Pilot Reviews

Pros

As a fast-growing tech company, it was extremely important to us that we partnered with a like-minded firm on our financials. We don't have this expertise in-house, but for a fraction of the cost we've been able to outsource and automate enormous amounts of the legwork involved with our monthly reconciliation process, CFO/Board Reporting, Tax, and R&D filings. On top of that, Pilot continues to proactively create value for our business thanks to their talented team, wealth of knowledge with similar businesses as ours, and dedication to top-knotch customer service.

As the ultimate testimonial, I frequently recommend Pilot to other entrepreneurs and personal friends of mine.

Cons

My only regret is not working with them sooner! Pilot has saved me hundreds of hours through their highly technical, automation-forward approach to everything they do.

Alternatives Considered

Bench

Reasons for Switching to Pilot

I especially loved that Pilot builds on top of existing accounting software like Quickbooks, rather than reinventing the wheel with some proprietary software, and was able to build models in Google Sheets vs. Excel, enabling much better collaboration.

Pros

I'm someone that appreciates human interaction and Pilot makes it easy to engage with the team when I wanted to. I also love, love the dashboard it's easy to use and interactive.

Cons

I wouldn't say anything is missing - I would love to be able to generate reports directly out of Pilot instead of going to QBO - purely for aesthetic reasons because the format doesn't look the same as the monthly reports the team provides.

Pros

The consultative sales process made me confident in choosing Pilot for our accounting & tax needs, the onboarding process was smooth, and their online portal is eye pleasing, easy to use, and makes collaborating with our dedicated bookkeeper seamless.

Cons

So far, I don't see any negatives in the platform. Pricing is transparent but scales with company size and transaction volume, so I'm interested to see where we land as we grow, but for now it's a great value for the services we receive.

Alternatives Considered

Bench

Reasons for Switching to Pilot

Consultative sales experience, pricing, attractiveness of online platform.

Pros

Nothing - they did not complete the service and we were forced to hire another bookkeeper.

Cons

Pilot was our book keeper for the 2022-2023 tax year, although they never completed the services and we were required to get a second bookkeeper (at half the price and twice the quality) to finish the books. I really recommend finaloop software for bookkeeping. It is night and day compared to pilot. As I said, we were unable to get finalized accurate books from Pilot for the 2023 tax season and we were forced to engage a new bookkeeper that got the job done in 3 weeks. Instead of paying $2,000 a month for pilot, Finaloop was only $6,000 for the whole year and the software is night and day. Finaloop will automatically calculate COGs. Pilot will just do nothing and ask for your team to fill out COGs journal entries. I do not recommend Pilot to any small business owner. Pilot refused to credit back any of the monthly fees even though they did not complete the service.

Pros

The primary advantage is how seamlessly it integrates with our existing tools. Pilot connects directly to our Quickbooks system and essentially handles everything from that point on. They've also been exceptionally vigilant in identifying and bringing attention to any issues that require addressing, some of which turned out to be quite significant and had previously gone unnoticed by us.

Cons

The main challenge we've encountered is that one of our service providers requires a personal SSN for accountant access, which isn't compatible with Pilot's system. This is a minor inconvenience, though; we simply upload the statement manually once a month when Pilot sends a notification reminding us it's time to do so.

Pros

The income and expenses comparison is the most impactful as it determines the benchmark for the next marketing target. We have as well managed to integrate it with semper reservations for easy flow of revenue.

Cons

Everything seems to be working well with pilot.

Pros

Pilot is brilliant at doing exactly what it promises: taking over the accounting and back office work of running a company so that you (the founding team) can focus on actually building your product. Pilot also does an exceptional job delivering great value for much less than any of their competitors — a testament to the strength of their technology. Lastly, the humans at Pilot are amazing. Every time I’ve had a question, from the most basic to truly arcane accounting and tax questions, all I have to do is email my account manager and he proactively pulls in the needed expertise from the larger Pilot team. I am simply so grateful this service exists; it has fundamentally changed the way I get to run my company.

Cons

I’m excited to see what new features Pilot rolls out in the future. A founder community where we could ask accounting and finance related questions would be amazing, for example.

Alternatives Considered

Bench

Reasons for Switching to Pilot

Better value for the price, better product, and better service. I know that Pilot can scale with my startup.

Pros

- Full stack of services needed by a startup - bookkeeping, CFO services, AR / AP, tax prep
- QBO integration
- Very knowledgable team
- Very responsive, straightforward communication
- Automation of bookkeeping all but eliminates manual errors, keeps costs down

Cons

Honestly not much I dislike. I used to have to work with multiple firms for tax prep and AR / AP services, but now I have everything under one roof and loving it.

Alternatives Considered

Bench

Reasons for Choosing Pilot

Too many errors, cumbersome communication, too expensive

Reasons for Switching to Pilot

Used to be Bench did not work with QBO. Might be different now.

Pros

The aspect I enjoy most is the professionalism and responsiveness of the Pilot team. They are dependable month to month in getting our books out to us timely and accurately.

Cons

Pilot is building more and more automation, which hopefully will continue to reduce the number of one-off adjustments or tags that we have to do each month.

Pros

Pilot allows us to focus on running our business without stressing about our books. Our Bookkeeping team highlights the transactions or trends we need to be aware of, allowing us to take action quickly and understand our financial status at a glance. I love Pilot because it gives me the peace of mind that our books are in order and that we have access to a team of professionals to steer us in the right direction. Finance and accounting can be unapproachable for a generalist, and Pilot makes bookkeeping and financial management comprehensible and actionable.

Cons

The portal to classify transactions and provide notes on unrecognized vendors or classifications continues to improve, but can be buggy.

Pros

We use pilot for our bookkeeping needs and absolutely love it. It has made the handling of taxes in particular so much simpler. I love that it connects our accounts and takes some of the work-load off when it comes to running monthly reports.

Cons

There is not really anything I dislike about the software. At the end of the day, it is something that really makes our jobs easier.

Pros

A consolidated tool for both bookkeeping and tax preparation has been very helpful.
- Adding a new account or connection is easy
- I'm able to see the status of my corporate tax filing
- Contacting my tax representative is easy
- Vendors and transactions are in a centralized repository

I'm prompted for input once a month or when deadlines arrive to sort and code a short list of new vendors or unusual transactions, but otherwise the Pilot portal (and service) allows me spend more time focused on taking care of my employees and running the business.

Cons

I hope to see Pilot build out features for greater account customization and security in the coming months:
- Two factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) made available
- Dashboard for updating email, password, security features
- Dashboard for adding/removing users and setting a security policy (ex: 2FA)
- Contact information for my bookkeeping team embedded into my Pilot dashboard the same way that it is for my Pilot tax team

Pros

This really simplifies the bookkeeping and has been a great tool and saves me a lot of time. Also the pricing is very transparent and predictable and we don't get slapped with large accounting bills out of the blue.

Cons

They do help with taxes but they don't have their own CPAs. I like to build relationships with my CPAs but they changed it without any notice and the next year I was filing my taxes I saw a different person in charge.

Alternatives Considered

Bench

Pros

easy to use, has simple to understand reports, synchronizes accounts and warns you if you have double payments helping you not to lose money

Cons

it has no negative points in my opinion, it is a great app

Pros

The book keepers are Pilot are quite good (even though it's "AI" much of the real work still needs people). They are generally fast to respond and correct errors. The interface is email + relatively simple webUI that makes managing exceptions pretty easy, books are generally delivered on time.

Cons

Customer support outside of book keeping is terrible. I tried to get pilot to also handle the company tax return, after 6 weeks of unresponsive email and repeatedly being sent questionnaires asking the same information, I gave up and used a regular accountant that was cheaper, faster, and more responsive.

Pilot charges a premium, but offers far below average customer support for tax filing.

Pros

Pilot had a very knowledgable sales team, [sensitive content hidden] is responsive, and their system is well built around Quickbooks, making your reports and books standard and portable. Question portal is great and captures what small startups need.

Cons

Want more insight into what expenses are flowing into what categories from the portal itself, rather than having to rummage around Quickbooks.

Pros

Pilot's software enables my business to have a consistent, accurate view of its financial health without much need for input from my team beyond the initial set-up.

Cons

We use Pilot's add-on tax service, and it can feel like the two teams do not share information/communicate, resulting in needing to provide the same information multiple times.

Pros

They manage everything seamlessly and transparently so I can focus on building my business.

Cons

I wish there was more of a task management, workflow in the dashboard.

Pros

It very easily lets me see what I need to see and understand important matters to clear my mind and focus on what I need to do and what I am good at which will in turn grow my business.

Cons

Nothing bad about the software, but maybe a crash course on accounting and taxes will be nice.

Pros

Pilot interfaces with most of the popular financial SaaS platforms and offers amazing customer support. They made it easy for us to toss the backoffice keys over to them so we could focus on building the business.

Cons

Certain actions and configurations on the various SaaS platforms require manual resolutions by either my team or through working with a Pilot representative. Fortunately, the Pilot team is very quick to respond and often resolves the issue with little or no interaction from us.

Pros

Seem-less integrations
Great customer support
Worry-free automatization

Cons

It comes with a cost, but for us it is worth it to the last penny!

Pros

Pilot really made it easier by sifting through and re-organizing our Chart of Accounts. The team we worked with are super knowledgeable and the financial controllers helped us setup our processes to help us scale our business.

Cons

The onboarding process requires a some time to setup correctly; but only has to be done once.
I also hope that Pilot can authenticate all connections added to accounts on a monthly basis so that any changes in credentials dont fall through the cracks.

Pros

We switched from Bench to Pilot and we are very happy with the results. Pilot is a far more professional organization with better customer service and more accurate bookkeeping.

Cons

Time between month end and when we get our books is pretty long. We don't get our books until the ~25th of each month.

Pros

Running an early stage startup, it's great that I don't have to worry about keeping my own books regularly. The staff is very helpful and answers questions clearly. The monthly burn estimates are also very helpful and easy to drop into board decks.

Cons

The only thing that I'd complain about is that the categories are sometimes difficult to navigate, and especially as a startup, we have some random expenses so adding a catch-all could be useful.

Pros

* Lots of integrations
* Monthly check-in
* Works on top of Quickbooks

Cons

* Integration setup can be a hassle if you have a lot of vendors
* For non-SaaS companies, it'll require some additional setup to recognize revenue properly