Key Takeaways Basis is an AI agent platform for client accounting services, tax, audit, and advisory work. Its agents complete a first pass on a task and hand it back for an accountant to review. Trullion is an execution platform built for accounting and audit. Trulli proposes the ruleset, and the reviewer reads, edits, and approves it before anything runs, with every figure cited to the source document and the licensed guidance or firm methodology applied. The real choice is where the review happens: before the AI acts, or after. Quick Comparison: Trullion vs Basis Trullion Basis Best for Audit execution (tests of detail, financial statement validation, document extraction) as one cited workflow Firms deploying agents across client accounting, tax, audit, and advisory work Review model Every conclusion links back to the source data behind it, and the reviewer approves the ruleset before it runs. Agents complete a first pass; the accountant reviews the output afterward Methodology coverage Outputs cite licensed authoritative guidance (FASB, PCAOB, SEC, FAC/Uniform Guidance), with Thomson Reuters Guided Assurance integrated. Standard-specific calculation logic not published as of this writing Scope Built for accounting and audit from the outset Four practice areas, of which audit is one What Is Basis Basis is an AI agent platform for accounting firms, with agents that work across client accounting services (CAS), tax, audit, and advisory work. An engagement gets handed to an agent, which works through it (Basis calls this “long-horizon” work) and returns a finished deliverable for an accountant to review. Within audit, Basis’s agents run a first pass on planning, fieldwork, and reporting, and the auditor reviews the result. Basis logs each agent action, giving reviewers a record of what happened during that pass. What Is Trullion Trullion is an AI-powered platform built specifically for accounting and audit. Two connected pieces sit at the center: Knowledge Room, which structures a firm’s accounting standards, internal policies, and prior work into one reference, and Trulli, Trullion’s domain-specific AI agent, which works across the platform’s workflows and draws on that knowledge. Trullion focuses on fieldwork execution. It reads a firm’s own workpaper, runs tests of detail, financial statement validation, and document extraction against the underlying evidence, and returns that workpaper populated with results, exceptions, and citations back to the page they came from. Nothing about how a firm runs its audit has to change. Trullion runs alongside the engagement platform a firm already uses instead of replacing it. Trullion is built around the audible AI philosophy. Isaac Heller, Trullion Founder, has written more on why this distinction matters: accounting doesn’t need agents that act on their own. It needs agency, kept in the hands of the person who signs the opinion. Where Trullion and Basis Overlap Both are AI-native platforms built for accounting and audit work, not general-purpose assistants adapted to the profession Both reduce manual review work and leave judgment with the accountant Both keep an accountant responsible for the final conclusion Both integrate with a firm’s existing systems instead of asking the firm to move its file. Basis works with a firm’s existing ledgers and file systems. Trullion reads and returns the firm’s native workpaper format Neither locks itself to one foundation model. Basis works with several leading labs. Trullion stays model-agnostic, so a firm gets each model’s improvements without owning the integration work itself Where They Diverge Review timing. Trulli proposes the ruleset, and the reviewer reads, edits, and approves it before anything runs. Every result then comes back cited to its source, so the workpaper reaches the reviewer ready for sign-off. Basis’s agents complete a first pass, and the accountant reviews and works through that output afterward. One puts judgment before the test. The other puts judgment after it. Scope of the audit practice. Trullion is built for accounting and audit review from the ground up, with tests of detail, financial statement validation, and document extraction as the core product. Basis spans client accounting, tax, audit, and advisory work, with audit as one piece of a broader platform. Citation versus log. Every Trullion output links back to the source document, down to the page, and to the licensed guidance (FASB, PCAOB, SEC) or firm methodology Trullion measured it against. Basis’s agent log shows what an agent did. A citation to a standard and a log of an action answer two different questions: whether the conclusion is correct, and what the agent executed. What starts the test. Trullion’s procedures start from the assertion in the workpaper and the firm’s methodology. Audit procedures are built around risk and assertions, and Trullion’s execution model follows that same logic all the way through. Pros and Cons, Side by Side Pros Cons Basis Covers four practice areas, so one agent layer can handle client accounting, tax, and advisory work as well as audit. Agents handle long, multi-step tasks with limited hands-on direction. Doesn’t break out standard-specific logic or substantive-testing steps the way an audit-first platform does. Audit sits alongside three other practice areas rather than as the core product. Accountants review the finished output after the agent has already worked through the task. Trullion Purpose-built for audit and accounting standards, with every output cited to both the source document and the standard applied. Reviewers approve the ruleset before it runs and check cited results after. Trullion also runs alongside a firm’s existing engagement platform and workpaper format. Use-case driven, built to apply to specific workflows within an engagement. Firms that want one agent layer across client accounting and tax work will need to pair Trullion with something else for those areas. Questions Worth Asking Either Vendor Most AI-for-accounting tools look similar in a demo. These are the questions that show the real difference. Can the logic be read before it runs, or only reviewed after? A record of what an agent did isn’t the same as a statement of what it’s about to do. What does reproducibility actually mean here? Ask what backs up the claim, not just whether the vendor makes one. What was the output measured against, and where’s the citation? A useful answer names a specific standard or policy, not just “GAAP” in general. What starts the work: the procedure, or an upload? Some platforms begin testing the moment a document arrives. Audit procedures are built around risk and assertions, not arrival order. What happens with a scan that has no extractable text? Real audit evidence includes handwritten notes, stamped approvals, and grayscale copies, not just clean PDFs. Can a reviewer with no connection to the engagement follow the work end to end? This is the bar audit documentation has to clear regardless of which AI produced it. Which Fits Your Firm If a firm wants one agent platform standardized across client accounting, tax, audit, and advisory work, Basis’s breadth is the draw. If the priority is audit execution specifically, tests of detail, financial statement validation, document extraction, reviewed and approved before it runs, and cited after, Trullion is built for that scope. Plenty of firms end up running both. A broad agent platform covers CAS and tax work, and Trullion handles the audit fieldwork that needs page-cited, reviewer-approved results. That includes Data Match, financial statement validation, and a methodology layer built on licensed guidance, which together cover an audit team’s biggest use cases. The Next Step The right pick depends on where a firm wants the review to sit, not on which platform covers more ground. A broad agent layer across the practice is useful. So is an audit execution layer built to be read and approved before it touches a single document. See how Trullion’s auditable AI works. FAQs What is Basis? Basis is an AI agent platform for accounting firms, with agents that work across client accounting services, tax, audit, and advisory work. Its agents work on tasks over an extended period and return a finished deliverable for an accountant to review. Is Basis a Trullion alternative? Basis and Trullion overlap in that both are AI-native platforms selling into accounting and audit practices, but they aren’t direct alternatives to each other. Basis spans multiple practice areas with a first-pass, review-after model. Trullion is built specifically for audit execution, with a ruleset the reviewer approves before it runs and citations to both the source document and the standard applied. Does Basis handle audit-specific work like tests of detail or financial statement review? Audit is one of four practice areas Basis covers, alongside client accounting, tax, and advisory work. Trullion is built only for accounting and audit, with tests of detail, financial statement validation, and document extraction as the core product, and each output cited to a specific accounting standard. What’s the difference between reviewing AI output after it runs and approving the logic before it runs? Reviewing after the fact means checking a finished result for errors. Approving the logic first means a reviewer reads and edits the actual test before it touches any evidence, so judgment shapes the approach from the start. That matters because AI models can hallucinate, giving answers that sound confident but are wrong. Trullion limits that risk in two ways. A reviewer has to approve the ruleset before it runs, and every result cites its source page and the guidance applied, which leaves an audit trail any reviewer can follow. Which AI accounting platform is right for my firm, Basis or Trullion? It depends on scope. A firm standardizing agents across client accounting, tax, and advisory work alongside audit may prefer Basis’s breadth. A firm whose priority is audit execution specifically, with standard-cited, reviewer-approved testing, will find Trullion built for that job.