Start with the work that moves through a practice: collect records, maintain books, prepare returns, manage tasks, and communicate with clients. Give each handoff a responsible owner and a clear system of record.
The map shows named tools at three accounting practices. Empty layers are evidence gaps; they do not mean a practice has no way to perform that work.
CPA firm and finance tech stacks
A CPA practice serves multiple clients; an internal finance team manages its own organization. The software can overlap, but permissions, engagement boundaries, and reporting responsibilities differ.
The Virtual Tax Solutions source names QuickBooks Online Accountant for its own books. The Dark Horse CPAs source describes QuickBooks Online in client advisory services. Keeping those scopes separate makes the comparison useful.
Connections are requirements to verify
A vendor’s integration catalog establishes that a connection is offered, not that it is active at a particular firm. These examples do not reconstruct every data flow or prove that all the named tools share records.
A registered investment adviser has different portfolio, custody, and client-reporting needs. This accounting map does not claim to cover an RIA’s complete stack.
A public job board supports an ATS observation. A subprocessor disclosure identifies a provider that may process data for particular services. A vendor customer story describes a published relationship. These sources have different scopes and are labeled separately.
Counts cover the records on these pages, not the whole market. No observation in our covered sources does not mean a company does not use a vendor. Source recency and unresolved conflicts affect confidence; observations do not establish spend, renewal timing, or customer churn.