How to plan your firm’s automation, then buy for it
This guide starts from the steps your firm repeats and ends with the plan you’d need to automate them. Prices are list prices as of 10 Nov 2026. Example firms and numbers are invented and labeled as examples.
Count your repeat steps for two weeks
Ask everyone to keep a tally, for two ordinary weeks, of the steps they do by hand that follow a fixed pattern: reminder emails to clients, “this is ready for you” messages to a colleague, new jobs set up from last month’s, invoices sent, payments chased.
Say a 4-person bookkeeping firm closes 80 clients a month and sends an average of 2 reminders per close (made-up figures). That’s 160 reminder emails a month from one step alone, before any handoffs. The tally gives you the list to automate and the yardstick for whether the tool helped.
Decide which steps to automate first
Score each step on three things:
- How often it runs. Weekly steps repay setup time; a once-a-year step rarely does.
- What a mistake costs. A reminder sent a day early is harmless. A wrong invoice or a missed extension isn’t.
- Whether you can see each run. Prefer tools that show what every rule did. Firmary, for example, records each run for review.1
Our order for most small firms, reasoned from those three: client chasing, then handoffs between staff, then recurring job creation, then intake, then billing. AI assistants fit wherever staff already use them, with a person confirming changes.
What to check in a tool’s automation
- Triggers. Which events can start a rule: a date, a status change, a client upload, a form, a signed engagement, an unpaid invoice. Canopy, for example, can trigger on a client marking a request complete.2
- Actions. What a rule can do: remind, assign, move, create, invoice. TaxDome’s pipelines move jobs, send reminders and assign tasks.3
- Client channel. Email, text or a portal notification. TaxDome and Financial Cents both send texts as well as email.4,5
- Whose permissions an AI uses. Firmary’s Claude connection acts as the staff member, within their permissions.6 TaxDome’s MCP uses per-area read or read-write permissions.7
- Approval. Whether AI changes wait for a person. Karbon says every action by Kai, its AI coworker in limited early access, waits for approval;8 Financial Cents lets each AI agent act automatically or wait.9
- The plan. Which tier the rule is on. This is where list prices mislead, as the next section shows.
What the automation costs a 5-person firm with 400 active clients
Say a 5-person firm with 400 active clients wants three things: automatic client reminders, rules that create or assign tasks, and a way to connect the staff’s own AI assistant (made-up firm). At list price, as of 10 Nov 2026, on the plan that covers the most of that:
| Tool and plan | What it covers of the three | Annual cost at list price |
|---|---|---|
| Canopy Standard, $74 per user per month annually10 | Task rules; reminders listed without a plan named; no MCP listed11–13 | 5 users for 12 months: $4,440 |
| Financial Cents Scale, $69 per user per month annually14 | All three15–17 | 5 users for 12 months: $4,140 |
| Firmary (ours) | Task rules and Claude; reminders not among published features1,6,18 | Not published19 |
| Jetpack Workflow Starter, $40 per user per month annually20 | Recurring task automation only21 | 5 users for 12 months: $2,400 |
| Karbon Business, $89 per user per month annually22 | Reminders and task automation; MCP announced, not confirmed23,24 | 5 users for 12 months: $5,340 |
| TaxDome plan plus AI add-on25 | All three, with the MCP server rolling out4,7,26,27 | $4,125 (TaxDome’s example for 400 active clients)28 + $2,400 = $6,525 |
| Uku Elite, $48 per member per month annually29 | Reminders, automations and MCP30–32 | 5 members for 12 months: $2,880 |
Two patterns follow from the published prices. With per-user tools, the automation tier multiplies by headcount: Karbon’s step from Team to Business adds $30 per user per month, or $1,800 a year for this firm.22 TaxDome’s AI add-on is a flat $200 a month for the whole team, so it weighs less as the team grows, while its plan price follows active clients.33,34
Card and ACH processing fees, AI credits and setup services are extra, and none of them are in the table.
Switching tools means rebuilding your rules
In a trial or demo account, set yourself up as a test client and run each rule end to end:
- Create a request to the test client and let the reminder fire.
- Read the reminder as the client would, on a phone.
- Answer it and check that the next task appeared with the right person and due date.
- Open the record of what the rule did. Ask where that record lives if you can’t find it.
- Switch the rule off and confirm nothing else fires.
Then turn it on for 5 friendly clients for a month before everyone.
Switching tools: rules don’t travel
Automation rules are written in each vendor’s own terms, so expect to rebuild them by hand when you move. Budget for it. TaxDome sells custom automation setup for $399 and workflow optimization at $749 for three sessions.35 Uku’s paid onboarding packages are $700 for teams up to 4 and $2,000 for up to 15 members.36 Jetpack Workflow’s one-time setup and training package is $1,500.37
Before you leave a tool, export what the rules did, not only the data they touched. In Firmary, staff with permission export the audit log as CSV, and an owner can export the whole firm.38 Karbon’s pricing page marks export as Standard on Team and Business.39 Uku’s client export goes to Excel with every field.40 For the other tools, ask in the demo whether rule definitions and run history can be exported at all.
Questions to ask in a demo
- Show a client reminder firing on a test request. Which plan is that on?
- Which events can start a rule, and which actions can a rule take?
- When a client marks a request done, can the next task create itself and go to the right person?
- Where do I see every time a rule ran, and what it did?
- Can reminders go by text as well as email, and can a client stop them?
- Can an invoice be created automatically when an engagement is signed, and who checks the amount?
- Which AI assistants can connect today, and is that on the plan you’re quoting or an add-on?
- When an assistant changes a record, whose permissions does it use, and does a person confirm the change?
- Can an administrator turn AI access off for the whole firm?
- If we leave, can we export our rules and their run history?
A checklist to print
- Tally hand-done repeat steps for two weeks
- Score each step: how often, cost of a mistake, can you see the run
- Pick the first 3 steps to automate
- Find the plan each of those steps needs
- Price that plan at your headcount or active-client count
- Add any AI add-on or credits
- Test each rule on a test client first
- Read every reminder as the client would
- Confirm where run history is kept
- Decide who approves AI changes
- Roll out to 5 clients for a month
- Ask whether rules and run history export
Join the Firmary waitlist
Firms join the Firmary waitlist and are emailed when they can join.
Sources
Each product fact on this page links to a numbered source. Quotes are copied as the page’s text reads on the date shown, spacing included.
- 1
Firmary Ours
Firmary automations: choose a trigger, define the actions and assign responsibility, then review each run in the run history.
- 2
Canopy
Use automations to trigger task creation or status changes once a client marks a request as complete.
- 3
TaxDome
TaxDome lets you create custom pipelines for different services like bookkeeping or tax preparation, automatically moves jobs through stages, sends reminders, and assigns tasks without manual work.
- 4
TaxDome
Yes, with TaxDome you can send automated emails, texts, and portal notifications when documents are due, payments are late, or approvals are needed.
- 5
Financial Cents
Financial Cents will send automated text and email reminders until your client completes the request.
- 6
Firmary Ours
Staff can connect Claude to Firmary today as a custom connector. It acts as the staff member, within their permissions and the firm’s AI rules; Claude asks before running a change unless the staff member has set that tool to always allow, and every change made through Claude is recorded in the firm’s audit log.
- 7
TaxDome (press)
The public API and MCP server are rolling out to all TaxDome firms over the coming weeks.
- 8
Karbon
Kai is available to Karbon customers now in limited early access with the list of capabilities growing each week. You can join the waitlist
- 9
Financial Cents
The agents are available on every Financial Cents plan, and your firm decides whether each one acts automatically or waits for approval.
- 10
Canopy
Standard $74 user/month ... Plus $109 user/month
- 11
Canopy
Automate task dates, notifications, status and assignee changes, and automate questionnaires and document checklists
- 12
Canopy
Automatically nudge clients to complete requests or upload documents.
- 13
Canopy
Access Canopy’s API to sync data and build custom integrations tailored to your firm.
- 14
Financial Cents
Solo ($19/mo annual) – Best for single-user firms. Team ($49/mo annual, $69/mo monthly) ... Scale ($69/mo annual, $89/mo monthly)
- 15
Financial Cents
Everything in Team Plan, plus Auto-follow ups for client tasks Customize client task emails Task dependencies Auto-send email updates Auto-create work
- 16
Financial Cents
Available on the Financial Cents Scale plan.
- 17
Financial Cents
Financial Cents pricing is per user. ... Month-End close, our tool for managing uncategorized transactions, is an add-on for $5/month per client, billed annually.
- 18
Firmary Ours
Firmary covers client requests and documents, forms, tasks, secure messaging, automations, proposals, e-signing, invoices and payments, and time tracking, with PocketFirm as the client side.
- 19
Firmary Ours
Firmary’s pricing isn’t published.
- 20
Jetpack Workflow
**Starter** – $49 per user per month billed monthly, or $40 per user per month billed annually.
- 21
Jetpack Workflow
Unlimited templates & customizable automation
- 22
Karbon
Team$59/month, per user, paid annually Or $79/month per user, paid monthly ... Business$89/month, per user, paid annually Or $99/month per user, paid monthly
- 23
Karbon
Includes everything in Team, plus: Automatic Client Reminders Task Automation Industry Integrations
- 24
Karbon (press)
Public MCP server: Connects Karbon to external AI tools via an open standard
- 25
TaxDome
AI is $200 a month, Managed Client Care is $100 a month, and Premium support is $249 a month. The white-labeled client app and Extended API are priced on request.
- 26
TaxDome
Move jobs on triggers or conditions. ... Trigger actions from answers or approvals.
- 27
TaxDome
Yes, with the TaxDome AI add-on. The open Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector lets your AI tool read and act on TaxDome data directly.
- 28
TaxDome
Clients beyond 150 are priced in volume bands, from $15 each on their own down to $5 each in the largest band. ... 400 active clients: $4,125 per year ($0.86 per client a month)
- 29
Uku
$ 38 /mo per member, billed annually or $49/mo billed monthly ... $ 48 /mo per member, billed annually or $62/mo billed monthly ... $ 88 /mo per member, billed annually or $99/mo billed monthly
- 30
Uku
Automatic notifications before deadlines and for overdue tasks.
- 31
Uku
Automate recurring workflows to save time and reduce manual work.
- 32
Uku
88 tools let Claude or ChatGPT run tasks, time, clients, invoicing and BI reports inside Uku, under the permissions of the person who signed in.
- 33
TaxDome
Available for $200 per month.
- 34
TaxDome
An active client is a client with any activity in the past 12 months, such as logging in, uploading documents, sending messages, or receiving an invoice. Contacts without activity cost nothing.
- 35
TaxDome
Get for $749, or included with a 12-month Account management package.
- 36
Uku
The first 90 min of onboarding help is free for every new account
- 37
Jetpack Workflow
Onboarding Setup & Training Package ... $1,500 One time add-on
- 38
Firmary Ours
Staff with permission export clients, contacts, tasks, time entries, aged receivables and the audit log as CSV and documents as a ZIP; an owner can export the whole firm.
- 39
Karbon
Data Import Self-Service Assisted Fully Managed Data Export Standard Standard Custom
- 40
Uku
Export clients with all fields to Excel; edit and re-import.