Bookkeeping service vs CPA firm: you can see the work

Both can close the month. Watch it, or wait. On Essentials, Growth, and Enterprise you use the same platform as the accountant. A local CPA firm keeps the file in their office and writes when they need a document, or when the package is ready.

Who files the return?

A tax firm does. We close the books so they can. One partner is an Enrolled Agent, so the file is shaped for that filing. The credential isn’t a state CPA license, and we don’t perform audits.

Zeni and Pilot keep the books and leave the return to someone else. So do we. A local CPA firm can file it themselves. Do the books yourself until April and the tax firm inherits a shoebox.

Can you see the close while it’s happening?

Each business day the team reviews a scheduled checklist. Tasks get finished, left open, or marked blocked. Month-end close shows bank rec, AP, AR, accruals, and sales tax as they move. A qualified accountant still signs the month before it’s called done. You can see who handled which task, and when.

A local CPA firm can close the month too. The work still sits in their office until they choose to surface it. Status is a reply. The date is whatever their week allows. Why accounting feels like a black box is that gap: you pay, and then the file goes quiet.

What if you have a question before they write?

The note lives on the task. AI Pulse shows what changed that day, so you aren’t waiting on a person to narrate the ledger. Ask AI can answer a plain question about the books without a meeting. A CPA shows up when they want to. Here the open items are already on the screen.

Zeni and Pilot also give you software, so a screen alone doesn’t separate us from them. The ledger stays in the QuickBooks or Xero file you already pay for. Leaving doesn’t mean begging for an export.

If the only update is the email they felt like sending, you don’t have visibility. You have a waiting room.

This screen is on Essentials, Growth, and Enterprise. Yearly plans for a solopreneur are the books. They don’t include the platform.

Need an audit, or the return itself? Call a CPA firm. We don’t do that work. If you want the books and a screen you can open on a Tuesday, that’s OnNumbers. DIY still means no monthly close at all.