As Pilot's program manager for talent, I make sure our existing team keeps growing and developing in their careers. This means I was in one of the first groups of people at Pilot to utilize Meridian’s bookkeeping and accounting AI tools—and bring those tools to real customer engagements. I love to connect with small business owners, hear their problems, understand their needs, and be a partner to them with some of the best agentic accounting technology in the world.
Getting books out in two weeks
We have a new customer at Pilot who owns two sandwich shops in the Miami area. His previous accountant wasn't recognizing revenue and cost of goods sold correctly on the P&L, so he came to us looking for a new partner. He wanted really great books, fast.
Using AI, I was able to learn an entire point-of-sale system I'd never encountered before. We have a few customers on it, but not many. I spent my time deep-diving that point of sale, understanding how it works, and then leveraging AI to execute my plan.
When I deliver his books, they'll be tenfold better than what he had before, and he's getting them on such a fast timeline, with such quality, that I think he's going to be blown away. Getting a client's books out in two weeks is unheard of, and he's thrilled about it.
Using AI well means learning to demystify it
AI is here to stay, and headlines can make that a little scary, a little anxiety-inducing. I'll speak for myself: I came back from vacation to find our two founders had built an AI agent. I've been here for almost a decade, and it felt like a watershed change. It was a little anxiety-producing for me, too.
The reality is, it's a tool. As humans with a lot of experience and a lot of connection with other people, we get to use it to do our work better, faster, and more efficiently, for the benefit of other people.
So we get to use different skills now. Our judgment becomes extremely important, as does our attention to detail. We also have to teach people to use these tools and demystify them. Using AI well looks like what we'd call prompt engineering. You can't just say, "Please do this thing"; AI can make a lot of assumptions and decide to do whatever it wants. We teach people how to engage with the technology successfully, whether that's AI or long-existing software automation.
Pilot is the test case for Meridian
Meridian is effectively the accounting firm of the future—powered by Pilot's technology, powered by AI, but powered most of all by our 10 years of thinking about how to do accounting well. We've been building some amazing technology, but we've also been developing a thesis on how to do bookkeeping well, and how to use software and AI to automate the work that's tedious, manual, or takes a long time.
Now we're the test case for Meridian. At Pilot, we use our own technology and software to leverage what's available and give people the chance to provide an excellent product at scale.
More space to be a business advisor
A lot of accounting work can be handed to AI: the long lists of things that used to take a long time by hand, or even with some software. We get to leverage tools to reduce that cost and over-index on what actually matters: relationship building, supporting a business, making sure owners understand what's going on in their business.
That gives you a lot more space and capacity to be a business advisor. To advise anyone well, especially a small business, you need soft skills and people skills: the ability to translate financial information into real-world meaning, develop strong relationships, and make your customers feel supported.
If you'd like to see what Meridian can do for your firm, schedule a call with the team.