Accountancy firms: does your IT only get looked at after 31 January?

Author: Bruce Penson | Managing Director

If you run an accountancy practice, you’ll know the pattern. IT goes on the list for February. Then February brings year-end work, then VAT quarters, then the next deadline is on the horizon, and IT slips again.

In hundreds of conversations with partners and practice managers over the past three years, we’ve heard that story more than any other. It’s completely understandable. Most practices of 10 to 70 people have no IT director, so IT sits with a partner on top of client work, or with a trusted contractor who’s been looking after things for years.

So we put it to the test. Our new benchmarking report, IT, cyber security and AI in SME accountancy firms 2026, shows what running IT around the tax calendar really means for a practice, and what the firms getting it right do differently.

Why it matters now

The pressure on practices is building from every direction. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax adds quarterly work. Practice software costs are rising. Firms are merging and offshoring. And AI is arriving in every inbox and accounts package, often before anyone has agreed how staff should use it.

Criminals know all of this. Accountants hold bank details, payroll records, tax data and the ID documents collected for anti-money-laundering checks, and the January rush gives a fake HMRC email or a changed bank detail the perfect cover.

What the report answers

The report combines IT Maturity Scorecard results from accountancy practices with what we heard in our conversations, set against guidance from the NCSC, the ICO, ICAEW and ACCA. It’s built around the questions partners actually ask us:

• How does our practice compare with others our size?
• Which attacks are aimed at accountancy firms, and why do they work?
• Would we cope if our systems went down in January?
• Is our staff’s use of AI putting client data at risk?
• What are the best-run practices doing that we aren’t?

The answer to that last one was clearer than we expected. The biggest gap between the top and bottom practices wasn’t the size of their budget or the software they used. It came down to whether IT was planned at all.

Who it’s for

The report is written for partners, directors and practice managers at accountancy firms of 10 to 70 people. It’s practical rather than technical, and it ends with ten actions you can take to your next partners’ meeting and plan around busy season.

Download the free report: IT, cyber security and AI in SME accountancy firms 2026

Want to know how your own practice measures up?

Our free IT benchmarking assessment takes just five minutes, and you’ll get your personalised results instantly.

Take the free IT benchmarking assessment