CAS by the numbers

December 30, 2022 4:52 PM

As a relatively young practice area, CAS is still a fluid discipline — so fluid, in fact, that not everyone agrees on what CAS actually means, or what these practices consist of. There is widespread agreement, however, that it's an extraordinarily profitable area, with growth rates that are often double those of the accounting profession's more well-established service lines.

That level of profitability has plenty of firms building or exploring launching their own CAS offerings, but with CAS varying so much from firm to firm, and many of the practices being so young, it can be difficult to get a clear picture of what the optimal structure might be, and what sort of metrics to pay attention to.

Enter CPA.com's CAS Benchmark Survey, now in its third iteration, which gathers data on key metrics, best practices and more to create a benchmarking tool to help both new and established CAS practices operate more efficiently and profitably. The 2022 survey is based on responses from almost 170 firms, and reports data from both the entire group, and from the "Top Performers" — the responding firms who are in the top quartile by net client fees per professional.

Below is a selection of important data from the survey; the entire survey report is available online, and a short wrap-up of key takeaways is available here.

The accounting profession's core services — in tax and audit, for instance — are generally growing in the single digits, but CAS routinely generates double-digit returns. What's more, almost three quarters of respondents

CAS as a service offering may be gaining tremendous traction at firms across the country, but the acronym has some catching up to do.

Interestingly, current tax clients are a more common source of potential CAS clients than current bookkeeping and accounting clients.

Almost all firms — 91% of all respondents, and 98% of top performers offer tax services, while 69% of respondents offered audit and assurance services (86% of top performers), and 61% offering payroll.

Among the top performers, over two thirds of staff do nothing but CAS; having staff who might, at any moment, be called away for a tax or audit engagement is critical to providing consistent service and maintaining enough capacity within the practice.

While the report notes that standardization is important, and that it's a best practice to "develop a prescribed tech stack with minimal choice and options available for clients," that doesn't necessarily mean paring it down to, say, just one general ledger system. As the results from the top performers show, it's possible to support five or even more GLs successfully — but those are generally software packages that are narrowly focused on specific niche industries.