Two virtual half-days. Up to 10+ hours of CPE. Complimentary for MACPA members.
For 125 years, MACPA has brought CPAs and finance professionals together, building a community that helps them navigate change and learn from one another.
CPA Summit brings together industry leaders who work closely with accounting and finance teams every day. Their perspective gives members a practical look at the trends, challenges, and technologies shaping the profession, including what they are seeing across firms and organizations, what is changing fastest, and what CPAs should be preparing for next.
We'll dive into the trends transforming the profession, including topics such as:
All times are Eastern Time (ET). Both half-days are virtual.
As we celebrate the close of MACPA’s 125th anniversary year, three of our organization’s leaders come together to reflect on the legacy that brought us here - and the possibilities ahead. This candid conversation will explore how MACPA and the profession have evolved, what today’s CPAs are being called to lead, and how we can build on 125 years of progress to shape an even stronger future.
Selling an accounting firm is about more than achieving an acceptable purchase price. This session explores how sellers can evaluate buyer fit before negotiations and deal mechanics begin to dominate the process. Attendees will learn what to consider when protecting their team, clients, culture, and legacy, as well as how to assess a buyer’s vision, communication, and ability to follow through. The goal is to help firm owners choose a transaction they will feel good about after the deal closes.
AI adoption is accelerating. Cyber insurers are tightening requirements and denying claims. Regulators are increasing expectations around protection, notification, and cyber incident reporting. The risk landscape for CPA firms has changed, and many leaders do not yet realize how vulnerable their firms may be.
In this fast-paced session, cybersecurity expert Scott Hagizadegan explains the shifts happening now, and what CPA firm leaders should understand to help safeguard their firms, clients, and operations as they head into 2027.
Firm owners often treat succession purely as a valuation question — "What is my firm worth?" — but a successful transition depends on far more than price. This session addresses the gap between headline value and the real drivers of a successful exit: owner dependence, staff depth, client concentration, process maturity, and choosing the right succession path and buyer fit. Attendees will learn to assess their firm's true succession readiness, compare the tradeoffs across internal transition, merger, sale, and wind-down, and evaluate buyers as critically as buyers evaluate them. They'll also learn to look past headline price to the deal terms that matter, and leave with practical steps to reduce transition risk starting now.
Your firm may have strong security tools in place and still have gaps you don't know about. As firms add AI tools, cloud apps and new vendors, those gaps are showing up in more places. This session takes a practical look at the blind spots hiding in everyday technology and processes, from untested backups and outdated access permissions to unmanaged AI use and third-party access. Attendees will learn where to look, how to prioritize what they find and what questions to ask before those gaps become bigger problems.
2026 has marked a year of transformation for accounting. This session explores which accounting workflows are being transformed next and what teams need to know as these tools become part of everyday practice.
This session provides an overview of the key liability and practice risks facing CPA and advisory firms as they grow and adopt new technologies. It examines how traditional exposures in audit, tax, advisory services, fraud detection, and independence are evolving alongside emerging risks related to generative and agentic AI, cyber and AI-enabled fraud, data-intensive engagements, and the data-center economy. The session also highlights the risk implications of rapid advisory growth, private capital investment, M&A activity, and shifts in the talent landscape. It emphasizes the need for governance, quality management, documentation, and supervision to keep pace with firm growth, ensuring that client expectations, professional judgment, and risk controls remain aligned.
Drawing on 25 years of investigating fraud and cybercrime as a police detective and his current work as a CISO to financial and accounting firms, Luke Kiely takes attendees inside how cybercriminals actually think, who they target, and why. Using real cases he has personally worked, including a ransomware negotiation and a supplier-account compromise that cost one firm eight months to recover from, this session moves past hacker stereotypes and vendor fear tactics to focus on what genuinely drives risk in a professional services firm.
AI is quickly becoming the intelligence layer within the tools accountants already use, transforming everyday workflows into valuable insights. For firms ready to embrace this shift, the opportunity goes beyond efficiency to delivering higher-value advisory services, strengthening client relationships, and creating new revenue streams. In this session, Heather Sperduto, Vice President of Accountant Channel Sales at ADP, shares how AI is reshaping payroll, HR, and financial workflows and what it means for the accounting profession. Bridging innovation with practical application, the discussion will explore how firms can thoughtfully adopt AI, strengthen their role as trusted advisors, and turn existing data into revenue-generating insights. You'll discover how workforce data, including overtime trends, labor costs, hiring, and turnover patterns, can guide decisions on growth, cash flow, and workforce planning. You'll also gain a practical framework for transforming these insights into proactive, scalable advisory services without adding complexity or workload.
Compliance isn't going away just because you'd rather not think about it.
In this session, Luke, a former cybercrime investigator, will talk through what the laws require, what insurance companies look for after a breach, how AI is impacting the landscape, and how strong cybersecurity practices naturally produce the compliance firms need — instead of the other way around.
Firm owners know advisory work is valuable, but compliance deadlines use up capacity, and advisory work ends up running through the owner alone. On AI, most practitioners have sat through keynotes and product demos without seeing anything specific enough to use in their own practice.
Every firm faces the same question on every task: who should actually do this? This session breaks down how to make that call with confidence. We'll cover when it makes sense to hire in the US, when offshore talent in the Philippines or Latin America is the smarter move, and what work can be scaled or delegated to AI. You'll leave with a practical framework for matching the right resource to the right task, plus a clear approach to recruiting and hiring the people your firm actually needs.
After this session, participants will be able to identify the billing and collection practices law firms use to get paid faster, and evaluate which of those practices can be applied to their own firm's accounts receivable process.
Your clients already trust you with their books. But what about their banking? Banking is an important part of understanding what's happening in a small business, yet it's often overlooked in advisory conversations. Knowing what to look for, what to ask, and how to evaluate a client's banking setup can help accountants and bookkeepers provide more strategic guidance. In this session, we'll explore how to bring banking into your advisory work. You'll learn how to spot potential cash flow issues, start banking conversations with clients, evaluate banking options, and navigate common questions and objections. We'll also introduce Relay's free Banking Partner Certification, a self-paced course that builds on these skills with a practical, vendor-neutral framework for evaluating banking platforms and recommending the right setup for each client. You'll leave with practical questions to bring into your next client conversation and a clear path to continue building your banking advisory skills.
Clients selling a business, real estate, or stock may be able to defer the tax under a new, permanent program starting January 1, 2027. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made Opportunity Zones permanent and added a rolling five-year deferral and a 10% basis step-up after five years, or 30% for rural funds. Scott Douglas interviews Clark Spencer of Bonaventure on how the rules work and when they may fit a client's plan.
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