Pilot

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

Reasons for Switching to Pilot

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

Reasons for Switching to Pilot

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.