Principles & practices

Accounting accuracy enables business builders to think clearly.

We believe most people prefer data-driven decisions over the loudest-voice decisions. Accurate accounting provides the financial truth of a business. Confidence in the financial truth requires a single source of truth, traceable from business drivers to business results, reconciled to actual cash. Puzzle is for builders who want to maximize confidence in their biggest decisions - enhancing their intuition with financial health data.

Opinionated software enables better automation.

The only way the product can truly do the heavy lifting is by defining a set of opinions that maximizes machine learning and automation. This can now be designed with transparency and flexibility in mind so your software can adapt and evolve as your business does, rather than your business having to adapt to the software. Additional benefits include enabling our team, AI or third parties to continue to solve the unique challenges to your business, industry or segment due to consistent data structures.  Flexible-first software enables everyone invent their own data structures, workflows and processes, which leads to inconsistent analysis, data integrity, and more upfront effort to see value.

Better automation provides better consistency, improving the “garbage-in” problem.

We take a lot of pride in our data ingestion, validation, reconciliation and automation that allows our users to solve the garbage-in problem in a fraction of the time of any other solution. Software, design and AI can enable the user to choose and control the level of automation they want, offering significantly improved consistency and accuracy.  This helps avoid rushed financial analysis and insights on unreconciled, miscategorized data - cause as they say, garbage in means garbage out.

Accounting requires judgment and company ownership.

Accounting has a set of rules which must be followed, and a set of guidance that provides flexibility to the user what they consider accurate.  That ranges from the volume and titles of the chart of accounts, if or when to depreciate an asset, or if or how to recognize revenue.  While we strive to keep people in GAAP compliance, ultimately it is up to the company to decide how to represent their financials, and the level of detail they prefer.

Accountants should be elevated, not replaced.

We understand not all companies can afford world class accountants.  But we think this should not be an advantage of the largest companies, but everyone company should get the support of financial health expertise.

The same way video, robotics and drones can bring world class doctors and medicine to the most remote parts of the world, data and automation can bring world class accounting into even the smallest businesses.

By minimizing time-to-accuracy, we can free up more time for improving the business.

Whether you are a founder, accountant or accounting firm owner, the one thing you care about is delivering accurate books.  But if the month is taken up by trying to get to accurate books, you don’t have the time to apply that knowledge to improving the business.