WorkflowCon 2026 · Nov 9–10 · Replays
Focus is the new flex, on replay.
Every keynote and breakout from WorkflowCon 2026, sorted by track. Pick a lane, or focus on one.
All 33 replays are live. Click any session to watch it right here.
The sessions
Pick a lane, or focus on one.
32 sessions
Day 1
Monday, November 9
14 sessions
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 10:45 AM ET
Build to Enough: Creating a Firm You Actually Want to Run
Keila Hill-Trawick, CPA · Founder and CEO, Little Fish Accounting
In an industry where growth is often treated as the ultimate measure of success, what happens when you stop chasing bigger and start asking what enough looks like for you? More clients, more revenue, a bigger team. These are often the things we’re told to work toward as firm owners. But growth for the sake of growth doesn’t necessarily lead to a better business. And building a successful firm means very little if you don’t actually enjoy running it. This keynote challenges you to think differently about what success looks like and whether the business you’re building is aligned with what you actually want. You’ll explore how defining your own version of enough can help you make more intentional decisions about growth, recognize which opportunities are worth pursuing, and build a firm that works for you, not the other way around. Because the goal isn’t necessarily to build the biggest firm you can. It’s to build the right firm for you.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 3:55 PM ET
Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don’t Manage You
Ethan Kross, PhD · Psychologist and author, University of Michigan
Emotions run our lives, but no one taught us how to run them. In this keynote, Ethan Kross, University of Michigan psychologist and author of Chatter and Shift, shares the surprising science of emotion regulation and the six “shifters” we all carry, giving audiences practical tools to manage their feelings, at work and at home, starting today. We’ve been taught that negative emotions are the enemy, but that’s not what the science says. Anxiety, anger, and sadness are tools that evolved to help us navigate the world. The problem isn’t that we have them; it’s when they show up too strongly or stick around too long. Nobody expects a mechanic to fix a car with one tool, and the same is true for our emotions. What I’ve learned over twenty-five years of research is that we all carry a set of “shifters” for managing how we feel, some inside us, like the way we talk to ourselves, and some outside us, like the spaces we’re in and the people we lean on. Most of us have never been shown how to use them. The people who do this best don’t rely on a single favorite strategy; they figure out which tool fits the moment, and with practice, reaching for it becomes automatic.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 10:30 AM ET
Host Welcome + Product Teaser
Shahram Zarshenas · CEO and co-founder, Financial Cents
Shahram Zarshenas, CEO and co-founder of Financial Cents, opens WorkflowCon 2026 with a welcome to the two days ahead and a first look at what’s coming next in Financial Cents.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 11:30 AM ET
Attract A-Players in 45 Minutes: Build the One Document That Does It
Ryan Lazanis, CPA · Founder and CEO, Future Firm
Finding A-players is hard, and most firms are already losing them at the very first step: the job post. If it doesn’t grab attention, nothing else matters, because the best candidates never apply. In this session, we’ll break down what makes a job post stand out from the flood of generic listings, then build one live using a free AI tool. You’ll walk away with a job post ready to publish, plus the tool itself so you can build a new one for every future hire. This session will include building a job post template live so please make sure you have access to a free ChatGPT account at minimum to be able to follow along and participate hands-on.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 11:30 AM ET
Turn Closed Books Into Email Clients Actually Read
Jan Haugo · Founder, SmartAccountant.ai
Your team already does the analysis every month, but it stays in the workpaper and the client receives a P&L they never open. In this working session, you take one set of closed books and turn them into two things a client will actually use. The first is an interactive dashboard, built in Claude, that lets the client click through their own numbers. The second is a short email that tells them what those numbers mean, using three observations and one question. You build both live on sample books with a written procedure you can run for every client next month. You leave with the procedure, a finished example, and a simple test for whether an email is worth sending.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 11:30 AM ET
Focus Is a Business System: How to Design Your Ideal Week and Stop Running Your Firm Reactively
Justine Lackey · Bookkeeping business coach
You started your business for freedom and flexibility, right? But now you might find yourself wondering, “Where did the time go?” Or reaching the end of another exhausting workday, knowing you were busy all day but struggling to identify what you actually accomplished. Between client demands, team meetings, emails, and endless notifications, it’s easy to spend your entire day reacting instead of focusing on the work that actually creates momentum in your business. In this session, Justine Lackey will challenge the myth of multitasking and introduce you to the power of monotasking — the practice of giving your full attention to one thing at a time. You’ll also learn how to design your Ideal Week, a method of intentionally structuring your time around your priorities, energy, and most important work. Walk away with practical tools to protect your focus, establish better boundaries, and create space for deep work, strategic thinking, leadership, and life outside your firm. The real flex isn’t getting more done — it’s having the freedom, ease and the space to focus on what matters most.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 12:45 PM ET
The Out-of-Office Stress Test: What Broke, What Held, and What These Firms Changed
Stephanie Otero (moderator), Dave Kersting, Debbie Hylander and Misty Scott
During Summer Workflow Camp, firms spent four weeks stress-testing a simple question: Could the work keep moving if someone suddenly wasn’t there? They built playbooks for vacations, unexpected departures, and those moments when the person who “just knows how it works” isn’t available. Along the way, they uncovered fragile processes, knowledge living in people’s heads, unclear backup plans, and capabilities sitting unused in tools they were already paying for. Months later, our three Stress Test winners are back to tell us what actually held. Dave Kersting, Debbie Hylander, and Misty Scott will share what stuck, what quietly reverted, what they changed after the challenge ended, and what turned out to matter more than they expected. This isn’t about documenting every possible scenario or building a perfect operations manual. It’s about pressure-testing what you already have, finding the places where your firm is more dependent on one person than you realized, and building enough clarity that the work can keep moving—even when someone can’t.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 12:45 PM ET
Before AI Touches Client Data: Know What You’re Agreeing To
Tanya Hilts · CEO and founder, Cloud Business Services
AI tools are showing up everywhere in our profession, promising to save time, automate tasks and make our businesses more efficient. But before we connect one to our accounting software, upload a client’s financial information or give it access to our systems, there’s an important question we need to ask: Do we actually understand what we’re agreeing to? In this interactive 60-minute workshop, Tanya Hilts will walk participants through a practical framework for evaluating AI tools before introducing them into their accounting or bookkeeping practice. We’ll look beyond the marketing promises to explore what happens to client information, how to identify potential risks in vendor terms and privacy policies, what permissions we’re giving away, and who remains accountable when something goes wrong. Participants will work through a realistic example using an AI Tool Evaluation Checklist, learning what questions to ask, what answers should raise concerns, and when it’s time to say no. This isn’t about being afraid of AI. It’s about understanding the tools we’re using, protecting the trust our clients place in us, and making informed decisions that allow us to take advantage of technology without giving up control. Attendees will leave with a reusable AI Tool Evaluation Checklist and a clearer process for deciding whether a tool is appropriate for their practice and their clients.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 12:45 PM ET
“Would You Fire This Client?”
Nancy McClelland, Tony Proctor, Tailor Hartman and Al-Nesha Jones
Some clients are obviously a poor fit. The harder calls are the ones where the answer is not so clear. In this interactive panel, four firm owners will work through real-world client dilemmas and make the call: keep the client, fix the relationship, or fire them? As each scenario unfolds, we’ll add new information and see what changes their minds—and what doesn’t. The conversation will dig into the factors that make these decisions complicated: profitability, client fit, boundaries, scope creep, team impact, security concerns, and the “just this once” exceptions that have a way of becoming permanent. Attendees will hear how experienced firm owners weigh the tradeoffs, where they draw the line, and what they consider before deciding a client relationship is worth repairing—or no longer worth keeping.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 1:55 PM ET
The Workflow Exists. Why Is Everyone Still Doing It Differently?
Jo Kindret · Operations specialist, Build The Firm Co.
When your team keeps working around a process, the workflow is usually telling you something. It might be missing a step, it might not account for an exception, or it might not match the way the work actually gets done. Jo builds the workflows at Arnason Accounting & Co. In many small and growing firms, that job falls to the owner or a senior team member, on top of everything else they do. This session is for whoever builds the workflows. Sometimes the real cause is a leadership issue, and Jo will say so up front. After that, she’ll stick to what the builder controls: finding the spots where people go off-script and fixing the workflow itself rather than repeating the reminder. To show how, she’ll rebuild a sample onboarding workflow in a Financial Cents template, including a Loom video embedded on the trickiest step. Not every tool lets you do that.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 1:55 PM ET
Financial Cents Live Demo
Kasey Cunningham · Financial Cents
A live walkthrough of Financial Cents with Kasey Cunningham.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 1:55 PM ET
Everyone Is Busy. So Why Is Work Still Stuck?
Jenna Lee Dillon · CEO, Gutsy Money
A full workload isn’t the same as work moving forward. In this live customer walkthrough, Jenna Lee Dillon, founder of Gutsy Money, will show how to spot stalled work, distinguish internal bottlenecks from client delays, and define the problem so the right solution becomes clear. Attendees will see the views and weekly routines that give her firm a clearer picture of assignments, deadlines, client dependencies, and team capacity—without chasing everyone for a status update. They’ll leave with a simple framework for reviewing work across their own firm, whether or not they use Financial Cents.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 2:40 PM ET
Stanford Tax Demo
Dan Berenholtz · Stanford Tax
StanfordTax automates the tax workflow from intake to delivery. Firms generate personalized organizers from their tax software in seconds, collect client documents with checklists that update in real time, and turn uploads into standardized, prep-ready workpapers. More than 800 accounting firms across the U.S. use it.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 2:40 PM ET
Relay Demo
Deanna Zubrickas · Relay
Relay is the banking and money management platform designed for growing accountants and bookkeepers managing large client portfolios. All your clients’ finances live in one place: AP, AR, and banking.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 3:10 PM ET
Make It a System, Not a Favor: Building the Systems Behind a Kept Promise
Tonya Schulte · Owner, The Profit Constructors
Every service business makes promises to clients: a response time, a turnaround window, a “we’ve got you” reassurance. Most of those promises quietly fail — not because the team isn’t working hard enough, but because the promise was never attached to anything structural. It lived in a person’s inbox, a group chat, or someone’s memory. This session makes the case that clients don’t get to decide how they interact with you — you design the door — and that the specific systems you build (a dedicated portal, a single intake channel, a defined escalation path) are what turn good intentions into guarantees you can actually keep and defend.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 3:10 PM ET
Your Tech Stack Has an Org Chart
Kristy Monahan · AI Transformation Advisor, Echo Park Consulting
Every piece of software a firm adopts quietly shapes how the firm operates. It determines where information lives, who gets interrupted, what clients have to do, where work gets stuck, and which decisions still find their way back to the owner. In this session, Kristy Monahan will explore how firm owners can evaluate their technology as an operating structure, not simply a collection of tools. Attendees will learn how to identify unclear ownership, unnecessary handoffs, and technology decisions that create more work instead of making the firm run better.
Day 1 · Mon, Nov 9 · 3:10 PM ET
Stop Selling Everything to Everyone
Veronica Wasek, CPA · Founder, 5 Minute Bookkeeping
More services don’t necessarily mean more revenue, and more clients don’t always mean more growth. In fact, offering too much can make it harder for clients to understand what you do best and harder for you to price and sell your services confidently. In this practical session, Veronica Wasek will show firm owners how to identify the work they are best positioned to deliver, turn that expertise into a clearly defined higher-value offer, and communicate its value without feeling like a salesperson. Attendees will learn how to evaluate which services deserve their focus, define the client problem and outcome more clearly, create stronger scope and pricing boundaries, and use a consultative approach to recommend the right next step. The goal is not to do more. It is to become known for solving the right problem for the right client, and to build a simpler, more profitable firm around that focus.
Day 2
Tuesday, November 10
13 sessions
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 10:35 AM ET
The Focused Firm: How to Get Everyone Focused on the Work That Matters (Recording coming soon)
Nicole Davis, CPA · Founder, Conscious Accounting
Busy is easy. Focus is harder. As firms add clients, services, technology, and people, work piles up without anyone questioning what actually deserves the team’s time. The result? Everyone is busy, but the firm isn’t necessarily getting better. This session explores how to identify the work that matters, assign it to the right people, and decide what to delegate, automate, or eliminate. Learn how to create clarity, strengthen accountability, and make focus your firm’s competitive advantage.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 12:30 PM ET
The Firm of 2028: What Will You Do With the Time AI Gives Back?
Jan Haugo · Founder, SmartAccountant.ai
The software small firms already use is starting to do the repetitive work for them, and every firm in this room will get hours back because of it. This keynote is about what you do with those hours. Jan Haugo walks through how to identify the work your software can take on, choose what the returned time goes to, and rethink the roles on your team, including how a new hire learns when software handles the entry-level work. You leave with a picture of your firm in June 2027 and one decision to make this week.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 10:00 AM ET
DJ Will Gill + Welcome to Day 2
DJ Will Gill and Shahram Zarshenas · CEO and co-founder, Financial Cents
DJ Will Gill warms up the room, then Shahram Zarshenas, CEO and co-founder of Financial Cents, opens Day 2 of WorkflowCon 2026 and sets up the sessions ahead.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 11:15 AM ET
Signed. Now Make It Work. Build a Client Onboarding Process That Sets the Relationship Up Right
Nayo Carter-Gray, EA, MBA · 1st Step Accounting
A signed engagement letter does not mean a client is actually ready to work with your firm. The first few weeks of a client relationship are where expectations get set, information gets lost, responsibilities become fuzzy, and bad habits can quietly take hold. A strong onboarding process makes it clear what happens next, what the client needs to do, who owns each step inside the firm, and when the relationship is officially ready to move into recurring work.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 11:15 AM ET
Losing $100K a Month: The Numbers & Story Behind LiveCA’s Turnaround
Chad Davis, CPA · Co-founder, LiveCA and AutomationTown
LiveCA was losing $100,000 a month before making the difficult decision to shrink from 120 people to 60 and ultimately become a more focused, highly profitable firm. In this numbers-heavy session, he’ll break down how they figured out where the money was actually going, what the economics revealed about service profitability, staffing, utilization, delivery costs, pricing, and client mix, and which numbers made it clear what had to change. He’ll share how doing less, focusing the firm, and making tough decisions as a team turned the economics around which ultimately opened the opportunity to move to Spain.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 11:15 AM ET
Inside-Out Feedback: See and Do Feedback Differently through Coaching
Brian Kush, PCC · Co-founder, Intend2Lead
Performance feedback matters—we all need to receive feedback to perform better and grow into our best selves. Yet traditional feedback methods often feel too hard and don’t create real momentum. Brian Kush, of Intend2Lead, will share a new mindset to cultivate and a coaching technique to practice. This “inside-out” approach to feedback will change the way you see and hold feedback conversations so you can make them more focused, continuous, actionable, and most importantly, more collaborative and fun!
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 1:25 PM ET
The End of the Organizer Chase
Jenna Rodriguez · Owner, Approachable Accountants, with the Financial Cents team
Every tax season starts with the same problem: you know exactly what you need from your clients. Getting them to actually send it—and knowing what’s still missing—is another story. In this session, Jenna Rodriguez joins Financial Cents for the first look at Organizers, a new way to build structured client requests around exactly what your firm needs. Instead of relying on long email threads, generic checklists, and repeated follow-up, you can guide clients through what to provide while giving your team a clearer picture of what’s complete and what still needs attention. You’ll see Organizers in action, how Jenna would use them in a real tax workflow, and how they connect document collection to the work that happens next. The goal isn’t another place to ask clients for things. It’s a better way to get the right information into your firm so the work can move forward.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 2:10 PM ET
GruntWorx Demo
Brian Unger · GruntWorx
GruntWorx helps tax firms increase capacity with AI-powered document processing, automated organization and data population, and U.S.-based expert verification available through GruntWorx PREMIUM.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 2:10 PM ET
Cloud Accountant Staffing Demo
Jordan Sublette · Cloud Accountant Staffing
Cloud Accountant Staffing helps modern accounting firms hire top accounting talent in days, not months. Whether you need onshore US talent or offshore team members from the Philippines, Latin America, or South Africa, their pre-vetted bookkeepers, accountants, and CPAs are ready to plug into your team.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 2:40 PM ET
Architect Before the Engine: My Real AI Implementation Playbook
Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE · CEO, Powerful Accounting
The architecture is the workflow. The engine is the tool. Most firms buy the engine first, then build around whatever it happens to do. Dawn Brolin does it the other way, and this session is how: what she asks before a tool touches client work, what she automated first and why that order mattered, and what she has passed on. One practitioner’s actual criteria from a working CPA firm. Fewer tools, used deeper, not more tools used worse.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 2:40 PM ET
Make Your Team Obsolete-Proof
Deborah Harris · CEO and co-founder, Grow Group Global
AI should not simply replace people – it should release them for more valuable work. In this practical session, Deborah Harris shares how firm leaders can move repetitive work to AI while developing their people for stronger judgment, problem-solving, client relationships and commercial contribution. Attendees will learn how to create a culture in which team members actively challenge inefficient workflows, experiment safely with AI and seek higher-leverage ways of working. They will leave with Deborah’s Human Leverage Loop: a practical framework for determining what moves to AI, what remains human and how released capacity can be deliberately redeployed. The future-ready firm is not the one with the fewest people. It is the one in which people continually become capable of more.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 2:40 PM ET
Social Security Workflow: Building Social Security Planning Into a Workflow You Already Have
Kaya Klotzek, EA, RSSA® · Founder and president, Life’s Just Taxing
Adding a new service to a firm usually sounds like more work, more tools, and more friction. Social Security planning does not have to be that. This session shows how firms are folding Social Security conversations into their existing client workflows, using structured software and case-based processes rather than building something new from scratch. Attendees will leave with a practical picture of what this looks like inside a firm that is not trying to reinvent its operations, just extend them.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 3:25 PM ET
Pricing Is How You Say No
Logan Graf, CPA · Owner, The Graf Tax Co
Pricing is how you say no without actually saying no. Learn how to use pricing to manage capacity, improve your client base, and create more room for the work you actually want to do. We’ll cover pricing strategies for both new and existing clients, including how to raise rates.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 3:25 PM ET
I Bought a Tax Practice. I Didn’t Buy Its Rules
Steven Moos, CPA · Founder, Moos Tax & Accounting
This session is about what happens after you acquire an existing tax practice and have to decide what comes with you into the firm you actually want to build. The goal is to give attendees an honest, practical look at what it takes to take over someone else’s version of tax season and intentionally make it your own.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 3:25 PM ET
Alignment Is Not Agreement
Jason Blumer, CPA · CEO, Thriveal and Blumer & Associates
Most firm owners think alignment means everyone nodding in the meeting. So they either push for a consensus that evaporates once people leave the room, or they tolerate real misalignment because everyone seems to get along. Neither one grows a firm. Alignment is not agreement. Agreement means everyone gets their first choice. Alignment means people can fully support the direction even when the outworking includes things they wouldn’t have chosen. You can be aligned with someone you disagree with, and that’s often where the most meaningful leadership happens. In this session, I’ll give you a working definition of alignment that you can assess and lead. We’ll walk through the chain that drives growth: trust is the root, alignment is the trunk, leverage is the branch, and reach is the fruit. Then we’ll apply it where it matters most. First, your team: the four parameters we score and what to do when the scores reveal a gap. Second, your clients: the four parameters that separate aligned clients from vendor relationships, and why letting a misaligned client go is a leadership move, not a failure.
Day 2 · Tue, Nov 10 · 4:10 PM ET
The Small & Mighty Awards
Judged by Keila Hill-Trawick, Richard Roppa-Roberts and Tanya Hilts
Big impact doesn’t always come from the biggest firms, the biggest teams, or the loudest voices. The Small & Mighty Awards celebrate the practitioners who are making accounting and bookkeeping better in meaningful ways: improving how work gets done, showing up for their communities, creating opportunities for others, and challenging the profession to think differently. Join us as we recognize this year’s finalists and reveal the 2026 Small & Mighty Award winners live at WorkflowCon. It’s a chance to celebrate the people doing remarkable work—often without nearly enough recognition for it.
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WorkflowCon 2026
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The people who made the call.
Ethan Kross, PhD
Psychologist and author, University of Michigan
Keila Hill-Trawick, CPA
Founder and CEO, Little Fish Accounting
Nicole Davis, CPA
Founder, Conscious Accounting
Jan Haugo
Founder, SmartAccountant.ai
Al-Nesha Jones, CPA
Founder, ASE Group
Brian Kush, PCC
Co-founder, Intend2Lead
Chad Davis, CPA
Co-founder, LiveCA and AutomationTown
Dave Kersting
Founder and CEO, Capovario
Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE
CEO, Powerful Accounting
Debbie Hylander, CPA
Managing member, Hylander CPA Firm
Deborah Harris
CEO and co-founder, Grow Group Global
Jason Blumer, CPA
CEO, Thriveal and Blumer & Associates
Jenna Lee Dillon
CEO, Gutsy Money
Jenna Rodriguez
Owner, Approachable Accountants
Jo Kindret
Operations specialist, Build The Firm Co.
Justine Lackey
Bookkeeping business coach
Kasey Cunningham
Financial Cents
Kaya Klotzek, EA, RSSA®
Founder and president, Life’s Just Taxing
Kristy Monahan
AI Transformation Advisor, Echo Park Consulting
Logan Graf, CPA
Owner, The Graf Tax Co
Misty Scott
Accounting manager, Bestow
Nancy McClelland, CPA
The Dancing Accountant, Chicago
Nayo Carter-Gray, EA, MBA
1st Step Accounting
Richard Roppa-Roberts
Founder, Roundtable Labs
Ryan Lazanis, CPA
Founder and CEO, Future Firm
Stephanie Otero, CPA
VP, Small Firm Advocate, AICPA
Steven Moos, CPA
Founder, Moos Tax & Accounting
Tailor Hartman, CPA
Founder and CEO, Celerity Accounting
Tanya Hilts
CEO and founder, Cloud Business Services
Tony Proctor, EA
Founder and principal, Proctor & Assocs.
Tonya Schulte
Owner, The Profit Constructors
Veronica Wasek, CPA
Founder, 5 Minute Bookkeeping
Shahram Zarshenas
CEO and co-founder, Financial Cents (host)
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