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Pilot — Bookkeeping for startups, powered by humans and software
Pilot is a bookkeeping company that focuses on startups—with a twist. Their bookkeepers are assisted by software that automates the most error-prone pieces, so the books are always incredibly accurate. Kind of like having a cyborg army working for you, only way less scary.
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I like the QuickBooks Online interface that Pilot gave me and their focus purely on making the background process seamless.
How is this differentiated from a Plaid integration companies like:
Indinero
Bench.co
SwayFinance
?
Also, the difficult part about outsourcing bookkeeping is that you don't know if the web service properly functions until 2 years out. Rough market space, I wish you the best of luck.
@datarade Hi Kumar — my answer re: bench is here: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Regarding inDinero the answer is somewhat similar: while they are focused on tech startups, they do your books in a proprietary system that isn't easy to migrate away from, and they don't do accrual basis by default. (I'd also encourage you to talk to some current inDinero customers first if you're seriously considering inDinero, because I've heard a number of horror stories about the experience.)
Regarding Sway: my understanding is that Sway is just a software package. Pilot has humans in the loop, and that's important: when I have questions or when something goes wrong, I'd rather just pick up the phone or email my account manager who knows me and knows my business well, as opposed to having to do a bunch of Googling to make sure that I'm doing the right thing.
Bookkeeping is such a pain for startups, and I am thrilled to see a team this strong come together to solve the problem. I have heard nothing but great things about the product from customers. I am excited to see the company continue to grow!
Terrific service and team. We've been users since the beginning and love it. Makes bookkeeping a delight!
We’ve been using Pilot at Winnie for a little while now as one of their earliest customers. It’s such a lifesaver. It has saved me from a ton of manual bookkeeping work I was doing using overpriced, clunky software. Now I don’t worry about anything anymore. They literally do everything for me. I get my monthly reports without doing any work so I can just focus on running my company. It’s THE BEST.
Pilot is going to finally make bookkeeping something that founders don't have to worry about! Looking forward to replacing our CFO stack with Pilot asap. Several of my founder friends already use this and love it. Also the MIT team behind this is insanely smart. They've built mission critical kernel software before, so I'd trust them to build financially secure stuff too.
@arecenello Hi Anthony, absolutely, take a look at my answer here: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
@waseem What's the difference between your product and bench? In just a few points.
@greg_x_willis Great question, thanks! Superficially, fairly similar, but with three key differences:
* Our books are stored in QuickBooks Online, and you have access, so you're never locked in. If you need to work with another provider or just don't like us anymore, you can hand your data to any bookkeeper in the world, because it's just QuickBooks (vs. being handed an Excel export from a custom accounting system)
* All we do is startup company bookkeeping, so we've developed super-deep expertise in it (vs. aiming to solve it for, e.g. the bakery or yoga studio)
* We do accrual-basis bookkeeping (vs. only supporting cash-based bookkeeping)—this is a pretty inside-baseball thing, but it matters as the startup gets larger
I don't know how much automation Bench has already built, or if it's all just humans under the hood, but one structural advantage of #1 for us is that it means our engineers can spend all their time focusing on automating error-prone work (rather than needing to build out a QuickBooks clone).
@greg_x_willis @waseem think this is big -- having to use Bench's software was the main thing that turned me off that, so good decision!
@_pulkitagrawal Thanks! We actually had a lot of angst about this in the early days. The trade off is basically: using the industry-standard data store vs. having complete control of the UX. Ultimately, I feel really good about where we landed because we still do have the ability to e.g. build custom dashboard and reports on top, in our own interface, as necessary.
In my mind, this is the best option for startup bookkeeping right now. It's already pretty good, and bound to only get better as more of it gets automated. To my pleasant surprise, the (human) team was very responsive in answering questions or addressing concerns as things popped up.
Pros:Clean books, high degree of automation to minimize errors, responsive team.
Cons:They don't do tax accounting yet - you still have to find another accounting firm for year's end.
Hi Ivo :) Thanks for the kind words!
Ivo's right—we're a bookkeeping firm, so we don't do the tax returns ourselves. But we can definitely connect you with a tax prep partner we know and trust, and can shepherd the process of working with them to insulate you from a lot of back-and-forth. (Or if you do have a tax preparer you like, no problem, we can work with them too.)
We elected to use Pilot at Parabol a couple of months ago. Switching to them has been easy. On-boarding a cinch. And, their non-robotic colleagues were able to suggest some great changes to our chart of accounts. Would recommend!
Pros:Fixed recurring pricing, clean books, great service & staff
Cons:They are the only AI + Bookkeeping game in town (that I know of), not Cons to note yet!
This looks great. Bookkeeping can be the last thing a startup founder wants to deal with so any gains in this area can be amazing!
What are you defining as a "startup". In @greg_x_willis questions (which was my first thought too) you mentioned "(vs. aiming to solve it for, e.g. the bakery or yoga studio)". So are you defining "startup" as primarily tech based, recurring revenue model business vs. transactional product/service type business?
@phikai Today, the reason I say we focus on startups is twofold:
1) We've built deep integrations with the systems that most tech startups are using — things like Stripe, Gusto, Expensify, Abacus, bill.com, SVB, and a bunch of others.
2) We have a lot of in-house expertise about how to properly do the bookkeeping for, e.g. a B2B SaaS company, or a company that sells stuff in the App Store.
So when we say "focus on startups," I really mean "focusing on companies that have a shape that's kind of like a tech startup". The exact business model (recurring vs transactional, product vs service) doesn't actually matter to us — but there are benefits for both you and us if we can take advantage of either #1, #2, or both.
Some nontraditional examples in our customer base: a few are nonprofits, and one is a makerspace that buys and sells physical objects. Neither of those are "startups" in the sense of a fast-growing tech company that plans on IPOing someday, but their shape is one that allows us to serve them well.
Finally, there's the "what we do today" and "what we do eventually" — as the company grows, I would love to be doing the bookkeeping for the bakery or the yoga studio as well, but for the time being, we're staying laser-focused on these "startup-shaped" companies.
(But if you have a bakery or yoga studio, I'd still love to talk to you today so we can figure out how to help out down the road!)
@waseem Thanks for the reply! I don't exactly have a bakery or yoga studio, but my wife does have a small business selling on Etsy. I'm not sure if it'd be a valuable market for you to serve or not, because while she makes a reasonable amount of money annually... looking at your pricing, there's no way it could justify an additional expense like that.
Either way... feel free to reach out and we can certainly chat about what could be valuable to her or people like her.
@phikai Awesome, yep, I'd definitely love to chat with you/her — sounds super-useful. I'll shoot you an email.
Awesome and much-needed product from one of the most incredible teams imaginable.
Oh man this is very much needed, it’s so hard to find a book keeper, thanks for trying to save us!
Pilot is a no-brainer for startups. The founders are extremely empathetic to the fact that you want to spend as little time as possible managing your books. Their staff is extremely on-top of things, smart, resourceful, responsive, etc.
For example, I asked them to accelerate some work in advance of a board meeting, and one of the founders followed up directly on the thread to make sure it would happen. And BTW, immediately after the board meeting the investors asked what bookkeeping service I use so they could recommend it to the rest of their portfolio.
Keep up the good work!
Pros:Thorough, responsive, zero hassle, overdeliver on service
Cons:None yet
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