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There Is a Firm Behind This, and It Is Optional
Accounting Advisor is an accounting practice under shared ownership with the company that builds this software. We lead with that rather than bury it, because it is the most useful thing about the arrangement.
The Disclosure, First
Accounting Advisor is a separate legal entity from Automate Accounting, under shared ownership. We say so up front because you would find out anyway, and because we think it is an advantage rather than something to manage: the people who build the software close real books on it every month.
It is optional, in both directions. You can license the software and never speak to the firm. You can engage the firm without moving your books here. Neither one is a condition of the other, and nothing in the product is unlocked by buying advisory services.
If you engage the firm, that is a separate engagement with the firm, on the firm’s paper, invoiced by the firm at the firm’s own prices. It does not appear on your software invoice.
Why This Is Worth Something to You
Most accounting software is built by people who have never closed a month under a deadline with an auditor waiting. The close checks on this platform exist because a real close kept catching the same three things by hand; the substantiation model exists because a reconciliation that is “done” with an unexplained difference is the thing that bites you in the diligence. That feedback loop is short here in a way it structurally cannot be at a vendor whose users are all somebody else.
The firm is also the reason we can say what the software does not do. A vendor with no practice has no cost to overclaiming.
Three Ways to Engage
What separates them is how much judgement the firm supplies — not how much software you get. Every product capability is in the subscription at every tier, including no tier at all.
Review
You have the process
The firm reads what your team closed. It does not close it.
- A monthly read of the close: substantiation quality, the flux explanations, and what was done about everything the derived checks flagged.
- A written response on what looks wrong and what looks thin.
- The firm posts no entries and holds no approval rights.
Close With You
You are short-handed
The firm works inside your close as a preparer, and your team keeps approval.
- Named staff prepare an agreed set of the close — reconciliations, schedules, the entries that recur.
- The firm proposes and you dispose: the same posture the automation takes, for the same reason.
- A standing monthly cadence with an agreed cut-off.
Own the Close
You have no in-house function
The firm runs the close and signs off as approver.
- The firm is the preparer and holds approval rights for an agreed scope.
- Includes diligence-package delivery to your lenders and investors on your reporting calendar.
- Requires an engagement letter with a defined scope.
This tier requires a written independence assessment for your engagement, and we will tell you if it comes back against us. A firm that both operates the platform and signs off your close is a combination some lenders and auditors will question — you should hear that from us on this page rather than from them after you have signed.
Every tier is priced per entity, per month. Four entities is roughly four times the work of one, which is a thing a flat fee hides and an hourly rate turns into an argument. We are not publishing a number yet, and we would rather tell you that than publish one we are not ready to hold to.
The firm’s own site is accounting-advisor.com.
What we will not do
We will not gate a product capability behind an advisory engagement, and we will not price the software differently depending on whether you buy services. If those two things ever stop being true, the shared ownership stops being an advantage and starts being a conflict — which is exactly why they are written down here rather than left as good intentions.
How the two companies relate, in more detail, is on the company page. To talk to the firm about a specific close, write to contact@automate-accounting.com.