner. When I needed to replace a senior accountant, finding someone locally was a real challenge,” Rigney told the brand.

CPA Australia business and investment lead Gavan Ord told Accountants Daily that CPA’s members are saying the same thing.

“For some smaller accounting practices, difficulty finding experienced people is constraining their ability to take on new clients and grow,” Ord said.

For vacant taxation and general accountant roles, on average, it takes 77 and 79 days to fill, the data adds, with over 65 financial leaders reporting difficulty filling mid-to-senior roles.

Further, Randstad Australia noted that 22,000 accountants will retire by 2026, and a 95 per cent decline in professional year enrolments, and a 19 per cent decline in accounting graduate completions.

Jobs and Skills Australia projects an 8.4 per cent increase in accounting-related roles over the next five years and 16.5 per cent over the next 10 years, faster than projected national employment growth.

“These figures reinforce what we are hearing from members: demand for accounting talent remains strong, while skills shortages continue to be a significant challenge for employers,” Ord said.

The small firm recruitment squeeze

Small firms report struggling to be competitive with their hiring against larger firms with more capital.

“Smaller firms are also disproportionately squeezed in the battle for technical expertise. Additionally, smaller accounting firms aren’t always able to compete on salary when top talent are able to command premium salaries and often receive multiple competing offers.” Randstad director of finance and accounting and professionals expert Richard Kennedy told the brand.

While they have the monetary side lost for the most part, Kennedy said that it is possible for smaller firms to highlight the non-monetary benefits, such as “access to flexible work options to improve work-life balance and support for professional development as our annual employer brand research shows”.

“We can’t keep expecting to hire experienced accountants if we’re not investing in developing them in the first place,” public practice accounting recruiter Christine Foggiato told Accountants Daily.

For Foggiato, to get accountants to invest in your firm, you must invest in them to address the retirement cliff.

“With more directors and partners approaching retirement, succession planning has become a big topic, but many partners are reluctant to share what partnership will actually look like with potential hires. If you want someone to invest the next 10 or 20 years of their career in your firm, you need to give them something to work towards – share the revenue numbers, profit margins with them, let them know how lucrative a long-term career in accounting can be,” Foggiato said.

Other options

Foggiato told Accountants Daily that cost savings from offshoring aren’t what they used to be.

“Wages in the Philippines have been increasing, good accountants are regularly jumping ship for better offers, and with the help of AI, an intermediate accountant in Australia can now produce work similar to what was previously being outsourced offshore,” Foggiato said.

She said that it is important to go back to basics. She said that firms must start hiring local junior accountants, training them and retaining them.

“There’s also the challenge of experienced accountants approaching retirement. We’re not just losing people, we’re losing decades of practical knowledge and experience. Firms need to be investing in mentoring younger accountants and giving them opportunities to develop their judgement, rather than simply pushing them through compliance work,” Byford Accountants senior tax accountant Albert de Jager also told the brand.

Further, Foggiato stressed that experienced accountants must be given the option to work remotely, as many do not want to spend hours commuting to an office every week.

Changing the appeal of the profession

de Jager told the brand: “I think addressing the accountant shortage starts well before someone enters the profession.”

For de Jager, this starts in high school and university. “There’s still this idea that accountants spend their days counting beans and crunching numbers, when in reality there’s so much more to the profession.”

He said that he would like to see more practising accountants getting into schools and universities and sharing their rewarding experiences in the industry.

“We’re in a position to genuinely influence the financial wellbeing of individuals and help Australian businesses grow. That’s something worth promoting,” said de Jager.

Although attracting people to the profession is important, de Jager said that it is equally important to focus on retention in the industry.

“I think some traditional public practice models need a rethink. Of course productivity and profitability matter, but when we focus too heavily on chargeable hours, timesheets and productivity percentages, we risk overlooking the very qualities that make someone a great accountant. Things like creativity, communication, problem-solving and building genuine relationships with clients,” he said.

“If we want more young people entering accounting, we need to show them a profession worth joining, and then provide workplaces worth staying in,” said de Jager.

The challenge of finding local, experienced accountants

“In conversations with other practice owners, the same issue keeps coming up: everyone seems to be looking for experienced staff,” Rigney said.

This shortage hits his firm to the extent that he has had to ask the ATO for extensions because he does not have enough people to get through the work.

He has first-hand experienced the benefits of providing perks such as work from home and flexibility for retention; however, he noted that he also was forced to bring in overseas support, something that required him to change his approach and rethink how he operated.

“Practice owners also need to look at what we’re offering. Pay matters, but so do flexibility, development and access to technology that makes the job easier. If we expect people to be productive, we have to invest in the tools and support that allow them to do that,” Rigney said.

“But buying a subscription isn’t enough. Firms need to give people practical training, appropriate tools and clear expectations about checking outputs and handling client information. There’s a big difference between having access to AI and knowing how to use it effectively.”

Using AI

“It also matters for retaining staff. You can’t keep asking people to produce more while refusing to invest in anything that makes their job easier. AI won’t solve the talent shortage on its own, but used properly, it can ease the workload and give people more room to do the work they find rewarding,” Rigney said.

Rigney said that the cost, focusing on essential compliance, and important conversations being pushed back are the biggest risks that small businesses are facing with their accountants.

“AI can help create capacity by reducing the time spent on repetitive administration, preparing drafts and organising information. That gives accountants more time to apply their experience, review the work and have useful conversations with clients,” said Rigney.

Regarding the increase in AI use, Randstad data showed that the use of GenAI in accounting and tax firms expanded significantly from 8 per cent in 2024 to 21 per cent in 2025, and 89 per cent of professionals in these firms acknowledged its application to their daily workflows.

Further, it revealed that across the finance and insurance sector, 64 per cent of businesses prioritised AI to automate repetitive tasks.

Revamping the profession

“I think it’s a combination of experienced accountants retiring, not enough new people coming through to replace them, and the profession not doing a good enough job of showing people what an accounting career can offer,” Rigney said.

Kennedy said: “The shortage is evident in recruitment bottlenecks and a decline in the number of roles being filled across the profession.”

“Ultimately, I think the profession has a lot going for it. It’s a stable career, you develop skills that are genuinely useful in everyday life, and you have the opportunity to make a real difference to people and businesses,” de Jager said.

“We’re still fighting that image of someone sitting behind a desk crunching numbers all day. The part I find most rewarding is understanding the person behind the business, helping them work through challenges and seeing them succeed. We need to show young people that side of the career much earlier (and by showing the three accounting bodies need to step up to promote the benefits of accounting as a career),” Rigney said.