Liberty Tax plans to dramatically grow its new 360 accounting stores. The new services, aimed at higher end tax, payroll and accounting customers, started very quietly two years ago with- two stores and expanded that to eight last year.

It's fairly easy to say accounting firms are usually not at the forefront of technology adoption. So social media and the cloud versions of business applications are not used by most firms and 48.4 percent of those responding to the Fourth Annual Accounting Firm Operations and Technology Survey do not use tablets.

At the Sapphire conference of software giant SAP in May, there was a demonstration of a sensor-equipped power tool being used to drill a hole in a thin panel of concrete. When the job was finished, the drill communicated with the company's financial software. It reported the cost of the job and application was ready to spit out an invoice.