How Will AI Transform Accounting Services?

Baker Tilly announced a collaboration with Basis on April 28, 2026, to embed AI-enabled automation across its accounting and finance managed services practice.

Basis is an AI-native platform built specifically for accounting firms, and the partnership is designed to reduce routine process burden while giving Baker Tilly's professionals more capacity to deliver analysis, advisory work, and decision support to clients.

The collaboration covers two layers of the managed services delivery model. At the core accounting level, AI-enabled automation will support transaction processing, journal entry work, and reconciliations.

At the finance level, it extends into post-close analysis, management reporting, and budgeting and forecasting, activities that carry higher analytical value and where consistent, faster execution has a direct impact on how clients understand and act on their financial position.

Baker Tilly evaluated multiple platforms against complex client accounting scenarios before selecting Basis, according to the press release.

The firm serves clients across a wide range of industries including construction, real estate, private equity, family office, healthcare, not-for-profit, SaaS, asset management and oil and gas, each with distinct reporting structures and accounting requirements.

What the Partnership Is Built Around

"AI will fundamentally reshape how accounting and finance services are delivered," said Jivka Batchvarova, Baker Tilly's Managing Principal for Managed Services. "For our clients, this is about more than efficiency. It is about creating a stronger operating model that delivers greater consistency, better visibility, and faster access to insight."

Accounting firms have typically positioned AI adoption as a cost and speed story, fewer hours per engagement, faster close cycles.

Baker Tilly is positioning it as an operating model story, where the output is not just faster execution but a different quality of insight and oversight across the engagement portfolio.

"AI-enabled capabilities strengthen execution across routine processes while giving our professionals more capacity to analyze, advise and help clients navigate complexity with greater confidence and forward-looking insight," said Missy Thompson, Principal at Baker Tilly and executive sponsor for the initiative.

The Basis Perspective

Matt Harpe, CEO of Basis, described the partnership as a signal of where the accounting industry is heading. "The future of accounting belongs to firms that embrace AI not as a bolt-on, but as the foundation of how they deliver services," he said.

As AI takes on repeatable accounting work, clients increasingly expect service providers to move upstream, delivering deeper insight, stronger decision support and more strategic guidance rather than primarily managing process execution.

According to the press release, Baker Tilly's investment in Basis is structured around meeting that expectation at scale across a diversified client base.