In the latest Accounting Tech Lab, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley, CPA, discuss the AICPA Startup Accelerator. Watch the video, listen to the audio, or read the transcript.
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Transcript (Note: There may be typos due to automated transcription errors.)
SPEAKERS: Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA, Randy Johnston.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:00
Welcome to the accounting Technology Lab sponsored by CPA practice advisor, with your host, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley.
We would like to talk to you about this year’s startup accelerator program from the AICPA and cpa.com now the accelerator program has been running for eight years. Last year, the focus was all around AI products, and this year, it seemed that most of the products that made it in had some sort of a CAS focus. That’s not 100% true, but it is a pretty good start. And what we’d like to do today is just give you an overview of the vendors that made it in and that were announced on Wednesday, March 12 of 2025 now I have always been impressed with these founders, and what I want to do is just provide a little bit of an overview on these products, Brian and I hope to interview use the products and talk about them in future technology labs, like we did in prior years. So we’ll have more details to follow. But in the meantime, you may want to take a look at these. So first, I’d like to start with a company called advise. A vise is still relatively small with eight employees. They were founded in 2020 by Graham Stanton and Edgar Thomas aviez. Is a month in close process, and it is bi directional with QuickBooks Online and NetSuite. Now we know of a number of online, closed products, and we’ve covered those in other technology labs, the flow casts and the trend techs and and so forth. And there’s many organized, exactly black line of classic many classic products trying to solve this product problem, and many products trying to solve it. Now, in the context of Cas, when you’re working inside your firm, trying to handle many, many clients with your relatively small team, these type of tools can help you notably So Brian, I think if you take note on this, on the problem that they are actually solving, you know, where they’re really going after the manual, repetitive tasks of accounting, that’s a pretty good call out. And you know, I think about the way you’ve talked about doing CAS workflows in the past, but you know, this particular vendor, I think, has a chance of helping with the closed process and cast practices.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 02:45
Yeah, and I think you know that that closed tool is a critical tool that people don’t realize they need until they get this, because it does make such a huge difference in the productivity. Because again, you set up to check. You know, it’s you set up. It’s very similar to to a digital checklist. I mean, you set up the checklist, you set up the tasks, and then you have some digital, digital automation to handle some of the work that’s associated with it. So it’s a it’s a pretty it’s a pretty exciting tool set, but nobody really talks about the the use of these tools in here, but you really, most of the people I know that are in industry could not imagine a world when they, when they went back to not having these kinds of tools.
Randy Johnston 03:34
Yeah, and, you know, one of the things that they drive off of is a set of work papers where they can handle, you know, the and automate tests like amortization, depreciation, multi entity consolidation and variance analysis, just to name some fundamentals. But as you and I have looked at other trial, balance products and workflow products, trying to get this all in a single platform. It’s not trivial to do. I think this is a good starting point. We’ll talk more about advice later.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 04:06
And the other thing I would say here is that it’s also very difficult in these kinds of platforms to get the engineers to let the accountants be accountants and do it the accounting way, instead of trying to in trying to re engineer the whole thing. And there’s some value to doing the re engineering thing, but in so many cases, since they don’t understand the why to accounting, just like you and I don’t understand, you know, just like I don’t understand anyway, the why to everything in engineering, it’s, I think it’s important to to be careful here, because it’s, again, I’ve seen many of these products go sideways when, when the engineers take over, and then they create a product that nobody understands and nobody can use.
Randy Johnston 04:50
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that then drives us to maybe the next tool in the list. And that is called filed. Now this particular platform currently is reporting 35 employees, founded in 2024 by Leroy Carey and Cam yar espabody. Now these guys are trying to get tax preparation done in an automated way. They’ve been flying under the radar for a few months. August of 2024 was when they were founded, and they are processing, at this point, and in this season, 10s of 1000s of tax returns, and they’re out now going to do some fundraising. Now the fields unique, AI is designed for firm, specific customization, which really focus on a couple areas, the speed of feedback to improve the collaboration between the customer and AI. Now customer, in this case, is really referring to you the firm, okay, and personalized security. And then the platform itself is then uniquely tailored to your firm’s workflow and security measures. Now, the evolution of this platform, and I’m not going to give you the history that I know, because I’m not sure that’s actually public information is, you know, an interesting evolution in their capabilities, and what I think they’ll be able to do for the profession is good. But if you listen in on our AICPA, cpa.com summit presentation, we point out that 70% of AI is easy accuracy and 100% is hard. And these guys are going after an area where accuracy of 100% is required and hard. So Brian, other things that you might mention about filed.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:02
You know, the the interesting part about this is, how is, how they, they’re, they’re attacking this. You know, we’ve looked at a number of different tools that are doing, doing AI based tax prep, and they’re, some of them work, some don’t, but they all have to have humans looking at things on the back end, because they inevitably get off track and start doing things they shouldn’t do, or they start, they start making things that doing things that are inaccurate, because they don’t have the context, necessarily everywhere that a human would have. So I think that, I think this gives me a lot of hope here, because I don’t like sending this stuff offshore. Now the thing, the thing that that also gets gives me quite a bit of pause surrounding some of the PE acquisitions, is that it seems like, you know, if you read between the lines, it seems like some of these mega acquisitions are pushing more and more of the work offshore as opposed to doing it onshore, and so the AI would supplant some of the offshore work. But the challenge here is that I think we’ve got to look at this and decide whether or not we want to, you know, we want the accounting profession to work that way. But it’s a it’s an interesting, yeah,
Randy Johnston 08:26
Sorry to interrupt you there, Brian, but you know that that whole BPO and the 7216 disclosure and offshoring, you know, I’ve been watching the numbers there, and I am convinced that AI could preserve this work on shore, which is interesting and filed, is one of three vendors that I’m aware of that’s trying to get this done for tax and collaterally, just an observation. But without fact, this is so I want you to hear. It’s a guess. It’s an observation. I believe these people could actually produce tax software to compete with cch Thomson, Reuters into it Drake,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 09:10
and that’s the interesting piece, because, because the tax oligopoly has been something that has driven accounting professionals crazy for years. You know, they, most of them say, at the end of tax season, I’m switching to something else. But then they start looking at things and realize that the grass is only greener over the septic tank, as the late great Irma Bombeck says. So I think it’s, I think it’s important here to to again, keep things in perspective that I think it’s possible they’ll create a new engine. But again, the challenge of creating something has to be, right, 100% of the time is hard, and so it’s, it’s, I hope that they can create a new engine, because it’s, it’s something that would be very interesting, to be sure. You well.
Randy Johnston 10:00
And one of the things that is a fallacy is so many of the companies think about federal tax and then pretty much ignore state level requirements. And you know, that’s, that’s a no win, as I would see it. And read, admittedly, there are some states that have very simple filings, but there are some that have very complex and then you go down to local, I mean, this, this really is a hard problem to solve, and I respect people that want to try it, that’s for sure. Well, that probably brings us to the next product. And I spoke with Ben Stein in the last week before we recorded this. So I’ve known keeper for quite some time, as it turns out, have recommended in to a lot of my clients out there, and I think they’re making pretty good progress. Keeper is currently running about 50 employees. They’ve been around since 2025 so they got a five year run, as they stand right now. And keeper has several different characteristics about it that I think is interesting to know. But bottom line is, what are they? There? They call themselves a practice management solution. I think that’s true, although I position them a little bit different. They integrate into QuickBooks, into zero and sage, and they control the workflows, the request list, the portal, and so forth on all of this. Now they are also working on AI for bookkeeping work throughout the close and they are doing AI powered bank feeds. And of course, the US bank fees are very difficult compared to global bank feeds. And if they can actually get that done, that’s a pretty big deal. So the main problems that they’ve been working on are automating the accounting work to keep it efficient. That’s where I’ve deployed this product in my firms, is to try to get a proficiency and a single platform to watch the workflow, the closed cycle, and monitor the open tasks. So Brian, what else would you say?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 12:12
Well, I think, you know, I think again, it’s another great example of a tool that’s designed to handle this closed process, monthly closed process, or quarterly closed process, for for clients, it’s, you know, I think this one is designed, you know, a lot of the ones we talked about earlier, like black line and flocast and trinitech, are aimed at mid market companies that have, you know, 10 plus million dollars in sales. This tool, though, is really looking more at QuickBook zero and sage. It looks to, looks to be really focusing in on practitioners that are doing this on a public basis for multiple fee paying clients. And so I think this is, this looks like he’s going after the lower end, the end of the startup and the smaller businesses as opposed to bigger ones. And so I think it’s, you know, and again, it’s designed to be used in firms. So I think that’s the differentiation that I would put in here relate to this.
Randy Johnston 13:10
Yeah. Now, one other thing that often happens with these entrepreneurs when they start out, they were trying to run their own business, and, you know, they were using, they worked in QuickBooks, and were using an accounting outsource firm. They had some board reporting they had to do. And, you know, things were painful, but they became acute when they were scaling up their business. And so they realized that these monthly clothes that we’ve been talking about the management of the CAS team, the internal firm and external client collaboration and other things were a real pain. They just integrated to email, which is still obviously a major communication tool. So you know, when everything is said and done. This is another story of, man, I’m having this pain. Has nobody solved this problem? Yet? I can’t find anybody that solved this problem. I can’t believe nobody’s solved this problem. Well, I guess I’ll try to solve this problem. And that really was kind of where being it been took me through the process again. I’ve known the company for a while, but that was pretty interesting side story. So that brings us to the next accelerator, company, remedian. Now, it turns out we have talked to Jay and Salon now, salon Angel. That name might strike a bell for you, because he was one of the founders for mine bridge as well. So the audit tool, which was an early entry into AI now remedian Has 17 employees. They’ve operated in Canada for quite some time. They started in 2021 they’re trying to break into the US market. And the concept is quite simple to. They believe that excessive late payments made by taxpayers in the United States, to the tune of $65 billion is a problem. They think that the time that CPA firms and public pressure professionals are spending on this somewhere between 30 to 60 minutes a year assisting with tax payments, the very difficult way to submit government portals. And of course, with the recent executive order, no checks are going to be permitted with very few exceptions to the government, everything’s going to have to be done through ACH. So that’ll aggravate the problem, I think, a little bit further, and this whole thing, we just needed a way to get tax payments made, and that’s what these guys have built with remedian, is a tax payment system that they consider a one click experience, so you basically can set up your tax payments, your quarterlies and your actual dues, and submit them through this platform. That’s the basic concept. So Brian, I know you’ve known salon for a while. I know you’ve sat in on the remedian calls as well. Any other things that you would call out that you might not have I might not have said,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 16:21
No, I think, I think we’re in I think we’re in good shape here. You know, the the this, the due date tracking and the reminders and all these other things are really, really important here. Now, are they going to replace the FTPS in the long run? I don’t think so. Okay, I think you’re still going to be in the FTPS, but at least you’ll have a workflow tracking tool that will help you track and then get all of the information related to, related to the payments that folks are making. I’m, I’m quite, I’m quite excited about, about getting that fixed.
Randy Johnston 16:58
All right. Well, that turns our attention then to tabs. Now, this company’s founder was Ali Hussein, and Caitlin Lou also represented the company. They currently have 50 employees and have been around since 2023 what do they do? Well, they’re an AI driven revenue automation program, and they’re basically trying to handle everything from customer contract management and billing to revenue recognitions, renewals and audits and so in effect, many of you in public practice have tried to solve this with engagement letter Automation. Here, we’re trying to work across AR and other revenue reporting and prevent some of the leakage. The other thing that the platform is designed to do is to make sure that 606 compliance is being done properly along the way. So now Brian, other key things that you would maybe add in this. And maybe one thing I didn’t position as well is this was really targeted at CAS practices, as opposed to CFOs themselves. And there is an opportunity, as we know, not only in payables, but over here in receivables. And I think that’s the part that they’re trying to handle. Because many of you who provide CAS services don’t want to do payroll. You’re willing to take payables. Well, what about the other side, the receivable side? So other
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 18:37
and just kind of generally looking at this, quite excited about it, ingesting the customer documents, to surface all of this information in here. You know, I think that in so many ways, one of the biggest things that AI can do for us is going through and summarizing data and then looking at processes, and then doing the, you know, the process analysis, or the, I guess, the the after the after action workflow analysis. And I think generally, by looking at this, I think they’ve got some, I think they’ve got some very valuable tools in here that can really make a big difference for firms that decide to use it, yeah,
Randy Johnston 19:22
so you know, their claim is they can take DSO from the average of 60 days, 20 days on average, down. So whatever your DSO is, reduce it by 20 days. That’s a big deal. And you know, I won’t disclose my DSO in the technology lab, but it’s really short, and I’ve always been cognizant of that since the 70s. Well, that turns us then to, you know, another and the last accelerator award winner this year, a group called true end now, likewise, I’ve talked to. Alex Lee, and who is one of the co founders there, Richard way also came along as the founding product manager on the product. Now, what does this do? Well, it is basically trying to develop an agentic AI solution that executes month end close tasks. So I think this is the third time out of these groups that we’ve talked about, you know, rapid close this one, though, is agentic AI, and they basically deal with outstanding items, and they handle the items that they can handle, but then they surface the agentic AI to the accountant professional to go back to the client, or surface it back to the client, to, you know, resolve issues. So one could think about this as kind of a smart work paper upgrade from the spreadsheet. It also helps standardize reconciliation along the way. So those are probably some of the call outs for true wind, an interesting concept that they’re working and and I’ll ask you for your opinion here in a minute, Brian, but I’m just thinking about all of these accelerator program selections this year, all trying to optimize our workflows. Many trying to go after closed processes, each looking for a time pain point or a money point point pain point to solve. And, you know, making a good stab at it, you know, and I always respect, you know, organizations that work along those lines. So any observations on true end or closing thoughts for our listeners?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 21:50
Well, I would just generally say that I’m quite excited to see this, because I think that the you know, the we all know, that the real innovation that’s going to happen in accounting is not going to come from the big guys. I don’t think, I think it’s really going to come from startups like this. Because, you know, again, you look at a big company, any big company, it’s a fortune 500 company. You know, a lot of people there are going to work 4045, hours a week. And you just can’t change the world working 4045, hours a week. You know. Again, just listen to Elon Musk for a little bit. And so as we’re looking at this, I just want to remind you that that again, they’re, they’re working with some very interesting folks that are doing, doing very interesting kinds of automation. And I think it’s, it gives me some hope, because I just don’t see the level of innovation coming out of the other folks in the accounting profession, you know, the monoliths. And so I’m quite excited to see these folks out there. Now, interestingly, true wind actually has received 17 million from Thompson, Reuters ventures, row capital and y com Y Combinator. And so the interesting part here is that we’re starting to see folks like Thompson and cch acknowledge the thing I just said, and they’re now starting to partner and or making make investments in platforms like this as they’re going through, to try to help them, help them through this. So I think there’s some I think that the future of accounting is very interesting, and I think it’s going to be different than we think it’s going to be today. I think the monoliths we have today will be completely different organizations than they were. You know, I think back to our time talking to the folks at Thomson Reuters, and how different the approach that you know, that that Elizabeth and the tax and accounting division have today is compared to how they were just five years ago. And so it’s a it’s a very exciting time, but the innovation is going to come from places where we didn’t see it coming.
Randy Johnston 24:08
Well, there you’ve heard it from the expert. So it’s always a pleasure, Brian to talk with you and for our listeners in the accounting technology lab. So that being the case, we appreciate you listening in, and we’ll talk to you again soon in another technology accounting lab. Good day.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 24:26 Thank you for sharing your time with us. We’ll be back next Saturday with a new episode of the technology lab from CPA practice advisor. Have a great week.
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Jackie Will May 10 2025 at 8:33 am
Really enjoyed the latest podcast episode on the AICPA Startup Accelerator! The insights on tech in accounting are super helpful for someone in the industry like me. Looking forward to more discussions like this!