Who sends accounting business
The professionals who meet your client before you do, and why they have a reason to refer:
- Business attorneys - a new LLC or S-corp needs a tax election and someone to keep the books.
- Financial advisors - clients with complex returns, RSUs, or a business inside the plan.
- Business consultants and fractional CFOs - they find the problem; you fix the books.
- Commercial lenders - borrowers whose financials are not loan-ready.
- Realtors and real estate investors - depreciation, 1031 exchanges, rental schedules.
Who you send business to
A referral network only works in both directions. These are the partners your clients need next:
- Attorneys - clients who need entity restructuring, contracts or an estate plan.
- Financial advisors - clients with a windfall, a sale, or no retirement plan.
- Payroll, HR and benefits providers - every growing client hits payroll.
- Lenders - clients ready for an SBA loan or a line of credit.
- Insurance agents - new entities and key-person coverage.
Where the loop breaks today
- The professionals who could send you clients all year only think of you in March, when you cannot take them.
- Referral relationships live in one partner's head. When the attorney retires or the advisor moves firms, the pipeline goes with them.
- Bookkeepers are referred as an afterthought, usually after the client has already made a mess that costs more to unwind.
How Referral Nova is used in accounting
- Describe the clients you want (industry, size, entity type, complexity) and the partners you can refer to. The AI matches you with attorneys, advisors and consultants who marked accounting as a partner they want.
- The first message is drafted from both profiles, so you open with the client type you share rather than a cold pitch.
- Referrals arrive with the client's situation attached and sit in your Pipeline; you accept, meet, and mark converted when the engagement letter is signed.
- Referrals you send are tracked too, which is what keeps an attorney or advisor sending: they can see the balance.
Referral fees and rules in this field
CPAs are bound by AICPA rules and state boards on commissions and referral fees: paying or receiving a fee for referring a client is permitted in most states only with written disclosure to the client, and prohibited entirely for attest clients. Referral Nova charges no commission and takes no share of any fee. If two members sign a referral fee agreement through the platform, it is their agreement and must meet your board's disclosure requirements.
Which matching factors matter most
Reverse alignment (partners who want to meet an accountant) and referral-to-me carry most of the score for accounting, and keyword overlap separates a bookkeeper for trades businesses from a CPA for physicians. Location matters less: most of this work is remote.