SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 26, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Meridian by Pilot today launched Meridian AI, a super agent that takes on the accounting work that has always sat outside of the monthly close checklist: revenue restatements, catch-up cleanups, historical reclassifications, receipt triage, and the ad-hoc client requests that land midweek and need answers before the weekend. An accountant describes the job, hands over the files, and Meridian AI does the work in the ledger the way a staff accountant would. Everything Meridian AI produces is reviewed by the firm before it reaches a client.
For firms, the effect is on capacity and predictability. Cleanup and forensics work that used to consume unbudgeted days becomes work a firm can quote, staff, and plan around. The engagement scoped for 20 hours stops turning into 200.
Firms do two kinds of work. Meridian already handles the recurring kind: a firm encodes the monthly close in a checklist, and Meridian executes it autonomously, the same way every month. Everything else has stayed manual. A client changes their mind. A review turns up something that should have been done differently. A new client arrives with two years of books nobody has touched. Meridian AI takes it on.
An accountant states the objective, hands over the source documents, and shares the rules the firm follows, the same way they would delegate to a strong staff accountant. Meridian AI reads the data first. When it finds a gap or a conflict, it stops and asks rather than guessing. Then it books the entries into the ledger, updates the supporting schedules that Meridian maintains natively, and returns a summary of everything it changed. The firm reviews the work before it is finalized.
"Meridian AI was built inside an accounting firm, as a result it has the context of nearly a decade of bookkeeping work to draw on as it adapts to a firm's preferences and each client's books," said Kel Jackson, Head of Product at Meridian. "That's the difference from a generic AI tool: the work runs against real accounting infrastructure, not just an API and a prompt."
That infrastructure is more than 400 bookkeeping tools Pilot built and hardened while closing client books, plus 52 automated checks that run over every close. A few examples of what those tools and checks enforce: a single Shopify settlement gets split across as many as 23 correctly typed accounts. A clearing account has to net to zero before the close can move forward. A reconciliation will not save unless the balance ties to the penny. Meridian AI can also refer to more than 4,000 current client books, which gives it a starting point before it adapts to a firm's own conventions.
"I onboarded a client that needed their 2024 through May 2026 books done. That's 30+ months of catch-up and thousands of transactions to reconcile, which would usually take me days," said Ben Kocher, an accountant in Nashville. "I put it in Meridian AI, plugged in my computer, and went to sleep. I woke up and it actually did everything. Being able to do all that work while I was asleep is pretty cool."
Key capabilities
- Takes direction in plain language and runs the job end to end, rather than stopping for approval at every step.
- Flags gaps in source data and conflicts between documents, and resolves them before booking anything.
- Works inside the ledger: classifies, reconciles, extracts data from uploaded files, converts currency, and posts entries.
- Keeps supporting schedules in sync with the journal entries and returns a reviewable summary of everything it changed.
Pricing and availability: Meridian AI is live today, included for all Meridian customers inside the platform. Firms not yet using Meridian can request a demo at https://meridian.pilot.com/demo.
About Meridian
Meridian is the AI operating system for accounting firms. Built inside Pilot and proven across nearly 8,000 businesses and more than 187,000 months of closed books, Meridian runs the month-end close autonomously and produces review-ready financials. Firms use Meridian to grow capacity, strengthen client relationships, and improve margins. Meridian has advanced support for QuickBooks Online and also works with Xero and NetSuite, with more ledgers coming soon. Learn more at https://meridian.pilot.com.
Contacts
Maebellyne Ventura
VP, Marketing
media@pilot.com
A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5963d75d-5dca-48ef-8539-b8fb8ecd7b0e
