I've been at Pilot for nine years, almost since the beginning. Long enough to see the industry cycle through multiple versions of what “modern” accounting looks like. But nothing has moved as fast or had as big an impact as what's happening now.
I started my career as a CPA in public accounting, then moved to Dropbox, where I worked on the finance and accounting team. That's where I met the co-founders of Pilot, Waseem and Jessica.
All this time, they've been building technology behind the scenes of Pilot's accounting practice, creating custom software that helped our accountants do their job better and faster. Pilot acted as a test kitchen, where we could see which processes took the longest and which of those software could take over. Eventually, the platform got so good that it could run the full month-end close all on its own. Now it's ready for accounting firms everywhere; we call it Meridian.
These last nine years have shown that there's a big difference between building software for accountants and building software that actually solves the problems accountants face everyday.
Finance teams were always left behind
Even at the most tech-forward companies, finance and accounting teams can often feel like an afterthought. Tools don't fit the workflow, so processes bend to make the tools work. If a client wants to allocate expenses by location or if a firm needs documents in a specific format for audits, you'd almost always need to find a manual workaround.
I came to Pilot because the founders wanted to solve that problem. Their mission was to build software that accountants could use to do their work well at scale, without forcing them into a box.
Despite getting really good at delivering, for a long time there were still limitations for our accounting team here at Pilot. A client would need their financials reorganized by a different cost center, and you'd spend hours (or sometimes days), making historical adjustments to previous months. You'd do it because it was important to the client, but it was tedious, error-prone, and took away valuable time that could've been spent advising our clients about what the numbers meant for their business.
Then, at the beginning of this year, those limitations went away when Pilot introduced Meridian.
Meridian makes it so I don't need a workaround
Right now, I'm working with dozens of clients and helping them set up their accounting configurations in Meridian. Every day I log into Meridian and I'm engaging with Meridian's AI Accountant to run the month-end close for them. What I've realized is that the most rewarding part of this work happens when you've configured a client correctly once, and then you never really have to touch it again because the agent handles the rest.
For example, I have a client who keeps changing the way they want to allocate expenses across departments. Before Meridian, I'd have to go back and manually update months of numbers, dig through spreadsheets, re-classify entries, and make sure I didn't miss anything. It was the kind of work that eats up an entire day.
Now with Meridian, the client tells me they've changed their mind and I let my in-app accounting agent know. Instead of taking me hours, the agent reruns the numbers within minutes, which was completely unheard of pre-Meridian.
AI is up-leveling accountants, not replacing them
I understand why people in this industry are nervous about AI. When your entire career has been built on knowing how to do the tedious work well: reconciling accounts, building schedules and making sure the numbers are clean, it's fair to wonder where you fit when a machine can do that faster.
My take is that the work AI handles was never the valuable part of what an accountant does. The manual bookkeeping was what had to be done before you could even start the important part of your job.
The valuable part is the judgment and understanding what a client's numbers mean. It's knowing whether the structure of their financials is set up to help them make better decisions. It's being the calming presence in the room when a client is frustrated or scared. That's what a real partnership looks like between a business owner and their accountant. And AI can't replace that type of human connection.
This will fundamentally change the nature of the accounting industry. An experienced accountant at a firm can spend their time on client relationships instead of data entry. They can mentor the junior folks to build accounting judgment. Early-career accountants will still need to learn the fundamentals, like debits and credits, how the general ledger works, and the reasoning behind accounting decisions. AI just means they'll spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time learning how to think like an accountant.
The future is accountants who act like partners
I've been watching the same problems show up again and again throughout my career: firms trying to scale by hiring more accountants to handle more clients. It works, until it doesn't. You hit a ceiling. You've got too many people. Your costs go up. Your quality is harder to control. Your best people burn out because they're doing work that doesn't engage them.
Meridian changes that equation.
The future of accounting, the way I see it, is accountants operate at a higher level with their clients. Understanding how their business works. Figuring out how to evolve their processes so they can grow revenue, diversify their client base, and make better decisions. It's cleaner financials that are more accurate because AI handled the tedious parts. It's faster insights: you can see what's changed month-over-month, dig into revenue granularly, and spot patterns you would've otherwise missed.
This future is better for accountants too. You'll gain more confidence in the numbers you're presenting because you know how you arrived there. You'll have more time to do the work you actually like doing.
I've never been more excited about where the industry is headed. The speed at which this is moving is remarkable. For the first time in a long time, I feel like we're actually solving the problem instead of just working around it.
If you'd like to see what Meridian can do for your firm, schedule a call with the team.