How much do accounting and law firms spend on software in 2026?
US accounting firms spent about $21,000 each on technology in the past year, and technology takes about 21% of firm budgets; a third of smaller law firms spend over 8% of their budget on tech subscriptions. Ours is a $2,500 (£2,000) ops audit, then a monthly plan from $2,000 (£1,600) to fix what the apps leave undone.
| What firms spend or pay | US | UK |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting firm tech spend, past 12 months (average per firm) | about $21,000 | about £16,800 (converted) |
| Technology as a share of accounting firm budgets | 21% | - |
| Law firms under 500 attorneys spending over 8% of budget on tech subscriptions | 1 in 3 | - |
| Practice management, accounting (Karbon, per user) | about $43-74 a month (converted) | £34-59 a month |
| Practice management, accounting (TaxDome, per seat) | $700-1,100 a year | about £560-880 (converted) |
| Practice management, law (Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, per user) | $49-150 a month | about £39-120 (converted) |
| Forge ops audit | $2,500 | £2,000 |
| Forge monthly plan, first build included | $2,000 / $3,500 / $7,500 | £1,600 / £2,800 / £6,000 |
Ranges are typical, compiled from published surveys, rate guides and vendor pricing pages, not quotes. The $21,000 average is from Intuit's 2026 Accountant Technology Survey as reported by Woodard Report, July 2026. The 21% budget share is from Accounting Today, January 2026. The law figure is from a Bloomberg Law survey, June 2026. Vendor prices are listed in the sections below. Conversions use roughly $1.25 to £1.
How much should a law firm spend on technology?
There's no single right number, and we couldn't find a published, verifiable 2026 figure for spend per lawyer. What the surveys do show:
- A Bloomberg Law survey, June 2026 found 1 in 3 firms with fewer than 500 attorneys spent more than 8% of their 2025 budgets on technology subscriptions and recurring costs, and nearly 30% spent more than 5% on new technology. Around two-thirds of large firms spent under 2% on new technology. Firms chose how to categorise their own spending, so treat these as approximate.
- The 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market from Thomson Reuters and Georgetown Law found technology spending grew 9.7% in 2025 and knowledge management spending 10.5% (LawNext, January 2026).
A sensible way to set your own budget: start with the per-user cost of the practice tool everyone needs, add the handful of specialist apps, then ask how many hours your people still lose to the manual work between them. That last number is usually bigger than the software bill.
How much does accounting firm software cost?
Firms don't buy one app; they buy a stack. Intuit's 2026 survey found accounting firms use about 10 applications on average, and one in three use 11 to 25 or more (Woodard Report, July 2026). The same survey put average technology spend at about $21,000 over the past 12 months, with firms planning about $22,000 next year. Accounting Today, January 2026 reports technology at 21% of overall firm budgets, expected to stay about the same.
Here's what the main pieces cost, from each vendor's own pricing page in October 2026:
| App | What it does | List price |
|---|---|---|
| Xero (US) | Accounting ledger | $27 / $59 / $97 a month per business, after an introductory discount |
| QuickBooks Online | Accounting ledger | $38 / $85 / $140 / $340 a month per business, before promotions |
| Karbon | Practice management and workflow | £34 per user a month (Team) or £49 (Business), paid annually; £44 or £59 paid monthly |
| TaxDome | Practice management with client portal | $700 / $900 / $1,100 per seat a year on a three-year commitment |
| Ignition (UK) | Proposals, engagement letters and payments | £79 / £169 / £299 a month, billed annually; Solo from £29 |
Xero and QuickBooks are often paid per client business, sometimes by the client, so they may not sit in your firm's budget at all. Dext, the receipt-capture tool, is another common piece; its pricing page didn't load for us, so we haven't quoted it.
What software do CPA firms use?
A typical 20-person accounting or bookkeeping firm runs something like this:
A ledger
(Xero or QuickBooks) for each client.
A practice management tool
(Karbon, TaxDome or similar) for jobs, deadlines and the team's workload.
A proposals and engagement tool
(Ignition or similar).
Receipt and document capture
(Dext or similar).
Tax software
, email, file storage, e-signature, and often a separate client portal.
At list price, a 20-person firm on Karbon Business pays £49 x 20 x 12 = £11,760 a year, plus Ignition Pro at £169 x 12 = £2,028 - about £13,800 before tax software, Microsoft 365 or anything else. On TaxDome Pro, 20 seats is $900 x 20 = $18,000 a year.
What does law firm practice software cost?
For a small law firm, the practice management tool is the biggest single line. From each vendor's pricing page in October 2026:
| App | List price per user a month |
|---|---|
| Clio | Starts at $49 (Starter); higher plans priced on request |
| MyCase | $50 / $100 / $130 billed annually, or $60 / $120 / $150 monthly |
| PracticePanther | $49 / $69 / $89 / $114, with annual billing saving $120 per user a year |
A 20-lawyer firm on MyCase Pro pays $100 x 20 x 12 = $24,000 a year. Add document management, e-signature, intake forms, legal research and accounting add-ons - MyCase lists its accounting add-on at $39 per user a month - and the stack grows quickly.
Where does the money leak?
Rarely in the price of any single app. Usually in three places.
Overlapping tools
Firms add apps one problem at a time, so they end up paying twice: a client portal in the practice tool and a separate one, e-signature in two places, two places to store documents. An app inventory usually finds a few subscriptions nobody needs. Our app inventory spreadsheet is a free way to start.
The manual work between apps
This is the big one. Intuit's survey found only 41% of accounting firms describe their tools as fully integrated, 48% say their setup works but is fragmented, and accountants lose about five hours a week moving, re-entering or reconciling information across tools (Woodard Report, July 2026). Five hours a week across a 20-person firm is a hundred hours of your people's time, every week, spent rekeying. That costs far more than the software.
Tools nobody uses properly
A portal clients never log into. A workflow feature switched off after a bad first week. You pay the subscription and keep the manual process. Rolling tools out properly - training, setting them up to match how the firm works, checking people actually use them - is usually what's missing.
Where does the time go in an accounting or law firm?
The same few jobs come up again and again:
Onboarding:
new client details typed into four apps. See our guide to client onboarding for accounting firms.
Chasing:
emailing clients for the same documents every month. See chasing clients for documents.
Sync:
keeping the ledger and the practice tool in step. See Xero and QuickBooks practice management sync.
Intake:
new matter details collected by phone, retyped into the case system. See client intake automation for law firms.
Document collection:
chasing signed forms and evidence. See document collection for law firms.
Most of these are fixed by connecting the apps you already pay for, not by buying another one. Sometimes a small custom tool fills the gap. At Fame, our own client portal meant producers stopped answering "where is the latest version?" emails, and our timesheet tool lets the founder see which clients earn their margin without building a spreadsheet. Each of those is the kind of build that typically costs $8,000-18,000 (£6,000-14,000) from a dev shop - the market range, not what Fame paid. Together, the tools built at Fame have given its team back 5,460 hours as of 14 October 2026. We don't measure hours per tool yet, so we don't quote them.
How does an ops audit and monthly plan fit the budget?
Take the accounting firm above: about £13,800 a year on practice and proposals software, and up to a hundred hours a week of people's time lost between the apps. The question isn't whether to spend more on software. It's whether to spend some of it on making the apps you already have work together.
Our pricing is published. For a people business - businesses that sell their people's expertise and time: agencies, accountants, lawyers, consultants - it works like this:
- A two-week ops audit for $2,500 (£2,000). We list every app, find where your people lose hours, and price the first three fixes. It's credited to your first month if you go ahead.
- A monthly plan at $2,000, $3,500 or $7,500 a month (£1,600, £2,800 or £6,000), with your first build included. Three-month minimum, then month to month.
- Everything runs on your own accounts, so you own it and pay those tool costs directly. Your tools are monitored and fixed when an app changes, and we train your team and roll each tool out so people actually use it.
Often the audit also finds subscriptions to cancel. See what this looks like for accounting firms and law firms.
When should you not hire us?
Your stack is small and joined up already.
If your practice tool does almost everything, spend on training, not building.
You need a new practice management system chosen and installed.
The vendor's own onboarding team or a certified partner is the better fit.
You need IT support
laptops, email, security. That's a managed IT provider.
You're a sole practitioner.
Run the free DIY version in our ops audit cost guide.
More cost guides: client portal development cost, custom CRM cost, and the full set in our pricing guides.
Questions, answered plainly
How much does accounting firm software cost?
US accounting firms spent about $21,000 on technology over the past 12 months on average (Intuit 2026 survey via Woodard Report, July 2026). Practice management alone runs about £34-59 per user a month on Karbon or $700-1,100 per seat a year on TaxDome.
How much should a law firm spend on technology?
There's no fixed rule. A Bloomberg Law survey (June 2026) found 1 in 3 firms under 500 attorneys spend more than 8% of their budget on tech subscriptions. Practice software alone runs $49-150 per user a month.
What software do accounting firms use?
Typically a ledger (Xero or QuickBooks), a practice management tool (Karbon or TaxDome), a proposals tool (Ignition), document capture, tax software and a client portal - about 10 apps on average (Intuit, 2026).
Where do firms waste money on software?
Overlapping tools, tools nobody uses properly, and above all the manual work between apps. Accountants lose about five hours a week moving and rekeying data across tools (Intuit, 2026).
What does Forge cost for an accounting or law firm?
A $2,500 (£2,000) ops audit credited to your first month, then $2,000, $3,500 or $7,500 a month (£1,600, £2,800 or £6,000) with your first build included. Three-month minimum.