A Mushin benchmark · October 2026
How 4,687 Sydney accounting firms look to a new client online
Researched and published by Mushin
Websites, automation and AI for Australian accounting firms
An anonymised study of the web presence of Sydney accounting firms, and the ways potential clients find and judge them online.
Most new clients still come by referral or word of mouth. Many will look the firm up before they call.
Seven in 10 Australian small businesses found their current accountant through a referral or word of mouth (Intuit QuickBooks, SMB Navigator Report 2025).
We looked at the 4,687 Greater Sydney accounting practices on the Tax Practitioners Board register that meet our definition, read their websites and email settings, and looked up a random sample on Google Maps. No firm is named.
2
Google reviews for the median firm we found on Google Maps. 78% of rated firms have 4.5 stars or more, and the review count is what tells them apart.
4–5 in 10
Sydney practices have no working website, by our two estimates.
79%
of firm website domains don’t tell Gmail or Outlook to reject or quarantine mail faked from that domain.
3 in 4
firm home pages don’t say what kind of client the firm is for before you scroll.
12
firms’ news pages carried the same post, “Check out the largest castles by country”.
1 · On Google
A client comparing three firms on Google Maps sees the review counts before anything else.
We looked up a random 956 firms by name and suburb and found 502. These are the more visible firms. The rest may trade under another name, or have no listing. Of the firms we found, 31% have no reviews at all, and 78% of rated firms have 4.5 stars or more.
Share of the 481 firms found with review data.
Share of firms found on Google Maps
Number of Google reviews
2 · No website
A client who looks one of these firms up won’t find a website of the firm’s own.
Our two estimates are 40% and 45%. The full findings show how each was worked out.
No website yet
3 · First look on a phone
On a phone, the first screen is all a visitor sees before deciding whether to scroll.
About 3 in 4 first screens don’t name a type of client or industry. Most sites do name the people at the firm and their qualifications.
On Google’s phone test, 76% of firm websites take longer than 4 seconds to show their main content, and half take longer than 6.3 seconds.
4 · Prices, bookings and documents
Without a price, a client has to ask before they can compare firms.
Most sites show a phone number (93%) and an email address (84%). Only 22% put a number set up as a call link on the first screen. About 8 in 10 firm websites show no prices or fees, only about 1 in 8 let you book a time online, and about 1 in 6 link to a client portal or secure upload. These figures cover only what the website shows. A firm may use a portal and never mention it.
Share of firm websites. Booking, documents and prices are estimates.
5 · Email security
A client who gets a fake invoice from what looks like the firm’s own address has no easy way to tell.
DMARC is a setting on a firm’s email domain. It tells Gmail and Outlook what to do with mail that claims to come from that domain but didn’t. Without it the firm gives them no instruction, and a fake may get through. Accountants ask clients for documents and bank details by email all the time, and scammers copy exactly those emails.
Share of 2,039 domains.
Scorecard
6 · What to do
None of it needs a new website. The firm, or whoever looks after its website and email, can start any of it now.
73% of firms we found on Google Maps have fewer than 10 reviews.
78% of firm websites have no call link on the first screen.
79% of firm website domains don’t tell mail providers to reject or quarantine fakes.
About 4 in 10 dated news pages have had nothing new in a year.
We build and look after websites for accounting firms. A firm’s scorecard shows which of these to do first. Websites for accounting firms · Monthly website care
The list comes from the Tax Practitioners Board’s public register. We took every registered tax agent in Greater Sydney that is a company or trades under a business name, and merged registrations that belong to the same practice. Franchises, networks, the large national firms, BAS agents, people trading under their own name, and register entries that aren’t accounting practices are left out. That leaves 4,687 practices. 2,129 practices have a website we could tie to the firm (2,041 distinct sites), and we read 1,950 of them in full, the way a phone shows them. The Google checks cover a random 956 firms.
Each website figure was checked against a second, slower reading of a fresh random sample of 65 sites, in which AI reviewers read each site in full and opened the live pages. We corrected the figures for the errors they found. They are estimates, and the table of checks gives each one’s margin. Simple counts, such as whether a site shows a phone number, weren’t corrected. Sites were read on 6 and 7 October 2026.
We sell websites, automation and AI to accounting firms, so we have an interest in these findings. Region makes little difference outside the City. The full findings break the main figures down by region.
The full findings have every check, its margin and the charts behind these figures. Download the full report (PDF).