Accounting firms are changing how they staff work, price services and build leadership pipelines. The question is whether those changes add up to a deliberate operating model or a collection of separate responses to pressure.
In the latest episode of the INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast, Executive Director Chelsea Summers and co-host Rob Brown use 2026 IPA practice management data to examine how leverage, pricing, offshoring and partner structure are reshaping the economics of the firm.
Their central point: changing any one of those pieces affects the others.
Leverage Depends on the Delivery Model
Leverage, or total staff per equity partner, remains one of the foundations of the traditional accounting firm model. More people working beneath each equity partner can expand production capacity and ultimately increase the revenue and profit supported by each partner.
But leverage varies significantly with firm size. The median staff-to-equity-partner ratio across the 2026 data is about 10, while firms above $50 million in revenue average roughly 12–13 staff per equity partner. Firms below $5 million average closer to six.
That difference reflects more than headcount. Larger firms typically have more standardized workflows, additional review layers and enough structured work to support wider teams. In that sense, leverage is partly a reflection of how developed the firm’s delivery model has become.
More Capacity Only Works if Pricing Keeps Up
Adding capacity does not automatically improve profitability.
As Summers explains in the episode, profitability depends on production capacity working alongside pricing discipline. A firm can increase leverage, offshore more work or add technology, but if its pricing model remains unchanged, it may simply produce more work without improving the economics behind it.
“If leverage climbs, but the rates stay flat, firms are just producing more work at the same margin,” Summers says. “It’s a treadmill.”
That creates an important question for firm leaders: Does the firm’s pricing model capture the value created by changes to its staffing and delivery model?
Offshoring Is Changing What Productivity Looks Like
Offshoring has become another significant source of capacity. Nearly half of firms in the profession now use some form of offshore staffing. Among firms above $75 million in revenue, adoption is closer to 7 in 10. Firms using offshore staff also report higher net income per partner than firms that do not.
At the same time, those firms can show lower revenue per full-time employee.
That does not necessarily indicate weaker productivity. Offshore teams increase headcount while taking on high-volume compliance work, expanding the firm’s overall capacity even if revenue per individual employee declines.
The result is a broader definition of capacity. Firm leaders increasingly need to consider not only how many people they employ, but where those people are located, what work they perform and how that work fits into the firm’s pricing model.
Partnership Structures Are Becoming More Layered
Changes in staffing are also showing up at the partner level.
Firms below $10 million in revenue remain largely equity-partner models. Between $10 million and $30 million, non-equity partners account for roughly one-quarter to one-third of the partnership. At firms above $50 million, the share approaches half.
That creates a broader leadership layer between senior manager and equity partner. It also gives firms additional ways to recognize technical expertise and leadership without requiring every high-performing employee to follow the same ownership path.
Technical expert tracks and non-equity partner roles can become particularly important as firms reconsider what advancement should look like for people who want greater responsibility but may not want to manage a book of business or pursue equity ownership.
The Middle of the Firm Matters
The operating model also depends on keeping the people capable of carrying work between junior staff and partners.
The 2026 data suggests firms are concentrating compensation increases in the three-to-eight-year experience range rather than raising pay evenly across every level. That group contains many of the profession’s future managers and partners and is also among the most mobile segments of the workforce.
Losing that layer can undermine the rest of the model. A firm may have a large junior staff, offshore capacity and a strong partner group, but without experienced professionals in the middle, delegation, review and leadership development become harder to sustain.
One Operating Model, Not Four Separate Initiatives
The episode ultimately leaves firm leaders with four connected questions:
- What is our leverage target and does our pricing keep pace with it?
- Where does offshore or distributed capacity fit within our delivery model?
- What should our partner structure look like as the firm scales?
- Are we protecting the staff layer that will carry the firm’s future?
Those questions cannot be answered independently. A staffing strategy that does not align with pricing, or a partnership model that does not align with the leadership pipeline, can create new problems even while solving old ones.
The firms building more durable operating models are approaching those decisions together.
Instead of asking only how to add capacity, improve retention or redesign the partnership, the larger question becomes: What kind of firm are we trying to build, and does the entire operating model support it?
Listen to the full episode of the INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast for the complete discussion between Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown.
