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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 accounta

by 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.
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  > 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. How is that a great leap forwards over double-entry accounting (which, by all accounts, was an actual great leap forward)?
- Lazare 9y ago
  > 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. Xero is a platform with an extensive API, partner program, app marketplace, etc., and a large ecosystem of partners, including bookkeepers, that offer what sounds to me like exact thing. If you want a better bookkeeper that uses automation to provide a slick experience on top of a modern software platform...I have no reason to think Pilot can't do a great job of that, but that's totally the value prop of the Xero partner program too...right? If the sync isn't very good and your doing some manual work categorising stuff, why not...write some tools to automate the categorising, and then feed it back into their API? I'm sure I'm just being obtuse, but every explanation of what Pilot is doing just sounds very "standard". Are you trying to do this cheaper, or better, or...? > 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. Okay, right, but...Xero has a pretty great API. I've written software that solves problems by working with the Xero API; I didn't need to write my own bookkeeping software to do it. Xero is outright targeting "bookkeepers that can write software" for their partner programs and developer APIs, no? (Sorry, if I seem like a Xero fanboy, but I do like them, and their offices are right down the road, so I suppose I might feel some local pride.)

by Lazare 9y ago

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.

UncleEntity 9y ago
> 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. How is that a great leap forwards over double-entry accounting (which, by all accounts, was an actual great leap forward)?
Lazare 9y ago
> 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. Xero is a platform with an extensive API, partner program, app marketplace, etc., and a large ecosystem of partners, including bookkeepers, that offer what sounds to me like exact thing. If you want a better bookkeeper that uses automation to provide a slick experience on top of a modern software platform...I have no reason to think Pilot can't do a great job of that, but that's totally the value prop of the Xero partner program too...right? If the sync isn't very good and your doing some manual work categorising stuff, why not...write some tools to automate the categorising, and then feed it back into their API? I'm sure I'm just being obtuse, but every explanation of what Pilot is doing just sounds very "standard". Are you trying to do this cheaper, or better, or...? > 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. Okay, right, but...Xero has a pretty great API. I've written software that solves problems by working with the Xero API; I didn't need to write my own bookkeeping software to do it. Xero is outright targeting "bookkeepers that can write software" for their partner programs and developer APIs, no? (Sorry, if I seem like a Xero fanboy, but I do like them, and their offices are right down the road, so I suppose I might feel some local pride.)