17 staff in one Austin office, tax planning and outsourced bookkeeping, no audit practice
State board firm licence + firm website
Use cases
Find accounting firm owners and managing partners
The database has the firm. It does not have the audit registration, the partner count or the software the practice runs on. Search by licence, specialism, size or ownership, and Causo reads state boards of accountancy, the IRS preparer directory, PCAOB filings, the ICAEW and ACCA registers and Companies House firm by firm, then shows you the evidence behind every match.
Run your first search85,412 accounting services businesses in the United States
How to find accounting firms by licence, size or specialism
3 results for this search. Pick another above to see what it returns.
11 staff in New Braunfels, individual and business returns plus payroll, two enrolled agents on staff
IRS preparer directory + state board firm register
24 staff across two Fort Worth offices, construction and real estate client base
State board firm licence + company website
Illustrative example. The source types are the ones Causo genuinely reads for this market.
Where the data on accounting firms comes from
- State boards of accountancy and NASBA CPAverifyFirm permits, CPA licence status per state, and the dates each was granted
- IRS Directory of Federal Tax Return Preparers with Credentials and Select QualificationsPTIN holders, enrolled agents and credentialed preparers by credential and location
- PCAOB registration, Form AP and SEC EDGARRegistered audit firms, issuer client counts, engagement partners and auditor changes
- ICAEW, ACCA, ICAS and CIOT firm directoriesPractising certificates, audit registration, tax specialism and member firm status
- Companies HouseThe practice entity, partners and persons with significant control, filing history, and agent filings made for other companies
- WPK, AFM, the Ordre des experts-comptables and the Spanish ROACStatutory audit licences and registered accountants in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Spain
- Xero advisor directory and QuickBooks ProAdvisor listingsWhich ledger and tax software a practice actually runs, and its partner tier
- Indeed, Greenhouse, LeverAudit senior, tax manager and bookkeeper vacancies as a timing signal
- Dun & BradstreetFirmographics and corporate linkage where available
- Plus many moreNo fixed provider list. If the answer lives somewhere else, the agents read that instead.
Ask anything about an accounting firm
Every result is a starting point, not an endpoint. Ask a follow-up about any firm on your list in plain English and the agents go back out and read for it, then answer with the sources they used.
Are they registered to do audit work?
AnswerYes, and the register shows the registration was granted in February this year rather than carried for a decade.
SourcesAudit registers + state board firm records
Which accounting and tax software do they run?
AnswerXero for the ledger, listed at partner tier in the advisor directory, with QuickBooks kept for a handful of older clients.
SourcesSoftware partner directories + the firm’s own site
How many partners are there, and is the firm still independent?
AnswerNine partners. The latest control filings list only individual people, so no investor holds a stake as of the most recent confirmation statement.
SourcesCompany filings + the partner page
Why you can’t filter accounting firms by licence or specialism
3,760UK firms still registered for statutory audit work, down 24.9% in five yearsFRC Key Facts and Trends, 2025
Accounting firms are not missing from contact databases. A professional services firm has profiles, a website and a hiring page, so Apollo or ZoomInfo will usually hand you the name, an employee band and a city without complaint. The problem is the next filter. Contact databases are assembled from firmographics: industry code, headcount, revenue estimate, location. None of them carry whether a practice holds an audit registration, which states its firm permit covers, whether it is registered with the PCAOB and how many issuer clients it signs off, how many partners it has, whether it files returns as an agent for other companies, which ledger and tax software it runs, or the date any of that changed. Those facts are published, just not by the firm in a form a database ingests. They sit in state board licence records, the IRS directory of credentialed preparers, PCAOB registration and Form AP filings, the ICAEW, ACCA and ICAS audit registers, and Companies House filing histories. That gap also hides the two things moving this market fastest: which practices have taken outside investment, and which are run by partners with no succession named. The firm is findable. The criterion is what has to be read.
Figures as of August 2026.
Apollo vs ZoomInfo vs Causo for accounting firm leads
| Apollo / ZoomInfo | Buying a list | Causo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whether a firm holds an audit registration | No such field | No such field | Read from the audit register |
| Which states a firm permit actually covers | Head office city only | Head office city only | Read from state board records |
| Partner count and whether the practice is still partner owned | Employee band only | Rarely mapped | Read from filings and partner pages |
| Freshness of a new registration or a partner change | Whenever the record was last refreshed | Date the list was compiled | Read at the moment you search |
| Reaching the managing partner rather than a general inbox | Usually a firm-wide info address | Often bounced | Named role, verified address |
Frequently asked questions.
Start from the register rather than a contact database. In the United States, firm permits and CPA licence status sit with the state boards of accountancy and are searchable through NASBA CPAverify, while firms that audit public companies are listed by the PCAOB. In the United Kingdom, audit registration is published on the ICAEW, ACCA and ICAS registers. Causo reads those registers alongside Companies House and the firms’ own sites, so you can filter on a permission that no contact database stores as a field.
Because those databases are built from firmographics: industry code, headcount band, revenue estimate and location. Accounting firms are covered well in them, so the firm itself is usually present. What is absent is the criterion. Audit registration, licence scope by state, PCAOB status, partner count, tax agent status and software stack are published by regulators and professional bodies rather than by the firms in a form a database ingests, so no filter exists for any of them.
The firm, why it matched, the evidence behind that with its source, and the decision maker with a verified email address. For an accounting practice that typically means the licensing body and licence status, audit registration where the firm holds one, partner or staff count, service mix, and the managing partner or firm owner. You can then ask follow-up questions about any result and get answers with sources attached.
Yes, in plain English. Neither is a field in any contact database, so Causo works them out from partner pages, company filings and the register of persons with significant control in the United Kingdom, and from firm registration filings and published deal coverage in the United States. That is how a search for practices that are still partner owned, with no private equity investor, can be answered at all.
It is read at the moment you search rather than pulled from a stored snapshot, so a practice granted audit registration last month, or a partner added to a register in April, appears in this month’s results. Contact databases refresh on their own cycle, which is why a licence status held inside one can be a year or more behind the register it came from.
Yes. The sources differ by country, so Causo uses the local equivalents. In the United States that is the state boards of accountancy, NASBA CPAverify, the IRS directory of credentialed preparers and the PCAOB. In the United Kingdom it is the ICAEW, ACCA, ICAS and CIOT registers plus Companies House. In Germany it is the Wirtschaftsprüferkammer register, in the Netherlands the AFM register of licensed audit firms, and in France the Ordre des experts-comptables.
It depends on the size of the practice. At a firm with one to three partners it is the owner or managing partner, usually the same person who still does client work. At ten partners or more there is normally a managing partner plus a practice manager or COO, and often a partner who owns the technology decision. Where a firm has taken outside investment there is also a group function that signs off spend. Causo surfaces the role alongside the firm so you can tell which of those you are looking at.
One token per researched company, per decision maker found, per question asked and per outreach sequence sent. Plans start at $10 a month, and the first 10 tokens are free with no card required.