Where Have All the Accountants Gone and What We Can Do About It
There’s no sugar-coating it: both Australia and New Zealand are running short on accountants. Demand is rising, pipelines are thinning, and compliance windows aren’t getting any kinder. Jobs and Skills Australia lists accounting roles on its Occupation Shortage List, and industry surveys show persistently low vacancy fill rates across taxation, audit, and general accounting. CA ANZ data highlights sub 67% fill rates for key roles in Australia, while projections point to 58,000 additional accounting roles needed by 2033. In New Zealand, Infometrics forecasts a shortage of 15,000 accountants within five years.
Why the pipeline is thinning
Enrolments in accounting degrees have slumped in recent years, even as regulation and reporting complexity have grown. Governments are fast-tracking talent Australia’s new Skills in Demand visa streamlines employer sponsored routes, and New Zealand’s Green List includes critical audit roles but immigration relief won’t fully close the gap.
The opportunity for the profession
This moment isn’t just a capacity crisis; it’s a leverage point. Accountants who invest in AI tools now can scale their impact, protect margins, and move upstream into higher-value advisory while keeping core compliance rock-solid.
What that looks like in practice:
Automate the repetitive, safeguard the judgment. Think bank recs, GST, wage reconciliations, workpapers assembly, and evidence trails handled by digital workers so you focus on materiality, risk, and client decisions.
Shorten cycle times. Close faster, review better. AI doesn’t get tired at 11pm when the return is due.
Raise quality and explainability. Modern agentic systems justify decisions with traceable steps, giving reviewers what they need to sign off with confidence.
Defend margins. When talent is scarce, throughput per practitioner is the only sustainable way to grow.
How AgenticAI fits
AgenticAI builds digital workers designed to take on the mundane, multi-step tasks accountants outsource or grind through themselves without locking you into a single stack. Today, our AI accountant (“Flynn”) automates GST and wages reconciliations, integrates with Xero, and maps outputs to Excel workbooks your teams already use. The aim: reduce preparation time, surface anomalies early, and hand reviewers a clean, explainable trail freeing partners and seniors to focus on clients, not clicks.
Designed for accountants, with accountants
Tools only work if they fit your workflow. That’s why we co-design with practitioners:
Choose high-leverage flows first. Start with a single workload (e.g., GST + wages) where volume is high and standards are clear.
Human-in-the-loop by default. You stay in control approve, override, or annotate.
Explain every step. If the system flags an exception, it shows you why, where, and what changed.
Measure ROI in weeks, not quarters. Track hours saved per file, rework avoided, and cycle-time improvements. Roll wins across clients.
What early adopters gain
Talent multiplier: juniors do more, seniors review faster, partners advise earlier.
Client stickiness: proactive insights, not just compliant returns.
Pricing power: productised workflows let you quote outcomes, not hours.
Future readiness: as regulatory load grows, your capacity scales with it.
A call to accountants
The shortage is real. The work still has to get done. Accountants who invest in AI now won’t replace their teams—they’ll protect them, amplify them, and elevate the profession.
If you’re ready to trial AI on a contained workload, start with GST and wages reconciliations. Prove the time-savings, lock in the quality, then expand to adjacent flows. That’s how we bend the curve together.
