How a 300+ Accounting Firm Turned AI Scepticism into $65,000+ Extra Billable Capacity a Month

When Melbourne company BlueRock first rolled out their custom AI assistant, Ask Dwayne, it didn't land the way anyone expected. They'd invested in a custom, smart, secure AI platform, but most of the team barely touched it. A few keen early adopters jumped in, but the majority of accountants stuck to the way they had always worked, using email, Excel, Word and their practice software. Most Partners could see the potential in Ask Dwayne, but on the ground, day to day work looked pretty much the same.

Here's how they turned a slow, hesitant start into a firmwide AI shift. And the $65,000+ a month in extra billable capacity that came with it.

THE ASK DWAYNE PLATFORM

THE STARTING POINT: POWERFUL AI, MINIMAL ADOPTION

BlueRock partnered with AI Dojo to build Ask Dwayne - a private, custom-made, secure AI platform tailored to their practice. It could draft and review emails, advice notes and workpapers, turn complex legislation and ATO guidance into plain English, help with proposals and marketing pieces, and support knowledge sharing across tax, business advisory, law and wealth.

On the surface, it looked like a guaranteed win. In reality, usage was patchy. A handful of enthusiasts loved it. Most staff weren't logging in. The comments will sound familiar to a lot of firms:

• "I don't have time to learn another tool."
• "I'm worried it'll get the tax wrong."
• "This is for tech people, not for me."

Like any big change in a business, the real challenge wasn't the shiny technology, change management was. People need to be taught how to build new habits around how they work every single day. They soon realised there is no quick fix for that.

THE TURNING POINT: TRAINING, NOT JUST TOOLS

Together with BlueRock, we shifted the focus from "we've rolled out a new tool" to "how do we actually change how people work?".

From early September 2024, they started weekly, opt-in AI training sessions built around Ask Dwayne and real accounting work. Staff brought their real use-cases into the room and they redesigned the process around AI. Different divisions saw examples that made sense for them - tax, BAS, VCFO, wealth, legal, admin - rather than generic demos.

They also spent time on the bits accountants worry about most: compliance, risk and quality. What's safe, what isn't, and how do you review AI output properly? On top of that, we added simple recognition, usage leaderboards, shoutouts and stories of real wins.

Since week one, those sessions have been standing-room only, and that's exactly where the usage curve starts to bend upwards.

THE NUMBERS: FROM CURIOSITY TO COMPOUNDING ROI

The data tells the story in the language accountants care about - time and billables – total minutes saved and billable time created.

Across the firm, Ask Dwayne is now saving over 18,000 minutes a month - more than 300 hours. In the early months after launch, they were only seeing around 6,000 - 9,000 minutes saved. As training kicked in and teams started building AI into their everyday processes, those numbers climbed month after month. By September, they were consistently in the high teens thousands of minutes saved.

Because BlueRock is a professional services firm, those minutes don't just disappear, they turn into billable capacity. Early on, the value sat in the $20k–$30k range. As more employees created AI habits and the firm redesigned entire processes, that value climbed steadily. By September, Ask Dwayne was contributing over $60,000 a month in additional billable time.

Effectively, they have added a new high performing fee earner without hiring anyone, simply by upskilling the team and operationalising AI. Even if you discount a chunk of that capacity, the return is very hard to ignore.

WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGED IN THE PROCESSES?

Day to day, work at BlueRock now looks different.

In tax and compliance, accountants use Ask Dwayne to help draft client emails, advice notes and file notes, then review and refine instead of starting from a blank page. They lean on it to unpack complex legislation or rulings into clear talking points for partners and clients.

On the business advisory side, teams use AI to turn management reports into client-ready commentary and recommendations in minutes. They build scenario summaries for planning meetings far faster than before.

For internal operations, templates, procedures and checklists now live in one central, AI-assisted workspace. Junior staff often run their work through Ask Dwayne as a "first reviewer" before it goes up the chain.

The common thread: partners still own the judgement and the final sign-off, but the heavy lifting of drafting, summarising and structuring is pushed to AI.

CULTURAL SHIFT: FROM AI LUDDITES TO "WHY WOULDN'T YOU USE IT?"

The biggest shift at BlueRock isn't in the software, it's in attitude.

People who were openly sceptical are now bringing AI optimised examples to team meetings. There's friendly competition around the usage leaderboard. You'll hear comments like, "Why are you doing that manually?" when someone ignores Ask Dwayne for a task it could handle.

Because the platform is private, secure and tailored to their work, partners feel comfortable backing it, and staff feel safe experimenting.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR OTHER ACCOUNTING FIRMS

You don't need 300 people to get this kind of result. But you do need three things in place:

• A secure, accounting specific AI workspace, not a generic public tool.
• Structured, ongoing training where people bring real use-cases the whole team can benefit from.
• Simple, visible metrics around usage.

That's exactly what AI Dojo is built to deliver for accounting firms.

YOUR NEXT STEP: TEST IT IN YOUR FIRM

If you're still in "wait and see" mode on AI, BlueRock's experience makes the risk pretty clear: the firms that move now are quietly creating thousands of extra productive hours a year.

You don't have to rebuild your tech stack. You can:

• Give your team a secure AI workspace in minutes or hours, not months.
• Attend short, focused trainings specifically designed for accountants.
• Start tracking usage inside the platform.

If there's a takeaway from BlueRock's experience, it's that AI only pays off when you educate your people and change how they work. When you do, the impact on time and billables is hard to ignore.