Former accountant builds AI tool Tabby to automate bookkeeping

Until May 2025, Ahad Ali ran a successful accounting business, leading a team of 20 people that handled more than 2,000 tax returns a year, covering bookkeeping, sales tax and general accounting work. Over time, Ali grew frustrated with existing accounting software, including QuickBooks, and eventually with the broader idea of SaaS-based accounting tools.

Ali concluded that small businesses don't need better accounting software — they need something that handles the work for them with minimal human involvement. That idea became Tabby, a real-time bookkeeping platform. Using Plaid to pull live account data, Tabby applies AI to automatically build a dashboard showing a business's profit and loss in real time.

Tabby also offers a version aimed at accounting firms looking for a smarter alternative to QuickBooks, but Ali's main focus is reaching small business owners directly. He believes tools like Tabby can eliminate bookkeeping work almost entirely, turning it into a monthly charge comparable to internet access or payroll services.

Growth and competition

Fourteen months after launch, Tabby has 5,500 small businesses on its platform, generating roughly $100,000 in annual recurring revenue. The team remains small — just seven people, including Ali, his technical co-founder, four engineers and a go-to-market specialist. The company is currently raising $1 million in pre-seed funding and preparing to launch Tabby Talk, a natural-language interface for the product.

Ali's main target is QuickBooks, still the dominant player in the market, but Tabby also faces competition from well-funded startups such as Sequoia-backed Rillet, as well as finance tools built by major AI labs. Despite the crowded field, Ali believes Tabby can carve out a niche by focusing on the small-to-medium-sized businesses that drove his earlier accounting business.