The accounting industry is at a pivotal moment: small businesses are starting at near historic highs, while needing guidance with compliance, hiring, benefits, and financial planning. At the same time, AI is reshaping the profession.
For accountants, that means their role is changing. Payroll no longer has to start with manual prep like pulling hours from emails, reconciling changes, and building reports. AI agents can do that work while the accountant supervises, reviewing the output and giving final approval. That gives firms back time for the work only they can do: scaling their advisory practices just as clients are asking for more. A recent Gusto Insights report found nearly half of small businesses want strategic financial advice from their accountant, not just tax prep and bookkeeping.
That's why at Gusto Next, they've launched some of their biggest ever updates for accountants – a rebuilt Gusto Pro, a new multi-client Model Context Protocol, and an expanded Gusto Partner Program. Together, they let firms put AI agents to work on payroll prep wherever they already are, whether that's in Gusto Pro or in the AI tools they use every day, while they stay in control of every approval. Gusto's goal is to empower their accounting partners so they can supercharge both their clients' success and the growth of their firms.
Gusto Pro: An AI-native platform for payroll, benefits, and proactive guidance
Gusto has just introduced the most significant update to Gusto Pro since 2021 — Gusto's platform built for accountants supporting small businesses using Gusto. The updates include new AI-assisted workflows, a multi-client assistant, and a simplified dashboard built to free up accountants from manual tasks, enabling them to do the advisory work only they can do.
The updated Gusto Pro is now available in early access to eligible Gusto partners, with general availability coming later this year. New features include:
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AI-assisted workflows that automate core payroll tasks end-to-end, like extracting hours from emails, surfacing changes since last payroll, and delivering critical reports — so firms spend less time on manual prep, while still retaining visibility and control. Once AI completes the prep, accountants review and give final approvals.
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Automated reporting, where Gusto remembers the reports accountants regularly run, applies those settings, and automatically generates them. These reports land in one centralized place across all clients, so accountants don’t need to find reports client-by-client.
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New connectors to wherever accountants complete their work, like Gmail and Outlook, for retrieving information like hours worked, reimbursable expenses sent by clients via email, etc. This frees up accountants from chasing clients for vital information that then needs to be inputted manually.
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Pro Gus, an assistant designed for Gusto Pro partners and purpose-built to give them faster answers to client questions. It also provides multi-client visibility across their entire book of business.
“Gusto Pro provides advisory forward-thinking insights and tools,” said Wyatt Kneaper, founder and CEO of The Lighthouse Group, an accounting firm based in Eureka, CA. “When a client is engaged, we can surface insights based on Gusto Pro to say, hey, let’s have a conversation. What are your goals? What direction do you want to head in the next two to five years? There’s a huge door that potentially opens.”
Using Gusto Pro’s new AI workflows has empowered Wyatt and his management team to redirect as much as 40% of their time to high-value strategic analysis and advisory work for their clients.
This has transformed the type of work that The Lighthouse Group now typically performs for clients – less time prepping payroll manually, and more strategic conversations about their clients’ businesses.
Meeting accountants wherever they work: Introducing multi-client MCP, built for modern firms
Accountants shouldn't have to leave the tools they already use to get their work done. That's why Gusto is launching Gusto’s multi-client Model Context Protocol (MCP), which brings Gusto's business context directly into the AI tools accountants already work in, across the clients they manage.
Until now, working with AI across a client book has meant connecting to one client at a time and disconnecting and reconnecting to switch. With the multi-client MCP, accountants connect Gusto once, choose which clients to include, and every Gusto tool works across them from a single conversation.
Accountants can ask questions across their book of business, prep payroll changes like hours, earnings, time off, and payment methods, and generate the reports they run every cycle. They can also set up recurring routines that run in the background.
For example, they could set up a task for every Thursday that reviews client emails for payroll hours, prep each client's payroll, and notify the accountant when it's ready for review. Every change still comes back to the accountant to review and approve before anything is updated in Gusto, and only the clients they've chosen are ever connected.
The multi-client MCP reflects how Gusto thinks about AI: a teammate that meets accountants wherever they already work. It’s now available to all accountant firms, with more capabilities coming soon.
An expanded Partner Program to help firms grow
The Gusto Partner Program helps firms grow their practices, while also getting rewarded along the way. When accountants serve more clients on Gusto, they receive more revenue share and deeper strategic support to invest back into their firms.
Gusto has also made major upgrades to their Gusto Partner Program to help accounting firms grow their practices, not just manage them. New features include:
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Marketing Development Funds and the Partner Marketing Hub — Marketing support designed to help firms grow their books. This includes Marketing Development Funds designed to help firms drive new client acquisition through email campaigns, webinars, events, or paid social promotion, as well as a Partner Marketing Hub providing AI agents, campaign building, and ready-to-launch marketing resources.
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Partner Development Funds – Built to help firms grow stronger from the inside with the support of Firm Business Consultants. Funds can go toward launching and improving AI adoption and implementation, pricing and strategy for client advisory services, operational efficiency, and marketing matching firms with the right expertise for where they want to grow.
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Firm Business Consultants – An exclusive, pre-vetted network of consultants with deep accounting industry experience providing specialized support across key growth areas.
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AI agents for growth - First introduced in June 2026 and built exclusively for Gusto Pro firms. These include a website audit agent, advisory positioning agent, expansion pitch agent, and pricing and margin target agent - all designed to help firms with new clients and deepen advisory revenue.
In mid-November, the Gusto Partner Program will also expand revenue share beyond payroll to include 401(k) plans at partners’ matching tier rate. New firms that join will also get a free firm 401(k) plan for owners and employees for one year.
Through these updates to the Gusto Partner Program, Gusto is signaling their commitment to every partners’ growth. When mutual small business customers win, accountant partners also win, and they’re better positioned to pursue higher margins and increased revenue.
Built with accountants, for what's next
Gusto exists to serve small businesses. One of the most important ways they do that is by empowering their accounting partners who serve mutual customers. Gusto is proud to share that today, more than 23,000 firms partner with Gusto to support small businesses across the U.S.
With these updates outlined in this announcement, Gusto's goal is to give firms the tools to uplevel their work from running payroll to providing deeper client advisory services and strategic guidance – leading to higher margins and more opportunities to grow revenue.
Gusto is committed to co-creating a future where mutually shared small business customers thrive, and where Gusto's accountant partners grow their firms alongside those small business customers.
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