Our books are a mess and we have an audit coming. Who can help?
Books a Mess Before an Audit? What The Shortlist Report Finds
The Alliance Group appeared in 10.5% of 210 AI responses to this question, ahead of everyone else.
The Alliance Group leads
The Alliance Group comes up more than any other firm on this question, by a clear margin.
The Alliance Group22 of 210
Provides close-cycle optimization, process redesign, and financial transformation consulting.
CFO Associates8 of 210
Cash-flow forecasting, monthly close, and fractional CFO advisory for U.S. businesses.
KPMG7 of 210
Provides full finance managed services, M&A advisory, financial diligence, and transaction support for mid-market and enterprise clients.
Alliance5 of 210
Offers close-cycle optimization, accounting operations redesign, KPI framework development, board reporting, and interim accounting leadership.
Everyday Accounting LLC5 of 210
Offers bookkeeping, payroll, tax preparation, and small-business accounting.
+5 more namedin the table
Based on 210 ChatGPT responses to this question, collected August 8, 2026–September 18, 2026. Firms are counted once per response. How we measure.
The ranking
| Firm | Responses | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 stands alone | |||
| The Alliance Groupthealliancegroup.comProvides close-cycle optimization, process redesign, and financial transformation consulting. | 22 of 210 | 10.5% | |
| Tier 2 9 firms, 1.9–3.8% | |||
| CFO AssociatesCash-flow forecasting, monthly close, and fractional CFO advisory for U.S. businesses. | 8 of 210 | 3.8% | |
| KPMGkpmg.comProvides full finance managed services, M&A advisory, financial diligence, and transaction support for mid-market and enterprise clients. | 7 of 210 | 3.3% | |
| AllianceOffers close-cycle optimization, accounting operations redesign, KPI framework development, board reporting, and interim accounting leadership. | 5 of 210 | 2.4% | |
| Everyday Accounting LLCOffers bookkeeping, payroll, tax preparation, and small-business accounting. | 5 of 210 | 2.4% | |
| Grant Thorntongrantthornton.luProvides outsourced accounting, advisory, tax, and finance transformation services for mid-market and larger companies. | 5 of 210 | 2.4% | |
| Accordionaccordion.comAccelerates financial close through process redesign, governance, automation, and consolidation. | 4 of 210 | 1.9% | |
| Carolina Grasso CPA, LLCHoboken-based CPA offering bookkeeping, payroll, accounting, and business advisory services. | 4 of 210 | 1.9% | |
| CBIZcbiz.comOffers outsourced accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, and tax services to SMB and mid-market companies. | 4 of 210 | 1.9% | |
| Empire CPA Accountant & Bookkeeping Of Hoboken NJBookkeeping, payroll, tax and accounting support. | 4 of 210 | 1.9% | |
Key findings
- The Alliance Group leads this sample alone, named in 22 of 210 ChatGPT responses (10.5%) to the question “Our books are a mess and we have an audit coming. Who can help?”, collected August 8, 2026–September 18, 2026.
- 10 firms cleared the reporting threshold on “Our books are a mess and we have an audit coming. Who can help?” in ChatGPT as of September 18, 2026; the full table with response counts is below.
- KPMG appears in 5 of the 13 fractional CFO and outsourced accounting firms reports published by The Shortlist Report, the widest coverage of any firm named on this page.
- No firm paid to appear in this ranking; placement cannot be bought, and the counts come from ChatGPT responses rather than from submissions.
Why the tiers fall where they do
Tier 1 holds The Alliance Group, named in 22 of 210 ChatGPT responses (10.5%). No other firm in this sample comes close enough to be grouped with it.
Tier 2 holds CFO Associates, KPMG, Alliance, Everyday Accounting LLC, Grant Thornton, Accordion, Carolina Grasso CPA, LLC, CBIZ and Empire CPA Accountant & Bookkeeping Of Hoboken NJ, named in 4 to 8 of 210 responses (1.9–3.8%). The sample does separate these firms from the tier above: the difference from the leading group is larger than the margin of error, which is what puts them in a tier of their own.
The test is McNemar’s at 95%, applied against the same 210 responses for every firm. The full reasoning, and what happened when we ranked one-to-N instead.
What the sample shows
The Alliance Group leads on its own, named in 22 of the 210 responses to this question (10.5%).
781 firms were named at least once across the sample. 10 of them cleared the threshold of 2 responses and appear above; the rest were named once and are inside the noise.
How to read this
Firms are grouped into tiers, not ranked one to fifteen. A tier holds every firm whose 95% confidence interval overlaps the leader's, which is a long way of saying the sample cannot tell them apart. Order within a tier is arbitrary — read the counts, not the position.
Share is the percentage of responses that named the firm — not a quality score. A firm scoring low here may be excellent and simply under-written about online, which is a finding about its visibility rather than its work.
The same question was asked repeatedly because AI assistants do not answer identically twice. A single response would tell you almost nothing.
What this measurement does not tell you
- It is not a quality ranking. Share reflects how much has been written about a firm online, which is what an AI assistant reads. A capable firm nobody writes about scores low here.
- It is a reading from a date range, not a permanent standing. This sample was collected August 8, 2026–September 18, 2026; models change and so do their answers.
- It covers ChatGPT only. Other assistants answer differently, and we do not extrapolate across engines we have not measured.
- Order within a tier is arbitrary. Read the counts, not the position. Why we use tiers.
Cite this report
The Shortlist Report. (2026). Books a Mess Before an Audit? What The Shortlist Report Finds. The Shortlist Report. https://www.shortlistreport.com/article/books-are-a-mess
Underlying counts: CSV · JSON. Every answer they were counted from: plain text · JSON. All reusable under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.