Tally

What do they actually do

Tally is a pre-launch YC W25 startup building autonomous AI agents for accounting firms. The public site is a “coming soon” placeholder and there’s no self-serve product page yet; the YC profile lists a two‑person founding team led by Rami Ghanem and describes the product in detail, implying they’re in pilot/early customer‑development rather than broad release YC profile, website.

The product embeds agents into the tools firms already use (Excel, workpaper/case software, file stores, email/Teams) to take over repetitive accounting, tax, and audit tasks. A concrete audit example: an auditor asks Tally to do a first‑pass review; the agent pulls the trial balance, financials and PBC files, checks completeness and standards, ties line items to supporting workpapers, flags variances, and returns tie‑outs and an issue list for human review YC profile.

Near term, they appear focused on audit workflows first (with tax and general accounting adjacent), aiming to integrate cleanly, extract/validate across systems, and produce review‑ready outputs while keeping judgment/sign‑off with humans. The main risks are reliability of extraction/validation across varied formats and meeting security/compliance expectations for client financial data YC profile.

Who are their target customer(s)

• Audit seniors/managers at public accounting firms: They spend hours pulling trial balances, tying line items to workpapers, and doing first‑pass reviews manually; they need those repetitive checks automated so they can focus on judgment calls. YC profile
• Tax professionals at accounting firms: They repeatedly gather documents, reconcile figures across spreadsheets and systems, and prepare filing workpapers—tedious, error‑prone tasks that reduce time for complex tax work. YC profile
• Corporate accounting/financial reporting teams (public and private): They must collect PBC items, run reconciliations, and consolidate numbers from multiple tools/files, often via manual Excel steps that slow close cycles and increase audit friction. YC profile
• Partners and operations leaders at mid‑to‑large accounting firms: They face rising labor costs and inconsistent junior output; they need scalable ways to cut low‑value labor without compromising audit quality or compliance. YC profile
• Private equity groups and roll‑ups that buy accounting firms: Post‑acquisition, they need standardized procedures and margin improvement across firms, but fragmented, manual workflows make consolidation and scale costly and slow. YC profile

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Run high‑touch, paid pilots via YC and founder intros with mid‑to‑large public accounting firms and PE roll‑ups, integrating into a single engagement to prove time saved on first‑pass reviews/PBC collection and convert to references. YC profile
• First 50: Leverage case studies/references to do targeted outbound to regional/national firms, show role‑specific demos (trial balance pull, tie‑outs, exceptions) in existing tools, and sell standardized pilot packages with clear deliverables. YC profile
• First 100: Formalize integrations with major workpaper/file/collaboration platforms, publish security/compliance artifacts, hire AEs with accounting sales experience, and launch a partner/referral program to scale beyond founder‑led sales. YC profile

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Global accounting and auditing services are about $238.3B in 2025—this is the pool of work Tally aims to make more efficient TBRC. The direct audit/accounting software category is in the low billions today (e.g., audit software ~ $1.27B in 2024) MRF.

Bottom-up calculation:

U.S. accountants/auditors earn roughly $129B/year in wages (1,579,800 × $81,680); automating 10% of routine work implies ~$12.9B of labor value in the U.S. alone, of which a software vendor captures a fraction BLS. Near‑term direct software TAM to compete for is ~ $1–2B in audit software spend MRF.

Assumptions:

• Automation affects 5–15% of routine accounting/audit work near term, with vendor capture of a smaller portion as software revenue.
• Initial go‑to‑market focuses on mid‑to‑large firms where deal sizes are larger and processes are standardized (IPA Top 500 as target list) IPA.
• Global opportunity exceeds U.S. figures; U.S. wage pool used as a conservative proxy for bottom‑up value sizing.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• DataSnipper: Excel‑first audit tooling that automates evidence linking, PBC/collection, and tests; expanding into AI agents and a PBC portal that overlap with Tally’s targeted retrieval, validation, and tie‑out work overview, AI agents.
• Thomson Reuters (Audit & Tax): Incumbent suite (e.g., SPBinder/engagement tools) with new “agentic” AI features for matching, sampling, and document review; competes via breadth and deep integration into tax/audit workflows product, press.
• Fieldguide: Cloud audit/advisory platform for mid‑to‑large firms that automates evidence collection, test procedures, and engagement documentation—overlaps with first‑pass audit automation and review‑ready outputs.
• Trullion: AI accounting platform for extraction, reconciliations, and audit‑readiness; now markets an “AI agent” to assist accounting and audit teams, overlapping on autonomous document/spreadsheet workflows.
• FloQast: Close‑management and reconciliation platform with automated evidence collection and AI matching; competes for corporate accounting and audit‑prep use cases including PBC and month‑end close acceleration.