A CPA practice documents its own reasoning more carefully than almost any other small business. Every engagement leaves workpapers with tick marks and review notes, every tax return has a preparer and a reviewer, and every busy season the firm rewrites its checklists after something slipped. Around that sits the practice's operating record: engagement workflows in Karbon or Canopy, onboarding steps, capacity planning threads, staff training and the partner emails that explain why a position was taken.
Buyers and the labs behind them point at this work directly. Accountants and auditors are one of the 44 occupations in OpenAI's GDPval benchmark and score 99 out of 100 on O*NET's email scale. Invisible says it draws reinforcement learning tasks from accounting and shows a tax preparation environment. Troveo's financial guide names accounting practices, and Nyne buys from QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuite.
Client books and tax return information are the hard part, and they are where most of the questions sit. Endless, a broker, lists client onboarding, month-end close, reconciliation and SOPs as in scope and excludes client books. Start with the practice's method, the part least tied to any one client, and put every question about IRC 7216, the AICPA Code or client records to the licensing company's review.
Worth
What a practice's data may be worth
Pre-set for a typical practice: 35 staff and 15 years of records. No buyer publishes pricing by industry, so industry does not move the band. Our estimate, not a buyer quote.
Buyers
Which buyers want this data
Each reason is the buyer's own published statement about the tools, data or industries it takes, matched to how CPA firms work.
Featured partners
micro1
Names professional services and lists SOPs, templates and project management workflows, the shape of a practice's engagement workflow library.13,14
- $100K to $2M+, micro1 says9
Watch out for: Says it removes personal details only "when relevant", so ask exactly how.15
Polyshares
Names professional services, buys accounting and ERP exports, and says it excludes data held on behalf of clients.16,17,18
- $100K to $2M+, Polyshares says10
- None, Polyshares says19
- An offer in 1 to 2 weeks, then paid in 30 to 60 days20
Watch out for: Exclusive by default, and every deal it lists is exclusive with no end date.21,22
Everyone else we reviewed
By score, with full reviews. We have no referral agreement with these companies, so we do not link out to them.
Nyne AI
Buys from QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuite and takes firms from 20+ US W-2 employees, which fits many regional practices.23,24
- $100K or more, Nyne says25
Watch out for: Pays only after the dataset is accepted, and publishes no timeline.26
Troveo
Its financial-firm guide names accounting practices and lists accounting workpapers, close files and email tied to reviews.1,2
- Six figures and up for a whole company, Troveo says27
- A share of the revenue; the percentage is not published28
Watch out for: You are paid from a revenue share, so ask what percentage you keep.28
Buyer demand
How buyers' own tools rate CPA firms
No buyer publishes a price list by industry. These are settings inside buyers' and brokers' own estimators and intake forms, read from their public pages on 2026-10-14. They show how each company sorts industries, not what any practice was paid. The category shown is the one a practice would most likely pick; that match is ours.
| Company | Its category | How it rates the industry |
|---|---|---|
| Troveo | Accounting, tax or bookkeeping | Tier 1 of 4: "Buyers pay a premium for data from your industry." Price factor 1.3 in its estimator.29 |
| Polyshares | Accounting and tax | Marked premium in its intake list30 |
| VMS | Accounting | Standard weight in its estimator (factor 1.12)31 |
| Ventra | Legal, healthcare, financial services or accounting | Says it cannot take these industries right now32 |
Size rules buyers publish
Checked against 35 staff, the typical practice size this page's calculator is set to. Ask each buyer whether contractors and part-time staff count.
Polyshares
No headcount rule; the length and texture of the record matter more33
Mercor
None stated34
Troveo
No minimum stated; its estimator starts at 2035
Nyne
20+ US W-2 employees and 3+ years24
Handshake AI
20+ full-time employees and 3+ years36
micro1
Pewter
20+ staff and 3+ years38
Endless
Roughly 30+ employees39
Ventra
30+ US employees and 3+ years of records40
Supersoniq
50+ employees and 5+ years41
What buyers value
What in a practice's records buyers value
The column on the right is not legal advice: it lists what to raise with the buyer before anything is exported.
| Data | Where it lives | Why a buyer values it | Raise with the buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engagement workflow templates | Karbon, Canopy or TaxDome | Step lists for each service line (1040, 1120-S, review, compilation, advisory) with owners and due dates, refined every season. | Nothing specific |
| Review checklists and review-note conventions | CCH Axcess, Caseware or a shared drive | How a reviewer challenges a preparer's work, the most direct record of accounting judgment a practice keeps. | Review notes written on real client workpapers. |
| Client onboarding process | Practice management and client portal | Intake, document requests and kickoff steps. Endless lists client onboarding as in scope for accounting firms. | Client names and documents collected during onboarding. |
| Month-end close and reconciliation SOPs | Written SOPs, QuickBooks or NetSuite | The repeatable close routine for outsourced accounting clients, step by step. | Client ledgers and bank detail behind each reconciliation. |
| Capacity and busy-season planning threads | Outlook, Teams | How partners triage deadlines, extensions and staffing when everything is due at once. | Nothing specific |
| Staff training and technical memos | Intranet, CPE notes, internal wiki | The firm's write-ups of new standards and tax changes for its staff. | Nothing specific |
A week of records
A week of data at a practice
- Monday: 120 organizers chased through the client portal with the standard reminder sequence.
- Tuesday: a manager adds two steps to the S-corp workflow template after a missed basis schedule.
- Wednesday: reviewers clear 60 returns, leaving review notes in each binder.
- Thursday: the capacity thread in Teams moves eleven returns to extension and reassigns two staff.
- Friday: month-end close runs for 30 outsourced accounting clients from the reconciliation SOP.
Software
Software CPA firms run on
Process
How it works with each buyer
In each buyer's own published words. Where a buyer publishes nothing, we say so rather than guess.
micro1
- Internal docs, SOPs and playbooks, knowledge bases, project management workflows, internal comms, templates, CRM and workflow metadata, task histories14
- 30 to 200 employees37
- $100K-$2M+ per data package; over $1M for unique data9
- PII removed "when relevant"15
- The company keeps ownership of its data and reviews samples before release42
- Not published
Polyshares
Nyne AI
Selling or closing
Selling or closing your practice? License its data first
CPA practices are sold, merged up into larger firms and passed to successors, and the archive of workpapers and workflows usually goes with the book of clients without anyone pricing it. If a practice sale or succession is coming, ask each licensing company whether the firm's templates, SOPs and review conventions can be licensed first, separately from client files. Pewter says it takes firms that are downsizing, winding down or closed, as long as the records still exist.4
FAQ
CPA firms: questions, answered
Accounting practices are on buyers' lists. Troveo's financial guide names them, Nyne buys from QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuite, and Pewter claims accounting deals. Endless lists client onboarding, month-end close, reconciliation and SOPs as in scope for accounting firms and excludes client books.1,23,3,46
You can ask for that package. Endless excludes client books from accounting deals, and Polyshares says it excludes data held on behalf of clients. List the items least tied to any client (templates, checklists, SOPs, training) on the first call so the offer prices what you are actually offering.46,18
Pewter claims $350K for a 60-person accounting firm and $280K for an accounting group. Both are Pewter's own claims, with no firm named and no independent check. Across buyers, published ranges mostly run $100K to $2M, also as their own claims: micro1, Cognor Labs and Ventra all quote that band.3,12,9,49,50
Most buyers describe an approval step. Goldmined.ai says nothing sells without the owner's approval, Troveo says it anonymizes to a documented standard and licenses on approved terms, and micro1 says the company reviews samples before release. Ask any buyer to walk through that step with a sample from your own files.53,54,42
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Legal questions go to the licensing company
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company before you sign: their team reviews these with you.
Questions for this kind of business
- How does your review handle IRC 7216 for any tax return information in the package?
- How does it treat the AICPA Code's confidentiality rule (ET 1.700) and state board rules?
- Does the GLBA Safeguards Rule change how data leaves our systems?
- Do client engagement letters restrict how workpapers can be used?
- Who owns this data: the company, an estate, or someone else?
- Do professional rules apply (AICPA, IRC 7216, HIPAA, ABA Model Rule 1.17, insurance agency contracts, adviser rules, state boards)?
- Do customer, vendor or platform contracts, NDAs or API terms restrict this?
- How do CCPA, GDPR, UK GDPR and state privacy laws apply, and is de-identified data still personal information?
- How is the payment taxed?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?
Proof
Deals in this kind of business
- Pewter, a broker, says an unnamed 60-person accounting firm licensed five years of workpapers, reconciliations, financial models and tax files for $350K, and an accounting group licensed workpapers, workflows, templates and internal communications for $280K. Pewter says these figures are the publishers' own statements, not independently verified.3,12