Puzzle

Startup accounting software that categorises and reconciles transactions as they happen, instead of leaving a founder to catch up at month end, with an optional human bookkeeper layered on top.

Money & invoicing Agents

Checked 25 Sep 2026

Open puzzle.io

What you'd use it for

Keeping a startup's books current as transactions happen instead of reconstructing them from a shoebox once a month.

Auto-categorises transactions from connected bank and card accounts with up to 98% accuracy and no manual entry
Drafts GAAP-compliant financial statements automatically, in cash and accrual views from the same ledger
Generates a 1-click tax report at any point in the year, not only at filing time
Connects live to Brex, Ramp, Mercury, Gusto, Stripe, Bill.com and over 12,000 other banks and cards through Plaid
On Complete and above, an AI reviews reconciliations and flags anomalies before you see them

The verdict

Puzzle earns its keep for a startup that already banks with Brex, Ramp or Mercury and wants books that are current rather than reconstructed at month end -- the real-time categorisation and side-by-side cash and accrual view are genuinely useful for anyone reporting to investors. It is a replacement for QuickBooks or Xero, not an add-on, so switching costs are real, and the free-tier utility drops off fast once you need more than one seat or an actual tax report. The AI review on Complete and above is worth paying for only if it is replacing a bookkeeper you would otherwise hire to catch the same mistakes; below that tier, you are still the one checking the AI's categorisation. It suits a founder tracking runway weekly, not one who reconciles once a quarter.

What it costs

Tier	Price	For	Includes
Starter	$30/month	A first-time founder replacing a spreadsheet with real books.	Up to 98% auto-categorisation, auto-drafted financial statements, 1-click tax report, 1 seat.
Core	$72/month	A team ready to replace QuickBooks entirely.	Everything in Starter plus cash, burn and runway insights, spend and revenue tracking, multi-entity support, 5 seats.
Complete	$120/month	A business that wants the books reviewed by AI, not just categorised (marked the vendor's most popular plan).	Everything in Core plus AI-powered accuracy review and reconciliations, priority support, unlimited seats, 100 monthly AI credits.
Scale	$360/month	High-volume accounting with no room for transaction or integration limits.	Everything in Complete plus subledgers, no transaction limits, dedicated support, 300 monthly AI credits.
Core + Expert Reviewed Bookkeeping	$171/month, for up to $10K in monthly expenses	A company that wants the Core software plus a human checking the work monthly.	Monthly bookkeeper review, transaction corrections, reconciliation checks, up to three bookkeeping questions a month.

Read from Puzzle's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.

What you need to start

A live-connectable US bank, card or payroll account -- Plaid, Brex, Ramp, Mercury, Gusto, Deel or Bill.com -- since CSV and PDF uploads are not supported
An already-incorporated business, ideally a US entity -- Puzzle's own setup guidance points new founders to Stripe Atlas before onboarding
Willingness to replace your existing general ledger, such as QuickBooks or Xero, rather than run Puzzle alongside it
A Core plan or higher if you need multi-entity reporting, since Starter is single-entity only

Accounts connect in minutes on Puzzle's supported integrations; the vendor's own guarantee window allows a full week for the onboarding call and setup before AI accuracy is guaranteed.

Your first run Connecting a bank, card or payroll account starts continuous categorisation immediately, and accounts resync automatically overnight; Puzzle's own onboarding guarantee assumes a full setup call and working ledger within the first week.

Where it breaks

Add-ons are billed separately: one-time migration from your old books is $149, catch-up bookkeeping starts at $300 per month of books to clean up, and annual tax filing starts at $1,250.

Browser-based. A Full Service tier with a named bookkeeper exists above Core + Expert Reviewed, priced by expense volume from roughly $10K to $200K+ monthly.

First entry in this reference. There is no previous check to compare it against.

When not to use it

Not for a business that doesn't bank digitally through one of Puzzle's supported connections -- if your transactions live in spreadsheets, cash, or a bank Plaid doesn't reach, you end up manually keying the entries the tool exists to eliminate. Not for a pre-incorporation business either, since Puzzle's own setup guidance assumes you have already formed a US entity before you connect anything. And not for a founder who wants a bookkeeper to simply handle it -- the software-only tiers still put categorisation review on you; only the pricier Expert Reviewed and Full Service tiers hand that off.

Puzzle’s bet is that a startup’s books should update the moment a transaction happens, not get reconstructed from a shoebox of receipts once a month. It auto-categorises spend as it lands, claims up to 98% accuracy without a human touching it, and keeps cash and accrual books running side by side so a founder can hand either one to an investor without translation.

That real-time posture is the actual differentiator against a traditional QuickBooks-plus-bookkeeper setup: instead of finding out your burn rate three weeks after the month closed, the dashboard is current. Whether that matters to you depends on how often you are actually checking it — a founder who opens the books once a quarter gets less value from real-time categorisation than one tracking runway weekly.

Software versus software-plus-human

The pricing structure is worth reading carefully because it is really two products. The pure software tiers (Starter through Scale) assume you or a hire will review the AI’s categorisation and close the books yourself. The service tiers add an actual bookkeeper reviewing the same data monthly, which costs meaningfully more but removes the “is the AI right” question from your plate.

Puzzle is a QuickBooks and Xero alternative rather than a companion to them — you are replacing your general ledger, not adding a layer on top of it, which is a bigger switch than most tools in this directory ask for.

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