Article
Frontier challenges in AI tax prep: Trust & estate K-1s
The 1041 K-1 has fewer boxes than its 1065 cousin, but they're harder to route correctly on the 1040. This article follows a single trust through the separately stated items, final-K-1 termination rules, and state nexus theories that break partnership K-1 muscle memory — and what firms should ask when evaluating AI tax tools.
Article
Compounding Returns: Learning from the corrections nobody writes down
Tax Season 2026 was Accrual's first full season preparing 1040s end-to-end at production scale. After April 15, we built an autonomous improvement loop that reconciles every Accrual draft against the filed return, classifies preparer corrections, and ships verified fixes — months before TS27.
Case Study
Armanino: leading AI adoption in tax
How a Top 20 accounting firm took AI-powered tax preparation from pilot to production across six offices and thousands of clients in a single tax season — replacing handful of tools, hitting 74% client portal acceptance, and cutting prep hours by up to 60% on complex returns.
Article
Why the 'AI Can't Do Accounting' benchmarks are asking the wrong question
A genre of AI benchmarks keeps concluding that AI can't do accounting. They evaluate a frontier model in isolation, one-shotting a task that no human or production system would ever one-shot. This post explains the mismatch between those benchmarks and how AI tax preparation actually works in production today.
Article
Frontier challenges in AI tax prep: K-1 processing
K-1 processing isn't an extraction problem, it's a comprehension problem. This article walks through why extraction alone isn't enough, the three-layer approach Accrual uses for non-resident state K-1s and PTET, and what firms should ask when evaluating AI tax preparation tools.
Article
How Accrual fits into your firm's tech stack
Accounting firms don't operate on a single system, they operate on dozens. This article explains how Accrual's API and developer platform connect to the tools firms already use, why we took an API-first approach, and how a unified platform compounds over time.
Article
How the Accrual platform works
There is no shortage of AI products that can summarize a document or answer a question about a PDF. Preparing a tax return is a fundamentally different problem. This article explains how Accrual is architected specifically for accounting firms, and why the design decisions behind it preserve the trust, transparency, and judgment the profession depends on.
Article
How to run a successful AI tax preparation pilot
Most enterprise AI pilots fail to reach production — not because the technology doesn't work, but because teams lack clear evaluation criteria and execution structure. This guide lays out a structured four-week framework for evaluating AI tax preparation with confidence.
Article
From pilot to production: how to implement AI tax preparation
How leading accounting firms convert successful AI pilots into operational deployments — scoping the rollout, redesigning workflows, training at scale, and managing the organizational change.
Media
AI Won't Replace Accountants, It Will Change Where They Create Value
Accrual CEO Cosmin Nicolaescu joins The Tech Trek to discuss why AI won't replace accountants but will shift where they create value, and what that means for firms bringing AI into tax and accounting work.
Media
You Don't Realise What You're Giving Up When You Become a Founder
Accrual CEO Cosmin Nicolaescu on Inside the Silicon Mind: the optionality founders give up, the feeling of being locked in, and the weight of carrying every hire.
Media
In Conversation: Accrual and General Catalyst - Rebuilding Industries with AI
Accrual and General Catalyst sit down to talk about rebuilding entire industries with AI, why accounting is where it starts, and what it takes to put AI into production at accounting firms.
Media
Giving accountants their time back
Accrual CEO Cosmin Nicolaescu joins Randy Crabtree on The Unique CPA to discuss what drew him to the accounting profession, how watching finance teams operate strategically at Stripe and Brex shaped his thinking, and what it looks like when a firm cuts a 100-hour tax return down to 15.
News
The engineer who never stopped building
Founder Uncovered profiles Accrual CEO Cosmin Nicolaescu, the former Brex CTO who still writes code daily, on why he targeted the largest accounting firms first, how Accrual processed 15,000 returns last season with 99.7% of worksheet fields AI-generated, and his selective approach to building a cap table.
News
Armanino and Accrual enter strategic partnership to redefine accounting with AI-driven insights
Armanino will deploy Accrual's AI-native platform across its tax and business management practices, beginning with individual tax returns and expanding into audit, advisory, and firm operations.
News
General Catalyst-backed startup raises $75 million to bring AI to accounting
Accrual, backed by General Catalyst, launched with $75 million in funding to bring AI-native automation to accounting firms, starting with complex tax preparation and review workflows.
News
Tax platform Accrual launches with AI automation support for all forms
Accrual supports every federal and state tax form, as well as unstructured data like emails, spreadsheets, and handwritten notes — relying on AI models rather than OCR-based extraction to interpret and apply information across the tax process.
Article
Introducing Accrual: the augmented accounting intelligence platform
Accounting is the operating system of the economy. It establishes trust, informs major financial decisions, and underpins long-term growth for businesses and individuals alike. Yet despite its importance, much of the profession still relies on manual, fragmented workflows.