Decimal, a leading modern accounting firm, partnered with Puzzle's AI-native general ledger to enhance operational efficiency and scale their services while maintaining quality across hundreds of clients.
Decimal, a leading modern accounting firm, partnered with Puzzle to complete their vision of being one of North America's most efficient accounting firms. Through this partnership, they've achieved finding a technological advantage for their business including:
"Puzzle is helping us reimagine how we deliver on our promise to clients." Matt, Decimal's CEO
TLDR:
Decimal wasn't your typical accounting firm looking for basic improvements. Through careful optimization of their team and processes, they had built one of the most efficient modern accounting practices in the industry. Their secret? A relentless focus on process excellence and a deep understanding of what makes accounting firms truly scale.
"We faced a choice: continue with legacy systems or find a true technology partner who could match our ambitions." Matt, Decimal's CEO
Decimal has always prided itself on using the best technology for its clients, but as they looked at adopting and applying AI, they faced a key challenge: legacy general ledgers were not practically built to work with AI. The options were clear but limited:
After weighing their options, it became clear that Puzzle was building the AI-native ledger needed to scale with their ambitious goals.
Puzzle stood out by offering something different: a true technology partnership that could complement Decimal's existing strengths. By partnering with Puzzle, it allowed them to focus on being the best at their core services while using a best-in-class general ledger built for the AI era. The partnership between Decimal and Puzzle is already showing promising results:
| Outcome | What It Means | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 📈 Scalable Operations | Automated quality checks, standardized workflows, and checklists | High-quality books delivered for hundreds of clients |
| 🔬 Rapid Product Velocity | Dedicated communication channel with Puzzle's product team | Feedback turns into real product improvements |
| 💻 Accurate Data Migration | Full client book migration at scale | 100% data accuracy across hundreds of clients, completed in weeks |
The result is improved scalability with Decimal's team able to focus more on service instead of repetitive tasks, with happier clients to show for it.
"Having a direct line of communication with Puzzle has been a game-changer. We've seen our feedback turn into real product improvements, and that level of responsiveness has been invaluable." Mitch, Operations Lead @ Decimal
The timing of Decimal's move matters. In 2026, the accounting industry crossed a threshold: roughly 85% of mid-size and large firms now use some form of AI in their workflows, up from 58% in 2024. More importantly, the frontier has shifted from AI-assisted tasks to agentic systems: AI that can detect an anomaly, investigate its source, flag it for review, and draft a corrective journal entry without human initiation. The AICPA's 2026 CPA Firm Top Issues Survey found that change management due to technology and AI ranked #1 across every firm-size group for expected impact over the next five years. A Thomson Reuters 2025 AI adoption report reinforces the urgency: organizations with a clear AI strategy are twice as likely to experience revenue growth as those without one.
Firms that built on legacy ledgers retrofitted with AI are already hitting the ceiling. Firms that partnered with AI-native infrastructure, like Decimal did, are the ones positioned to run agentic workflows without rebuilding from scratch.
With Puzzle as their technology partner, Decimal delivers on its mission of making it easier for SMBs to be in business. They continue to lead the industry in execution excellence, now backed by technology that can truly scale with their ambitions. The partnership represents more than just a software implementation: it's the beginning of Decimal's vision for what a modern accounting firm can be, and an inflection point in their story of what's to come.
Firm partners get a meaningfully different experience. Decimal has a dedicated communication channel directly with Puzzle's product team, which means feedback turns into real product improvements instead of disappearing into a support queue. Onboarding for firms is designed around migrating entire client books at scale: Decimal moved hundreds of clients with 100% data accuracy in weeks, not a single-account setup flow. If you're considering Puzzle as a firm, the right conversation is with our firm partnerships team, not a standard sales motion.
Legacy general ledgers were built decades ago to store and report transactions. AI features added on top of them can automate tasks at the surface, but the underlying data model wasn't designed for it, which means there's a ceiling on what the AI can reliably do before human intervention is required at every step. An AI-native ledger is architected from the ground up so that AI operates at the data layer: detecting anomalies, investigating sources, drafting corrective entries, and running month-end close checklists without needing to bridge between old infrastructure and new models. That's the difference Decimal recognized, and why firms building on legacy systems retrofitted with AI are already hitting limits that Puzzle's architecture was built to avoid.
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