On November 12 & 13, 2,400 accounting and bookkeeping professionals logged in for one reason. They were tired of racing against deadlines with broken workflows, tired of feeling guilty every time they opened their inbox, and tired of pretending that being busy was the same thing as being successful.
WorkflowCon 2025 was built around a simple, uncomfortable question. What if the problem is not that accounting firms need to work harder, but their workflows were never designed to handle the reality they are operating in today?
You can watch a replay of all the sessions that addressed the question here.
Clear the Chaos. Find Your Calm was not just a tagline, but a filter for every keynote, every panel, every Workflow Champions Live session, and every conversation in chat. This is what actually happened over those two days, what people learned, and why it matters now that everyone has gone back to their client work and deadlines.
A virtual conference that did not pretend to be a physical one
WorkflowCon is fully virtual, and that choice was deliberate.
Instead of trying to imitate the hallways of a hotel in Las Vegas, the experience leaned into what virtual does well. Tight sessions. Focused tracks. Chat that behaved more like a group therapy room than a random comment stream.
Over November 12 and 13, attendees could earn up to 12 CPE credits while moving between six core tracks: Team Track, Client Track, Workflow Track, NextGen Track, Revenue Track and Workflow Champions Track.
Day 1: November 12
The tone for Day 1 was set early with host, Yuri Kapilovich, CPA (theFunCPA), opening with contagious energy before passing the mic to Shahram Zarshenas, CEO & co-founder of Financial Cents.
Shahram shared the concept behind the year’s theme and why it mattered more now than when WorkflowCon first began. He explained that the accounting profession continues to absorb more responsibility every year, including increased client expectations, compliance changes, and operational overhead, yet the systems firms rely on have not evolved at the same pace.
Then came the first keynote, From Chaos to Clarity with Kenji Kuramoto. The central idea was uncomfortable but necessary. Growth without clarity will eventually break you, your systems, or your team. Often all three.
Energy without structure can ruin your firm. You get tools clashing, a lack of accountability, and ultimately, you figure out that alignment is important. What you need to find out are the areas that you constantly find slip-ups."
Kenji KuramotoA few themes kept appearing in the chat during that first block:
- Scaling is not a marketing problem first, but an operations problem.
- Culture and clarity are leading indicators of whether your accounting firm will survive aggressive growth.
- Calm is a product of design, constraints, and better workflow decisions.
From there, attendees split into the first round of sessions.
In the Team Track, Smarter Capacity Planning for Growing Firms turned vague capacity talk into something more quantifiable. Instead of “we are busy,” the panel walked through what it actually looks like to forecast workloads, balance busy seasons, and spot burnout before it becomes a resignation.
In-person checkups are critical when relating to clients and even your team. Having a culture of honesty and transparency also helps. Going to your team with vulnerability gives permission for them to be vulnerable with you."
Tonya SchulteOn the Client Track, Dawn Brolin’s Boundaries That Clients Respect answered questions that usually stay hidden. How do you protect your margins without feeling guilty? How do you say no to scope creep when a client has known you for ten years? How do you maintain trust while defending your time?
Dawn had this to say
Scope creep starts when there aren't clear-cut boundaries with your clients. Also, your client's poor planning should not create urgency on your end."
Workflow Champions Live also kicked off, with Steven Moos breaking down a simplified 1040 return process. It was a look behind the curtain at how standardisation, templates, and checklists inside Financial Cents can take something that used to feel overwhelming and turn it into a repeatable, less stressful workflow.
Josh Aharonoff, “Your CFO Guy,” took a different angle with From Numbers to Narrative: Clear the Chaos in Financial Reporting. The main question was this: If clients are drowning in numbers and still cannot make decisions, has the work really been done? His answer involved cleaner reporting workflows, more context, and less obsession with impressive dashboards that nobody reads.
Clients get fatigued very quickly if they don't get clear and simple financial reports to assimilate. In a way, it creates more work for them. To make this better, use the SIP framework: Source, Input, Presentation."
Josh AhanaroffBetween blocks, the Break, Wellness Nook, Booths, and Trivia segment tested a basic hypothesis. Would accountants actually take a break if you gave them one? Many did. Some visited virtual booths, and others jumped into live trivia, Who Wants to Be an Accounting Millionaire.
Day 1 concluded with additional sessions, followed by The Workflow Showdown, where 5 firm leaders showcased their best workflows in front of the accounting community. This was about real firms, real bottlenecks, real fixes, and one champion crowned live.
Day 2: November 13
Day 2 opened with a keynote from Lauren Baptiste, where she shared how to turn setbacks into systems that restore clarity, build resilience, and protect you from burnout as your firm scales.
Instead of glorifying constant winning, she framed sustainable leadership around cycles of winning and learning, not winning and burning out. This was displayed in a live coaching session with Jenny Rost, CEO of Construct Bookkeeping, LLC.
Massive growth happens when failure is no longer an option"
Lauren Baptiste.The rest of the day stayed honest about what leadership and operations actually look like inside accounting firms.
Highlights included:
Contractor Chaos — Security Workflows for Temporary and Outsourced Staff with Jatin Narang, which tackled a very current problem. Many firms rely on temporary or offshore help, but treat security and access as an afterthought. The session demonstrated how to onboard and offboard temporary staff securely in one hour, without compromising your tech stack’s security.
Turning Clients into Advocates, a panel featuring Kelly Rohrs, CPA, and Peter Piluk, focused on loyalty earned through consistent delivery and communication, rather than just personality.
Another Workflow Champions Live, this time featuring Jennifer Robinson, CPA, who presented a walkthrough of her Financial Audit workflow, providing attendees with yet another concrete example of what workflow wins look like in practice, inside Financial Cents.
Standardizing Processes Across the Firm with Justine Lackey, showed how standardisation is not about killing flexibility, but cutting errors, improving collaboration, and making scaling less painful.
Live Q&A with Shahram and Abdullah: Attendees asked about the roadmap, client experience, and upcoming improvements. The much-requested client view of the portal is officially on next year’s roadmap, with a stronger focus on connecting team and client workflows.
Fun, Games & Community Highlights
Our community raised $550.31 for Women’s Money Matters, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the financial literacy of women, then Financial Cents matched the entire amount, bringing the fundraiser to a strong close.
Also, the Who Wants to Be an Accounting Millionaire live show happened with Colin Stallings walking away with $30.
Six attendees won $50 gift cards each for being the top posters of both event days, and DJ Sarah on the wheels of steel brought Workflowcon 2025 to the climax with some cool jams from way back that got everyone dancing.
Workflow Template Showdown
Five contestants and 3 judges later, Mélyssa emerged as the winner of the workflow templates showdown.
She showcased her year-end review workflow template and walked away with an all-expenses-paid trip to Mexico!
You can expect a full feature on her winning workflow soon.
Feedback From Attendees
Five Shifts Accounting Firm Leaders Took Away From WorkflowCon 2025
Across sessions, chat, and feedback, five shifts stood out.
- Growth without clarity for capacity is no longer acceptable
Firms that used to treat capacity planning as a vague forecast are now realising that it is the backbone of every strategic decision. Hiring, pricing, service expansion, and technology adoption all rely on a clearer view of who is doing what and when. - Boundaries are a workflow feature, not a personality trait
Several speakers reinforced the idea that client boundaries are not about being tough. They are about designing services, scopes, and communication flows that make it easy to say yes and clear when the answer is no. - Perfectionism is a hidden bottleneck
Sessions like When Accuracy Is Enough exposed just how much revenue and sanity are lost to over-delivery on details that do not change client outcomes. Firms are left with permission and tools to focus on the level of accuracy that truly serves the client, then redirect effort toward advisory, insight, and proactive support. - AI is useful, but only when connected to real workflows
The NextGen track made it clear that AI is not magic, and it is not a strategy on its own. It becomes useful when it plugs into existing workflows in specific ways. Drafting, summarising, creating first-pass checklists, and sparking ideas, all while remaining accountable for the final output. - Calm is a competitive advantage
This might be the quietest but most important shift. Calm used to sound like a luxury. A nice thing to have once everything else was under control. WorkflowCon 2025 framed calm as a strategic asset. Calm leaders make better decisions. Calm teams are more resilient. Calm firms retain clients and staff for longer, and have more capacity to respond when things genuinely go wrong.
Wrapping Up
If you attended WorkflowCon 2025, the question now is simple.
- Which process will you simplify first?
- Which area of perfectionism will you dial down?
- Which boundary with clients or staff will you finally formalise?
If you missed it, the waitlist for WorkflowCon 2026 is already open.
Calm does not happen by accident. It happens when you design for it, defend it, and build habits that reinforce it long after the conference tab is closed. The next twelve months will reward the firms that choose clarity over clutter, systems over guesswork, and sustainable pace over heroic effort.
Clear the chaos. Protect your calm. The work continues.
