How we know: Basis, "How Schneider Downs uses Basis to increase audit capacity per accountant" (customer story, Oct. 20, 2026); Basis release on Business Wire (Feb. 24, 2026).
Accounting & bookkeepingCase study
An accounting firm's AI audit pilot grew practice-wide, its vendor says, with "hours → minutes" on some tasks
Basis says Schneider Downs went from a 10-person pilot in January 2026 to 92% monthly active use. The firm's spend and any error rates are not disclosed.
October 2026 — Schneider Downs rolled AI audit agents out across its audit practice after a pilot that began in January 2026, according to the vendor, Basis. Here's what the company claims, what it cost, and what went wrong or remains unknown.
Cost and outcome (as of Oct. 20, 2026)
- Outcome (company claim): "92% MAU" after "growing from a 10-person pilot to a practice-wide rollout." (Basis)
- Time saved (company claim): "Hours → minutes" for "select audit tasks during the pilot." (Basis)
- Cost: not disclosed by either firm. (Basis)
- Status: in use practice-wide; auditors "make the final decisions," Basis says. (Basis)
How the pilot started
Schneider Downs, which Basis describes as a "Top 60" accounting firm, launched a pilot in January 2026 after a Basis demonstration, the customer story says. Basis credits its "Deployed Intelligence" team with supporting the rollout. The firm chose to "invest in a broader rollout during the winter peak season," meaning busy season.
An all-day on-site hackathon followed. Schneider Downs set out to find 15 workflows Basis could take off auditors' plates and identified 85, according to Basis. The agents were then used to collect and organise confirmation letters, perform substantive testing and check financial statement quality, the story says.
What the firm says
"With legacy tools, teams could run deeper analysis, but the process was so cumbersome and time-consuming that they rarely did. Basis helps the team go deeper, faster," said Patrick Kerns, a shareholder in Schneider Downs' audit and assurance services, in the vendor's story.
"There was a lot of time invested in just trying to stay current with what's changing and evolving in our clients, and really not being able to deliver value because we're simply just trying to get the audit done," Kerns said.
Basis frames the rollout around two goals, "prioritizing people and improving audit quality," and says the change helps the firm retain talent. Neither claim is backed by figures in the story.
How Basis says it keeps auditors in control
Basis says its agents "show how they reached their results through cited sources, formulas, and an audit trail." Auditors "start with review-ready work, evaluate the results, and make the final decisions," the company says. It also says it keeps updated context on each client so auditors don't have to assemble it across documents and software.
Who Basis is
Basis raised a $100 million Series B at a $1.15 billion valuation in February 2026, led by Accel with GV participating, according to its release on Business Wire. The company says it is working with "~30% of the Top 25 accounting firms." In the same release, investor Vinod Khosla claims "20-50% efficiencies" for firms using it. These are company claims.
The release pitches the problem Basis says it solves: "decades-long talent shortages," margin pressure and burnout, with firms "forced to turn away work." Basis describes "long-horizon" agents that work "over many hours" and return "completed deliverables for review." It says it will spend the money on its platform and on its engineering and machine-learning teams.
What went wrong
- No independent numbers. Every outcome figure comes from the vendor's marketing page; no audit-quality or error data is published.
- Vague time savings. "Hours → minutes" covers only "select audit tasks," which Basis doesn't name.
- Busy-season rollout. The firm expanded during busy season, the story says; Basis says auditors review the agents' work but doesn't say how that review was done or checked.
- What we don't know yet: the cost, how many auditors use it, which tasks were timed, and any error rate.
Our follow-up question for Schneider Downs
Which audit tasks went from hours to minutes, and how did reviewers check the agents' work during busy season?
Sources
- Basis, “How Schneider Downs uses Basis to increase audit capacity per accountant,” customer story, Oct. 20, 2026. getbasis.ai
- Basis via Business Wire, “Basis Raises $100M at a $1.15B Valuation as Accounting Firms Adopt End-to-End Agents Across Accounting, Tax, and Audit,” Feb. 24, 2026. businesswire.com
© 2026 Real World Wire. Written October 29, 2026.