“Today, we’re excited to officially launch Accrual.”
The San Francisco-based startup posted that message on LinkedIn Thursday morning, announcing that its new platform’s AI-native infrastructure is built to unify tax preparation and review into a single system for accounting firms.
“Accounting firms sit at the center of financial decision-making, yet preparation, review, and client context are still spread across disconnected systems. As complexity and expectations rise, these fragmented workflows limit capacity, consistency, and the ability to deliver the highest-quality work at scale,” Accrual said in its LinkedIn post.
“By removing mechanical coordination while preserving accuracy, controls, and auditability, we help firms scale their expertise without compromising professional judgment.
“Over the past year, we’ve worked closely with firms across the U.S. to apply recent advances in AI to real-world accounting workflows. Today, Accrual is live with firms processing individual returns and seeing meaningful reductions in preparation and review time, alongside improved consistency and earlier issue detection.”
Accrual said it has raised $75 million in funding led by global investment company General Catalyst, with participation from Go Global Ventures, Pruven Capital, Edward Jones Ventures, and a group of founders and industry executives.
“Accounting is a deeply interconnected system, yet most software treats it as a collection of disparate tasks,” Cosmin Nicolaescu, CEO and co-founder of Accrual, said in a statement on Feb. 5. “We are building core infrastructure from the ground up to unify these workflows into a single system that amplifies judgment and compounds a firm’s expertise over time.”
Accrual’s platform uses AI agents that function as a preparer, reading and organizing all client inputs, identifying missing information, generating targeted follow-up questions, and producing draft returns that are ready for professional review. Data is structured as it enters the system, allowing preparation, review, and client guidance to build on one another rather than requiring repeated rework.
Accrual says it’s currently focused on individual tax returns. The platform handles real-world inputs including complex K-1s and 1099s, spreadsheets, emails, photos, and multi-hundred-page statements. It integrates directly with existing tax engines to support prior-year data, carry-forwards, and final filing workflows, allowing firms to continue using the systems they already trust, the company adds.
Over the past year, Accrual said it has worked closely with such firms as H&R Block, Armanino, Creative Planning, and several others in the top 100.
“These early deployments showed that recent advances in AI can remove long-standing bottlenecks in accounting workflows without compromising accuracy, transparency, or professional judgment,” the company said in a media release on Feb. 5.
Accrual touts that firms using its platform are saving thousands of hours per tax season. Preparation time has dropped by more than 85%, while review time has fallen by up to 60%. Every 50 complex returns effectively adds the capacity of one accountant without increasing headcount while improving consistency and accuracy, Accrual says.
“Returns coming out of Accrual are already at manager-review quality,” John Karls, national leader of the Private Client Advisors tax practice at top 20 accounting firm Armanino, said in a statement. “What used to take hours of staff preparation now processes in minutes. Just as important, Accrual is catching issues that could have led to amended returns and handling documents our existing tools can’t. That shift frees our teams to focus more on higher-value planning and advisory work.”
“Accounting is one of the largest and most critical professional services markets in the world, yet its core workflows have remained largely unchanged for decades,” added Marc Bhargava, managing director at General Catalyst. “Cos and Sidd [Accrual co-founder Siddarth Chandrasekaran] have spent their careers building software for complex, highly regulated environments and we believe are the right team to rebuild these systems using AI without compromising the trust the profession depends on.”
Accrual said it’s actively onboarding accounting firms across the U.S. and plans to expand the platform beyond individual returns over time. The company is also hiring engineers, product leaders, and accounting experts to help build the next generation of accounting infrastructure.
To learn more or request a demo, visit https://accrual.com/.
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