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In NZ, UK and Australia we have been using Xero for years, and there is a vibrant ecosystem around it. And yes - it’s turned bookkeepers and accountants into ad

In NZ, UK and Australia we have been using Xero for years, and there is a vibrant ecosystem around it. And yes - it’s turned bookkeepers and accountants into advisors, completely changing their professions. Xero is listed, worth $3-4 billion and growing quickly. So how is this different, and how is it going to integrate with Xero, QBO and other cloud accounting software? And why does the article not mention these elephants in the room?

pdq 9y ago
Seconding Xero from the US for payroll and accounting. Their pricing is excellent.
simonbarker87 9y ago
Xero is probably my favourite peice of time saving software we use, possibly just my outright favourite. It works flawlessly and the fact that our accountants can login and work with us on something is a huge bonus.
flog 9y ago
As a founder in the UK I was using Xero and a London based virtual-CFO about 8 years ago, and it was an absolute life saver not having to deal with the cruft. The accountants did the books for most of the good startups in London at the time, so had a good range of experiences from funding to tax credits. Of course, they did this without raising $15M :) Interesting to see how this seems to be a "new" thing even now in the US market. [Disclosure: I am an ex-Xero employee]
wdaher 9y ago
We do all of our bookkeeping in QuickBooks Online (and only QBO) today. In the US, QBO is still definitely the market leader, and we think there are a bunch of benefits for our customers in using QBO. (Bank integrations and other third-party software integrations tend to be better, there's a bigger ecosystem of e.g. tax and accounting firms that are better-equipped to deal with it, etc.) (And then from an engineering perspective, we can be a lot more efficient if we can focus on targeting one platform.)
Lazare 9y ago
That was my first thought too. Xero is quite good and very large, and it's absolutely in the "modern era". And it's growing a very large ecosystem of accountants and consultants that are building on the platform to offer the exact service that Pilot is (apparently) offering. Launching a Xero killer is ambitious but doable. Launching some new bookkeeping software (or...service? what even are they doing?) seemingly without being aware of Xero seems...deeply myopic. Xero is big, their product is solid, and they're able to move a lot quicker than the legacy vendors. And this: > When a company starts working with Pilot, the actual core experience on the customer side doesn’t really change all that much: they still work with a human on the other end. But the bookkeeper from Pilot is working with the internal tools they have built to bring in the data from the company, organize it and structure it, and produce a set of books that are more accurate than someone might have produced than just doing it by hand. That's a bizarrely accurate description of how stuff works today. That's not new, that's standard. I'm not sure if the article is terrible or the product is terrible, but something is clearly not coming through. Similarly, all the stuff about categorization of expenses? Again, that's just a core feature in modern bookkeeping software; Xero allows you to configure very detailed rules. And then since the rules can't be 100% accurate in all cases, your actual bookkeeper (the one who uses the software) is going to ask you about the ambiguous ones. I'm just mystified as to what the value prop is. "Bookkeeping firm raises $15m to provide the same services everyone else does"? How is this tech news? Or even news? (Caveat: My experience is outside the US, maybe this is less common/standard in the US?)
- wdaher 9y ago
  Pilot is not replacing Xero or QuickBooks (in fact, we do all our work in QuickBooks -- and we're definitely aware of Xero.) Pilot is a better bookkeeper, and the reason we can be a better bookkeeper is that, even with a tool like QBO or Xero, there's still a bunch of incredibly manual work that happens ON TOP of those platforms, and a lot of that work is very well-suited to being done in software. Do Xero and QBO get better and smarter with time? Sure, yes, of course they do. But the problem is: no one software company (i.e. a company with the ability to develop software) owns the problem end-to-end, so it's never going to be seamless. (It's not obviously Xero's problem if the Xero/Gusto sync isn't very good, and it's also not obviously Gusto's problem either. Net result: the bookkeeper does a bunch of work by hand to fix it all up themselves--work that's super-manual and tedious.) That's where we come in; we're the bookkeeper, but we also have the ability to write software when it's appropriate for solving the problem.

pdq 9y ago

Seconding Xero from the US for payroll and accounting. Their pricing is excellent.

simonbarker87 9y ago

Xero is probably my favourite peice of time saving software we use, possibly just my outright favourite. It works flawlessly and the fact that our accountants can login and work with us on something is a huge bonus.

flog 9y ago

As a founder in the UK I was using Xero and a London based virtual-CFO about 8 years ago, and it was an absolute life saver not having to deal with the cruft. The accountants did the books for most of the good startups in London at the time, so had a good range of experiences from funding to tax credits. Of course, they did this without raising $15M :) Interesting to see how this seems to be a "new" thing even now in the US market. [Disclosure: I am an ex-Xero employee]

wdaher 9y ago

We do all of our bookkeeping in QuickBooks Online (and only QBO) today. In the US, QBO is still definitely the market leader, and we think there are a bunch of benefits for our customers in using QBO. (Bank integrations and other third-party software integrations tend to be better, there's a bigger ecosystem of e.g. tax and accounting firms that are better-equipped to deal with it, etc.) (And then from an engineering perspective, we can be a lot more efficient if we can focus on targeting one platform.)

Lazare 9y ago

That was my first thought too. Xero is quite good and very large, and it's absolutely in the "modern era". And it's growing a very large ecosystem of accountants and consultants that are building on the platform to offer the exact service that Pilot is (apparently) offering. Launching a Xero killer is ambitious but doable. Launching some new bookkeeping software (or...service? what even are they doing?) seemingly without being aware of Xero seems...deeply myopic. Xero is big, their product is solid, and they're able to move a lot quicker than the legacy vendors. And this: > When a company starts working with Pilot, the actual core experience on the customer side doesn’t really change all that much: they still work with a human on the other end. But the bookkeeper from Pilot is working with the internal tools they have built to bring in the data from the company, organize it and structure it, and produce a set of books that are more accurate than someone might have produced than just doing it by hand. That's a bizarrely accurate description of how stuff works today. That's not new, that's standard. I'm not sure if the article is terrible or the product is terrible, but something is clearly not coming through. Similarly, all the stuff about categorization of expenses? Again, that's just a core feature in modern bookkeeping software; Xero allows you to configure very detailed rules. And then since the rules can't be 100% accurate in all cases, your actual bookkeeper (the one who uses the software) is going to ask you about the ambiguous ones. I'm just mystified as to what the value prop is. "Bookkeeping firm raises $15m to provide the same services everyone else does"? How is this tech news? Or even news? (Caveat: My experience is outside the US, maybe this is less common/standard in the US?)

wdaher 9y ago
Pilot is not replacing Xero or QuickBooks (in fact, we do all our work in QuickBooks -- and we're definitely aware of Xero.) Pilot is a better bookkeeper, and the reason we can be a better bookkeeper is that, even with a tool like QBO or Xero, there's still a bunch of incredibly manual work that happens ON TOP of those platforms, and a lot of that work is very well-suited to being done in software. Do Xero and QBO get better and smarter with time? Sure, yes, of course they do. But the problem is: no one software company (i.e. a company with the ability to develop software) owns the problem end-to-end, so it's never going to be seamless. (It's not obviously Xero's problem if the Xero/Gusto sync isn't very good, and it's also not obviously Gusto's problem either. Net result: the bookkeeper does a bunch of work by hand to fix it all up themselves--work that's super-manual and tedious.) That's where we come in; we're the bookkeeper, but we also have the ability to write software when it's appropriate for solving the problem.