Words & Time, Tools and Tokens

What if I told you that your technology stack is now free?

Completely free.

Go build whatever you want.

You can walk out of this presentation, stop reading this article, open a blank document, and start creating your own technology stack.

Because code is words.

And words are free.

Words have always been free. Anyone can have a thought. Anyone can begin writing. Anyone can theoretically sit down and write a book.

Yet most people have not read many books, let alone written one.

Why?

It is not because the words are expensive.

It is because creating something worthwhile takes time.

That is the part that is not free.

What We Really Buy When We Buy Software

Software can feel expensive, but we are not really paying for the code.

We are paying for the time that someone spent:

• Understanding the problem
• Designing the system
• Writing the code
• Testing the code
• Correcting mistakes
• Securing the system
• Supporting its users
• Improving it over time

When we purchase software, we exchange money for time.

Instead of spending 5 hours / 5 months / 5 years building an application ourselves, we purchase a product that allows us to begin using it today.

The same applies to the individual applications inside a technology stack.

A firm may build some tools itself. It may use free or open-source products for others. It may pay for applications where the cost of purchasing the product is materially lower than the cost of recreating and maintaining it.

Every technology decision is ultimately a decision about time. Where should we spend it? Where should we save it? Where should we purchase the benefit of time already spent by someone else?

The Billable Hour Is Going Away

This is why I think we need to be much more precise when we talk about the death of the billable hour.

The billable hour is going away. Time is not.

Those ideas are often lumped together, but they should not be.

Time is not merely an accounting convention. It is one of the fundamental ways humans organize life.

Morning. Lunch. Evening. Meet me at three o'clock. Finish this by Friday. TGIF — it's the weekend!

We sleep, wake, work, recover, and plan according to time. Our capacity is limited because our time is limited.

The 2011 movie In Time takes that idea to its extreme (wouldn't watch it, not great — but cool in principle). In its fictional world, time is literal currency. People earn it, spend it, gamble it, transfer it, and die when they run out. The movie works really well as a metaphor because we already understand that time is our most finite resource.

Timekeeping is also much older than the modern firm. Mechanical clocks emerged in medieval Europe, with churches, abbeys, and monasteries among their earliest prominent users because communities needed to coordinate prayer and daily activity. It would be too simplistic to say that monks invented time or even invented the clock, but monastic life helped make disciplined, standardized timekeeping central to Western thought.

Time is not disappearing from professional services nor in any other facet of life. Time is, and will always be, central.

Its purpose is changing.

Time Should Measure Cost, Not Value

For much of the profession's history, time has played two roles.

It has been used to understand the cost of performing work.

It has also been used to determine what the customer should pay.

That second role is getting difficult to defend.

A client does not necessarily receive more value because a project took longer. In fact, a firm with better systems, better people, and better technology may produce a superior result in significantly less time.

Charging less simply because the firm became more capable creates the wrong incentive.

The future firm separates price from production cost.

Price is based on the customer, the problem, the desired output, the complexity, the risk, and the value of the relationship.

Cost is based on what the firm consumed to produce that outcome.

That cost will increasingly be understood through three things:

Time

Human time will remain one of the firm's most important and constrained resources.

Firms still need to know:

• Who has capacity
• Where work is getting stuck
• How much review is required
• Whether a workflow is efficient
• Whether senior people are doing junior work
• Whether automation is actually saving effort
• Whether the client relationship is consuming more attention than expected

Time remains essential to understanding production (output, value, etc).

It simply should not be confused with price.

Tools

Professional work increasingly consumes a collection of software products and infrastructure.

A modern project may use:

• Practice management software
• Workflow systems
• Tax engines
• Research platforms
• Document management
• Client portals
• ERP systems
• Payment platforms
• Data extraction tools
• Reporting systems
• Artificial intelligence applications

Some tools will be purchased. Some will be created internally. Some will be open-source. Some may initially appear free.

But every tool carries a cost somewhere.

That cost may be money.

It may be implementation time. It may be maintenance. It may be training. It may be integration complexity. It may be the operational friction created when two systems do not communicate.

A free tool that requires hundreds of hours to implement is not necessarily free.

Tokens

Artificial intelligence adds a third unit of consumption.

Tokens represent the resources used by AI tools to read, reason, create, classify, and act.

The cost of those tokens will move over time. Models will become more capable. Some types of work will become dramatically cheaper. New capabilities may become more expensive.

But AI consumption will still need to be measured.

A firm may ask an AI system to review one document, or it may deploy an agent that continuously reviews thousands of transactions, compares contracts, researches tax positions, and interacts with multiple business systems.

Those are not the same cost structure.

As AI becomes embedded in professional work, firms will need to understand how much computational effort was consumed to create an outcome.

The New Margin Equation

The firm's economics begin to look less like hours multiplied by rates and more like a traditional product company.

The firm determines a target price.

Then it subtracts:

• Human time
• Tools
• Tokens
• The appropriate allocation of operating expenses

What remains is the true margin.

This is a healthier model because it gives the firm the incentive to improve.

If a firm creates a better workflow, its margin improves. If it automates repetitive work, its margin improves. If it chooses a better combination of tools, its margin improves. If it uses AI intelligently, its margin improves.

The client receives the agreed-upon outcome at the agreed-upon price. The firm benefits from becoming better at delivering it.

A Tax Return Is Also Words and Numbers

This logic extends beyond software.

A tax return is ultimately a collection of numbers, words, rules, calculations, elections, and representations.

In theory, a business owner could create the systems required to produce it.

Remember back to the beginning — all of this is "free."

The owner could collect the information, read the tax code, interpret the guidance, construct the workpapers, perform the calculations, evaluate the risks, prepare the forms, and review the final submission.

The underlying words and numbers may be available.

But the time required to assemble them accurately is not free.

The business therefore exchanges money for the accountant's time, accumulated knowledge, judgment, process, and accountability.

This becomes even more important as the mechanical production of the tax return becomes easier.

Payroll systems already contain part of the data.

Banks and investment platforms contain another part.

Accounting platforms contain another.

Government agencies already possess substantial amounts of the information.

Over time, more returns will arrive largely assembled.

The remaining value will not be typing numbers into forms.

The value will be in everything that happened before the form was produced.

The Return Is the Artifact

The tax return is a snapshot of an artificial period beginning January 1 and ending December 31.

But what created the artifact?

The financial systems. The controls. The classifications. The transactions. The tax planning. The entity decisions. The compensation decisions. The timing decisions. The advice.

The artifact matters, but the system and judgment that produced it are the real product.

That is where I believe the profession is headed.

Future State: The Firm Becomes Embedded

More accounting firms will become an embedded financial layer inside the businesses they serve.

They will provide ongoing oversight of the company's financial systems.

They will help establish controls and auditability.

They will understand the tax implications of decisions as they are made.

They may attest to certain information.

They may manage or oversee the systems that produce that information.

They will not simply arrive after year-end to recreate what happened.

They will participate throughout the year in making sure it happens correctly.

This will take time.

Client ERP systems will not change overnight. Payroll systems, billing systems, banking platforms, and internal processes will all evolve at different speeds.

Accounting firms and their customers will have to change together.

The Importance of a Defined ICP

The firms that move fastest may initially be smaller, more specialized firms with extremely well-defined ideal client profiles.

A firm may decide that it exclusively serves a particular type of healthcare organization using a specific ERP, payroll platform, billing application, and banking system.

Another may focus on technology companies using Rillet, Stripe, Ramp, and a defined payroll platform.

Another may specialize in construction companies running a particular combination of project management and accounting software.

These firms will be able to build a highly repeatable internal operating system.

They will know the data structures. They will know the common problems. They will know the integrations. They will know the workflows. They will know which advice matters.

That specialization will allow them to move faster and deliver more value.

Larger firms will eventually follow by developing similarly defined operating models within individual niches.

Their websites will change.

Instead of simply listing audit, tax, advisory, and client accounting services, they will present complete solutions for specific types of businesses.

They will be able to say:

This is the technology environment we understand. These are the systems we connect with. These are the outputs we provide.

This is our guidance cadence. This is how we embed into your business.

Technology Ecosystems Will Define Service Models

Software companies already make these decisions.

In our own software development work, we use Linear as a core operating system for product development. We use GitHub for the code repository and AWS for infrastructure.

The surrounding technology stack is chosen partly according to how well it works with those foundational systems.

If a customer support platform does not integrate with Linear, it is less useful to us.

If our development platform does not work effectively with GitHub or AWS, we will likely choose something else.

We do not select each application independently.

We select an ecosystem.

Accounting firms will increasingly operate the same way.

Their preferred client technology ecosystems will shape their workflows, staffing models, service packages, and economics.

The most valuable firms will not merely say that they understand an industry.

They will understand how that industry's businesses actually operate.

A Product, Not a Collection of Services

This requires firms to think through the lens of product.

A product has a defined customer.

It has a defined problem. It has a defined experience. It has a defined set of outputs. It has a repeatable delivery system. It has a price. It has a cost structure.

And it has a margin.

The future accounting relationship may be paid monthly or annually. It may resemble what the profession currently calls client accounting services, but I suspect even that term will eventually feel too narrow.

The firm will feel like an embedded financial function.

It will not merely perform isolated accounting tasks.

It will provide a comprehensive accounting system supported by people, software, data, automation, and artificial intelligence.

Time Is Not Going Away

Technology will make words, code, calculations, and compliance outputs increasingly abundant.

That does not make professional services worthless.

It changes what customers are paying for.

They are paying to reclaim time. They are paying for judgment. They are paying for confidence.They are paying for accountability. They are paying for a system that consistently produces the right outcome.

The billable hour is going away because time is a poor proxy for value.

But time itself will remain central to understanding capacity, productivity, cost, and human contribution.

The future firm's economics will be built around time, tools, and tokens.

Its pricing will be built around outcomes.

And its value will come from the operating system it creates around the customer — not simply the annual artifact it delivers.

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