When Accountants Become Analysts

Forbes

05-05-2025

Bryce Welker is a Certified Public Accountant and owns a portfolio of 20+ test prep websites, including the CPA Exam Guy.
When I became an accountant, my world revolved around financial statements, tax deadlines and making sure every number lined up just right. I never thought that in the future, accountants would spend chunks of their week playing around in Power BI or Googling how to write a Python script. But here we are.
Over the last few years, the accountant's role has shifted dramatically. We've gone from simply recording what happened to helping businesses figure out what might happen next. That change requires a new toolkit—one that looks a lot more like what you'd expect from a data analyst than a traditional CPA.
This shift hasn't made headlines, but it's happening everywhere. Firm after firm, accountants are being asked to build dashboards, clean up datasets and help clients extract insights from their numbers, not just balance them.
Tools like Power BI and Tableau used to be considered extras—something only big firms might invest in. But that's changed. These tools are quickly becoming part of the standard toolkit for accountants at every level.
Some examples:
• Power BI Or Tableau: These tools let you create interactive dashboards that update automatically and tell a story with data.
• Excel Power Query: It's still Excel but turbocharged for cleaning and shaping messy data.
• Python: Even knowing how to automate a few tasks, like scraping data or generating reports, can save hours.
• SQL: If you're working with larger data sets or accessing databases directly, it's a valuable skill to have.
And it's not just about the software. It's about how we think.
In my experience, clients aren't just asking us to reconcile numbers anymore. They want us to help them make sense of the story behind the numbers—what's happening now, what's likely to happen next and how to get ahead of it. They're looking for timely, visual and actionable insight.
A colleague of mine worked with a client who was hesitant to scale their business. They had that gut feeling we all know—the one that says, 'Better play it safe.' But after running a few simple forecasting scenarios, the numbers told a different story.
The client actually had more room to grow than they thought. Seeing that data laid out clearly gave them the confidence to move forward. Within two years, their revenue had doubled.
That's not just accounting. That's strategy.
More and more, this is what businesses are asking for. Not just 'What happened?'—but 'What's next?' Accountants with data skills are becoming the bridge between raw numbers and wise decisions.
We're not just number crunchers anymore. We advise. We translate complex data into meaningful decisions. This doesn't mean the traditional accounting skills don't matter—they do. Accuracy and integrity are still at the core of what we do. But the most successful CPAs I know today are the ones who pair fundamentals with data fluency. They are the ones whose clients turn to them not just during tax season but for problem-solving all year long.
I never planned on becoming a 'data person.' But the more I leaned into it, the more I realized that this just might be the future of accounting. And it's not as complicated as it sounds. A few new tools. A curious mindset. A willingness to evolve. That's all it takes to turn a spreadsheet into a strategy—and an accountant into an analyst.
Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?