I Just Gave a Talk on How to Stop Buying Software You'll Never Use. Here's What We Covered.
This week at Scaling New Heights 2026, I got to spend 50 minutes with a room full of accounting firm owners talking about one of my favorite topics: how to stop buying software that sounds amazing in a demo and sits completely unused by month three.
The energy in that room told me everything. Hands went up, people were laughing in the painful recognition kind of way, and I had more conversations afterward than I had time for. So, I'm putting the key frameworks here for everyone who was in the room and wants a refresher, and for everyone who wasn't and is wondering what they missed.
Let's get into it.
Why This Is Such a Hard Problem Right Now
New tools are launching faster than any firm can keep up with. AI, automation, workflow software, client portals; there's a new “game changer” hitting your inbox every single day. And the sales cycles behind these tools are sophisticated. Demos are rehearsed. Urgency is manufactured. The pricing that “expires Friday” was always going to expire Friday.
The result? The average firm wastes over $18,000 a year on software that goes unused. And the hidden costs are often even higher than that. There's the onboarding time, the team frustration, and the switching costs when you bail six months later.
I've been there. We've all been there. The good news is there's a better way.
The SPA Test™: The Three Forces Driving Every Bad Software Purchase
The first thing I walked through in the session was what I call the SPA Test: three forces that quietly drive almost every software decision firms make, whether they realize it or not.
is for Showroom Appeal (or software sexiness). This is the demo effect. Great design, polished UI, a sales rep who genuinely believes in the product. Showroom Appeal is real, and it inflates your perception of a tool's value before you've ever put it near an actual client file. Ask yourself: am I excited about what this does, or about how good it looked in the demo?
is for Pocket Impact. The license fee is just the starting point. Add implementation, onboarding, the hours your team spends climbing the learning curve, the tier upgrade you'll need six months in, and the switching costs if it doesn't work out. True cost is almost always 2-3x the sticker price.
is for Ability to Deliver. This is the question that kills firms: can this tool do your work, for your clients, in the way your firm actually operates? Not demo data. Not best-case scenarios. Your real, messy, specific workflows. If you haven't asked a vendor to show you that, you haven't really evaluated the tool.
When all three go unexamined, you end up with a shiny subscription and a headache.
The VALID Filter™: Five Questions Every Tool Has to Answer
Once you understand what's driving your instincts, you need a framework for making the actual decision. This is mine.
is for Value Fit. Does this solve a problem we actually have right now? If I can't name the specific workflow gap in one sentence, we don't move forward.
is for Adoption Reality. Who are the three people on my team who'll use this most? Have they seen it? What's their gut reaction? If your power users are lukewarm after a real demo, that's data.
is for Long-term Scale. What does pricing look like when we're twice the size? What's on the vendor's roadmap, and who owns it? A tool that traps you at your current size is a liability, not an asset.
is for Integration. Does it connect cleanly to the tools we already rely on, or are we holding it together with Zapier duct tape? Native integrations only, wherever possible.
is for Downside Risk. What happens if the vendor gets acquired, pivots, or raises prices 40% at renewal? Can you get your data out easily? If a vendor can't answer that confidently, walk away.
A tool needs to pass all five before we even think about a pilot. It can't be four out of five. It has to be all five.
The Template
The thing that made all of this real for us, and what I walked through at the session, is the spreadsheet I've been using for years to evaluate software.
It forces you to define your requirements before any vendor calls start. It scores features by priority, maps out your integration needs, and compares pricing at both your current and future scale. It tracks vendor health signals along the way. And the scoring summary at the end makes the final decision almost obvious.
I've cleaned it up, added a “How to Use” tab, and I'm making it available here for free. But before you download it, I want to share the tip that got the biggest reaction in the room.
The Trick That Makes This 10x Faster: Use Claude in Excel to Fill It Out
Once you've downloaded the template, you don't have to fill it out by hand. Claude in Excel, which is Anthropic's AI that works directly inside your spreadsheet, can do the heavy lifting for you. Here's exactly how I do it:
1Set up your columns first.
Add the names and websites of the tools you're already familiar with in the header row. Even if you only know two or three, start there. You're giving Claude the landscape you're working in.
2Fill in column A with your actual requirements.
This is the part you cannot skip. Add your must-have features, your integration requirements, and your security needs in column A before you ask Claude to do anything. This is your criteria. Claude needs to know what matters to your firm, not just what the vendor says matters.
3Prompt Claude to fill out the comparison.
Open Claude in Excel and paste in a prompt like this one. Replace the bracketed text with your specifics:
Today you are my head of technology. I am evaluating [TYPE OF SOFTWARE, e.g. tax workflow software / client portal / AI bookkeeping tool] for my accounting firm. We serve [DESCRIBE YOUR CLIENT BASE, e.g. small business owners and nonprofits / high-net-worth individuals / restaurant groups]. Our firm has [NUMBER] staff and we currently use [LIST YOUR MAIN TOOLS, e.g. QuickBooks Online, Microsoft 365, and Karbon]. The tools I am considering are listed in the header row of this spreadsheet, along with their websites. Column A contains my specific requirements, broken out by category: features, integrations, pricing, security, and vendor health. Please research each tool using their public websites and any available documentation. For each requirement in column A, fill in the corresponding cell for each tool using the following key: checkmark for yes, dash for no, and tilde for partial or requires a workaround. In the pricing rows, enter publicly available pricing where you can find it and note if pricing requires a demo request. In the notes row at the bottom, flag any deal-breakers or concerns you identified for each tool.
Claude will work through each tool and populate the grid based on publicly available information. It is not perfect, and you will need to verify anything business-critical before you act on it. But it gets you 80% of the way there in a few minutes instead of a few hours.
4Ask it to find competitors you haven't thought of.
This is my favorite part. Once the initial comparison is done, follow up with a prompt like this:
Based on the requirements listed in column A and the tools I am already evaluating, please identify [NUMBER, e.g. 3] additional competitors I should consider. For each one, provide the name, website, and a one-sentence description of why it might be a good fit for my firm given what I've told you. Then add each one as a new column in the spreadsheet and fill in the same comparison data using the same format.
I cannot tell you how many times this has surfaced a tool I had never heard of that turned out to be a better fit than what I was already looking at. That alone is worth the five minutes it takes to run the template.
5Review everything before you act on it.
Claude is pulling from publicly available information, and software changes fast. Pricing tiers shift. Features get added or removed. Integration claims get vague. Treat the filled-out spreadsheet as a strong starting point, not a final answer. Use it to know what questions to ask in your demos, not to skip the demos entirely.
The goal is to walk into every vendor conversation already knowing what you need, what competitors exist, and what you're comparing. That changes the whole dynamic. You're no longer being sold to. You're evaluating.
Get the Template
Fill out the form and the Software Evaluation Template downloads instantly — including the “How to Use” tab and the SPA Test reminder.
Questions? Let's Talk.
If you were at the session and want to go deeper, or if you have a software horror story I absolutely need to hear, find me on LinkedIn or reach out through TaxFigure. I read everything and I genuinely love these conversations.
And if you missed the session this year, I hope to see you at the next one.
Liz Mason is the CEO at TaxFigure. She helps accounting firms build smarter, leaner, and more profitable practices.