Disjointed software is steadily eroding billable hours across the accountancy sector, with practitioners spending excessive time managing platform friction rather than focusing on client deliverables, according to Haiilo’s State of the Employee Experience 2026 report.
The study found that 38% of professional services employees spend at least 11% of their working week—equivalent to more than four hours for standard full-time staff—resolving complications caused by fragmented systems.
Approximately 23% devote more than a fifth of their working hours to troubleshooting issues created by disconnected applications and processes.
Application switching has emerged as a primary driver of these workflow disruptions.
More than half (51%) of respondents frequently toggle across multiple separate tools to complete an individual task, while 49% rely on between four and seven workplace platforms during a standard week.
Around 24% of survey participants manage between eight and 12 distinct tools, resulting in frequent operational interruptions.
The rise of AI has further compounded these challenges for a portion of the workforce, with 20% indicating that the technology has added complexity to their digital environment.
These administrative delays significantly affect fundamental day-to-day functions, particularly data retrieval.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of employees dedicate more than two hours per week to searching for information across various corporate systems, with 19% spending more than five hours on retrieval tasks.
As a consequence of poor data accessibility, 58% of respondents indicate that they frequently or occasionally duplicate existing work, while 89% report fielding inquiries from colleagues that could have been resolved independently had internal information been easier to locate.
Hannah Soye, chief people and culture officer at Haiilo, commented: “Accountancy firms are navigating one of the most transformative periods the sector has experienced in years.
“From adopting AI to responding to evolving client expectations and managing increasing regulatory and commercial pressures, firms are being asked to deliver more while protecting the value of every billable hour.
“When employees are losing time to disconnected systems rather than focusing on complex client work, it becomes harder to deliver the expertise and trusted advice that clients expect.
“Those small moments of digital friction quickly accumulate throughout an entire firm.”
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