- “Best” is the wrong word. “Best fit” is the right one. A solo startup and a 4-doctor, $5M practice need completely different accountants, and the firms below sort cleanly by who they serve.
- A veterinary CPA reads your practice, not just your return. They work in industry KPIs, the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts, production pay, and peer benchmarks, the things a generalist almost never touches.
- Outsourced finance is no longer exotic. Client Advisory Services is the fastest-growing area in public accounting, with CAS firms reporting roughly 16 to 17 percent median growth per AICPA and CPA.com. Larger practices increasingly run a fractional CFO or controller.
- Ask five questions and you’ll know in ten minutes. Percent of clients who are vets, do they use the AAHA/VMG chart, do they get production pay, which benchmarks, and references from practices your size.
- Above $3 million, the harder question is who you compare notes with. A great accountant gives you clean numbers; OwnerExchange is where owners of 3+ DVM, $3 to $10M+ practices ask each other which firm actually delivered, with no sales pitch attached.
A few months ago an owner asked me a question I get a lot.
She runs three locations, north of $6 million, and she’d just gotten off the phone with her accountant of fifteen years. Lovely guy. Did her parents’ taxes. And he had no idea why her cost of goods had crept up two points, or whether her associate pay was high or low for the market, because he’d never seen another veterinary practice in his life.
“Am I supposed to have a special vet accountant,” she asked, “or am I being precious about this?”
Fair question. So here’s the honest version, including the part where a good generalist is genuinely fine for some owners. I’ll name the specialized firms worth knowing in 2026, tell you what each actually does and who it fits, and give you the short list of questions that sorts a real veterinary CPA from someone with a nice website.
Do you actually need a veterinary-specific accountant in 2026?
For a single-doctor practice that mostly wants accurate taxes, a solid local CPA can do the job. For a multi-doctor practice trying to manage profitability, a veterinary specialist usually pays for itself. The difference isn’t the tax return. It’s whether the person reading your numbers knows what “normal” looks like for a practice like yours.
That’s the whole case in one sentence. A generalist can tell you profit went up or down. A veterinary CPA can tell you your drug-and-supply spend is running three points hot, that your support-staff ratio is light for your doctor count, and what that means against thousands of comparable hospitals.
Leslie Mamalis, a longtime veterinary financial consultant, puts it plainly in Today’s Veterinary Business: a generalist who also serves lumber yards and nail salons will hand you generic advice like “raise fees” or “cut payroll,” while a veterinary expert reads the practice through industry KPIs and benchmarks. Same numbers, completely different read.
What a veterinary CPA actually does differently
Three things, mostly, and none of them show up on a tax form.
They build your books on the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts. That’s the standardized framework for classifying veterinary revenue and expenses, endorsed by the AVMA, the VHMA, and VetPartners. It sounds like plumbing. It’s actually the thing that lets you compare your practice against industry data instead of guessing.
They understand how vets get paid. Production-based compensation, ProSal, the relationship between doctor pay and doctor production. A generalist often treats associate pay as a flat line. A specialist knows whether yours is sustainable.
They know the cost structure cold. What cost of goods should run, where staffing and occupancy usually land, which line items quietly eat margin. Mamalis notes that cost of goods is the category that most often erodes a practice’s profit, and that owners should break out any expense above 1 percent of revenue so it can actually be managed. A generalist rarely thinks at that resolution.
The best veterinary accountants and CPA firms in 2026
Below is a neutral map of well-known veterinary-specialized firms, what each one does, and the kind of owner each one tends to fit. These are good firms doing real work, and plenty of owners are well served by every one of them. I’ve kept it factual on purpose, no rankings, because the right pick depends entirely on your practice, not on a leaderboard.
One note before the table. OwnerExchange isn’t on this list, and shouldn’t be. We’re not an accounting firm. We’re the peer community where owners trade unfiltered, no-commission opinions on which of these firms actually delivered, which I’ll come back to at the end.
| Firm | Focus / services | Best fit |
|---|---|---|
| Burzenski & Company (now BerryDunn) | Veterinary accounting, tax, bookkeeping, forecasting, operational consulting, valuation. Serving the profession since 1983; team led by a CPA and including a Certified Veterinary Practice Manager; merged into BerryDunn in December 2024 | Established multi-doctor practices wanting deep veterinary specialists now backed by a larger full-service firm |
| Gatto McFerson | Accounting, tax in all 50 states, consulting, valuations and appraisals, litigation support. Describes itself as the first firm to focus on the veterinary industry; AICPA-accredited in Business Valuation | Owners who want the longest veterinary track record and in-house valuation or partnership-dispute expertise |
| Summit Veterinary Advisors | Tiered monthly accounting and bookkeeping, QuickBooks on the AAHA chart, payroll, quarterly profitability assessments, valuation. Veterinary-only since 1998 | Owners who want monthly accounting that scales from “just for taxes” up to full-service, with a profitability lens |
| Dillon Business Advisors | Outsourced accounting, tax planning, payroll oversight, reporting, and fractional CFO strategy via a dedicated “team of three” (CFO, controller, client service manager) | Growth-minded, larger practices that want outsourced financial leadership, not just compliance bookkeeping |
| Granite Peak Veterinary Advisors | Proactive tax planning, multi-entity structuring, monthly veterinary-specific reporting, KPI and compensation advisory, payroll, transaction support. National boutique with a CVPM on staff | Multi-entity or multi-location owners wanting tax structuring and KPI advisory under one roof |
| Veterinary Practice Made Perfect | Practice-performance consulting, strategic planning, accounting, tax, HR support, valuation, group facilitation. Led by a practitioner who is both a DVM and a CPA | Owners who want an advisor fluent in both the clinical and the financial side of the practice |
| Morey CPA & Associates | Cloud-based veterinary accounting, online bill-pay, tax-reduction planning, and tax coaching. Veterinary-focused CPA, member of the Veterinary CPA Network | Owners wanting cloud-first bookkeeping plus proactive, coaching-style tax planning |
| Veterinary CPA Network (VetCPA.org) | A network that matches owners with licensed CPA member firms specializing in veterinary practices, with fees agreed in advance rather than billed hourly | Owners who’d rather be matched to a vetted boutique veterinary CPA than search cold |
Look down the “best fit” column and a pattern shows up. The firms sort less by quality and more by what kind of relationship you want: lightweight tax help, full outsourced finance, valuation depth, or a clinician-CPA hybrid. That’s the real decision. Not “who’s best,” but “which model fits how I run my practice.”
How to choose a veterinary CPA: the five questions
You can sort a genuine veterinary specialist from a generalist with a vet-themed homepage in about ten minutes. Ask these five, drawn from the vetting checklists that VetCPA.org and dvm360 have published for years.
- What percentage of your clients are veterinary practices? You want a real concentration, not “we have a few vets.” Depth comes from volume.
- Do you build books on the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts? The right answer is an immediate yes. If they’ve never heard of it, you’ve learned what you needed to know.
- Do you understand production-based compensation? Even if you don’t pay that way, a true specialist will know the models cold. It’s a fast tell.
- Which veterinary benchmarks do you work with? An expert is comfortable naming the standards relevant to a practice your size and discussing where you land.
- Can you give me references from practices my size? A 4-doctor, multi-location owner needs an accountant who already serves practices like that. Call one and ask the blunt questions.
Two more things worth checking. Membership in a veterinary professional group, like the Veterinary CPA Network or VetPartners, is a reasonable signal of genuine focus. And credentials beyond the CPA, such as a Certified Veterinary Practice Manager on the team or an AICPA Business Valuation accreditation, tell you the firm has invested in the niche.
Outsourced finance and the fractional CFO question
Here’s a shift worth understanding if you run a larger practice. Accounting firms increasingly don’t just file your taxes. They run your finance function.
The model has a name: Client Advisory Services, the outsourced or co-sourced finance relationship where the firm acts as an embedded resource rather than a once-a-year preparer. Per AICPA and CPA.com benchmark surveys, CAS is the fastest-growing area in public accounting, with participating firms reporting roughly 16 to 17 percent median growth, and firms offering CFO-level advisory earning materially higher recurring revenue.
For a 3-plus doctor practice, this is the difference between an accountant who reacts in April and a controller or fractional CFO who’s in your numbers every month. Several firms above are built this way. Dillon’s “team of three” is an explicit CFO-controller-manager model. Granite Peak and Summit offer monthly reporting and advisory tiers. The question isn’t whether outsourced finance is legitimate. It’s whether your practice has outgrown once-a-year accounting, and most multi-doctor practices have.
What owners get wrong in their own books
A quick detour, because the best accountant in the country can’t fully save books that are built wrong underneath.
Cost of goods is the usual culprit. It’s the category that most quietly erodes profit, and many owners track it too coarsely to manage. The fix specialists recommend is granular, consistent categories, and breaking out any line that runs more than 1 percent of revenue.
Inconsistent categories break benchmarking. If your accounts don’t match the AAHA/VMG standard, you can’t compare yourself to anyone. Standardize first, then benchmark.
Books built only to minimize tax hide how the practice performs. Minimizing tax is good. But if that’s the only goal, the financials stop telling you the operational truth. A veterinary CPA builds books that do both.
None of this requires you to become an accountant. It requires hiring one who works at this resolution, and giving them clean inputs.
Clean numbers are step one. Knowing what to do with them is step two. A veterinary CPA gives you the financials; a room of owners running practices your size tells you what they’d actually do with them. See who’s at the OwnerExchange table →
Where this leaves you above $3 million
Walk back through that table with one filter: a 3-plus doctor practice doing $3 million or more. The shortlist gets clear fast. You want veterinary depth, benchmarking on the AAHA/VMG chart, monthly reporting, and ideally controller or CFO-level advisory. Several firms above fit that bill, and the right one is a matter of style and chemistry, not a ranking.
But hiring the firm is only half the decision. The other half is harder to buy: who tells you the truth about whether that firm is actually any good?
That’s the gap OwnerExchange fills. When an owner in our community is weighing two of the firms above, they don’t read a marketing page. They ask the room, “who here uses them, and would you again?” and a dozen owners running practices at the same scale answer honestly, because nobody in that room is selling anything. The accountant gives you the numbers. The peers give you the unfiltered verdict on the accountant.
What is OwnerExchange?
OwnerExchange is a private peer community for the sharpest 5% of independent veterinary practice owners: 3+ doctor practices doing $3 to $10 million and up. You join a small, caliber-matched mastermind POD led by a veterinary thought leader, plus a private 24/7 forum where owners trade honest, no-commission opinions on the vendors, accountants, and advisors they actually use. No fluff, no sales pitches, no noise. A new group of just 12 owners is forming now.
We’re selective on purpose. The forum only works when every owner in it operates at a level where their experience with a firm like the ones above is worth your time.
Further reading
If you’re getting your financial house in order, these go deeper on the problems a good accountant helps you solve.
- Veterinary financial planning for practice owners — how owners at scale structure cash, profit, and personal financial goals around the practice.
- Veterinary data and analytics tools — the dashboards and metrics that turn clean books into faster decisions.
- The veterinary practice owner community — who’s in the OwnerExchange room and how the PODs work.
Frequently asked questions
Who are the best veterinary accountants and CPA firms in 2026?
There’s no single best firm, only the best fit for your practice. Strong veterinary-specialized firms include Burzenski & Company (now BerryDunn), Gatto McFerson, Summit Veterinary Advisors, Dillon Business Advisors, Granite Peak Veterinary Advisors, Veterinary Practice Made Perfect, and Morey CPA. The right one depends on your size, whether you want full outsourced finance or just tax help, and how much advisory you need.
What does a veterinary CPA do that a regular accountant doesn’t?
A veterinary specialist reads your practice through industry KPIs and benchmarks rather than generic ratios. They know production-based pay, the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts, and normal ranges for cost of goods, staffing, and occupancy, and they can tell you what your numbers mean against thousands of comparable practices. A generalist can file an accurate return but rarely contextualizes it.
How do I choose a veterinary accountant for my practice?
Ask what percentage of their clients are veterinary practices, whether they use the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts, whether they understand production-based compensation, which benchmarks they work with, and whether they belong to a veterinary professional group. Ask for references from practices your size. Veterinary depth plus practices at your scale is the best predictor of fit.
What is the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts and why does it matter?
It’s the standard way to classify revenue and expenses in a small-animal practice, endorsed by AVMA, VHMA, and VetPartners. It matters because standardized categories let you compare your practice apples-to-apples against industry benchmarks. A veterinary CPA who builds your books on it gives you numbers that mean something next to your peers. VMG and AAHA released an updated version in 2026.
Should a large multi-doctor practice use outsourced accounting or a fractional CFO?
Many do. Client Advisory Services, the outsourced or co-sourced finance model, is the fastest-growing area in public accounting, with CAS practices reporting roughly 16 to 17 percent median growth per AICPA and CPA.com. For a 3-plus doctor practice, a fractional CFO or controller-level relationship often pays for itself by catching cost creep and improving decisions.
What do veterinary practice owners get wrong in their own books most often?
Cost of goods is the category that most often quietly erodes profit, and many owners track it too loosely to manage it. Other common gaps are inconsistent account categories that break benchmarking, and books built to minimize tax rather than to show how the practice actually performs. A veterinary CPA who standardizes the chart of accounts fixes most of this.
Sources
Veterinary CPA and accounting firms (firm-published)
- Burzenski & Company, PC (now BerryDunn). Veterinary Medicine practice services. burzenski.com
- Gatto McFerson CPAs. Veterinary Consulting & CPA Services. gattomcferson.com
- Summit Veterinary Advisors. Services (accounting, bookkeeping, profitability, valuation). summitveterinaryadvisors.com
- Dillon Business Advisors. Veterinary Hospitals (team-of-three outsourced finance). dillonadvisors.com
- Granite Peak Veterinary Advisors. Tax, accounting, and advisory for veterinary hospital owners. granitepeakcpa.com
- Veterinary Practice Made Perfect (BFH, CPAs, Inc.). Business management, accounting, tax, and consulting. vpmp.net
- Morey CPA & Associates (My Veterinary CPA). Cloud accounting, tax planning, and tax coaching. myveterinarycpa.com
- Veterinary CPA Network (VetCPA.org). CPA matching and “Top 7 Questions to Ask When Choosing an Accountant.” vetcpa.org
Financial standardization, benchmarking, and how to choose a vet CPA
- American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA). VMG/AAHA Chart of Accounts. aaha.org
- American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts. avma.org
- Today’s Veterinary Business. “Do You Need a Veterinary CPA?” (Leslie A. Mamalis). todaysveterinarybusiness.com
- Today’s Veterinary Business. “How to Account for Your COGS” (Leslie A. Mamalis). todaysveterinarybusiness.com
Outsourced accounting and advisory-services trends
