Methodology & neutrality

ProofColumn tracks AI tools that accounting, tax and bookkeeping firms actually use, and records only what each vendor's own pages say.

How data is checked

• Every week a script fetches each tool's homepage, pricing, security/trust, privacy, DPA and AI-policy pages and saves a text snapshot.
• Snapshots are compared with last week's. Any change to a price, a data-use statement, a SOC 2 mention or the site status is reviewed by a person and logged in the changelog.
• Each field links to the page it came from, and every listing shows the date it was last checked.

What the fields mean

• Pricing (as shown): copied from the vendor's pricing page with the billing unit. "Contact sales" means no price is published.
• Trains on customer data: No = the vendor states customer data is not used to train AI models. Yes = the vendor states customer data (or data derived from it) is used to train or fine-tune models, even if only for that customer's own model. Unclear = we couldn't find a clear statement. Unclear is not an accusation.
• SOC 2: whether the vendor's site mentions SOC 2. We don't verify reports. Ask the vendor for the report itself.
• Integrations mentioned: integrations named on the vendor's own pages. Confirm depth (one-way vs two-way) with the vendor.

Neutrality

• Sponsors and featured listings are always labelled. Payment never changes data, order within filters, or what goes in the changelog.
• We don't publish star ratings or ROI claims.
• Vendors can submit corrections. We publish a correction only when the vendor's public page supports it.

Current snapshot: 62 tools, checked Nov 2, 2026.