Questions Answered

HORIZON is built for small and mid-sized businesses that need accurate, real-time financial visibility without the cost of a full accounting team or the complexity of stitching together multiple tools. The platform is particularly well-suited for product-based businesses, service firms, and contractor-heavy operations that deal with recurring transactions, 1099 contractor payments, or multi-vendor accounts payable. If your business currently uses spreadsheets alongside accounting software, or if you're paying a bookkeeper to do work that should be automated, HORIZON is designed to replace that friction. The platform delivers the same accounting depth and controls that enterprise companies use, without requiring an in-house finance team to operate it. Growing businesses between $500K and $10M in annual revenue get the most immediate value from the platform's automation and real-time intelligence.

HORIZON's AI assistant lets you query your live financial data and take action using plain English. You can ask questions like "What did I spend on materials last quarter?", "Which invoices are overdue?", or "Show me my cash flow for the past six months" and receive answers pulled directly from your books, not a cached summary. The assistant can also generate reports, create invoices, categorize transactions, and draft journal entries. Any action that would modify your books requires your explicit approval before it executes. The assistant has 200+ specialized financial tools, covering everything from transaction classification to forecasting, anomaly detection, and live economic queries. Because all data lives in a structured accounting system with enforced constraints, every answer is derived from auditable records.

Most AI bookkeeping platforms use artificial intelligence as the primary control system. HORIZON works differently. Financial integrity is enforced by the accounting engine itself, independently of the AI. When the AI misclassifies a transaction or generates an incorrect journal entry, the system rejects it before it posts. Correctness was never the AI's responsibility to begin with. In practice, this produces books that are audit-ready by default: every journal entry balances, every period stays locked after close, and no amount is ever stored with rounding errors. The AI handles what benefits from intelligence - categorization, analysis, pattern recognition, drafting. The rules that protect your books enforce themselves. Competing tools that rely on software rules can have those rules bypassed by bugs or updates. HORIZON's rules cannot be bypassed because they live below the software entirely.

Yes. HORIZON is built on full GAAP double-entry accrual accounting, enforced at the accounting engine level. Every transaction posted to the ledger must balance before it is written - there are no exceptions. All monetary values are stored with exact precision, eliminating the rounding errors that affect many accounting applications. Revenue and expenses are recognized in the period they occur, not when cash changes hands, which is the core requirement of accrual-basis GAAP. Books stay locked after close, preventing retroactive changes to historical periods. The audit trail records every posting, categorization decision, and reconciliation action with timestamps. All 18+ of HORIZON's standard financial reports are generated directly from this ledger with no separate reporting layer.

HORIZON connects to over 12,000 U.S. financial institutions, covering national banks, regional banks, credit unions, and business banking platforms. Once connected, HORIZON pulls in real-time account balances and transaction data automatically. Transactions arrive and begin categorizing immediately. For institutions where real-time feeds are unavailable, HORIZON supports manual statement import with the same automated matching applied on import. HORIZON never stores your banking credentials - authentication is handled directly through your bank. Access can be revoked at any time through your bank's connected apps settings, independent of HORIZON.

Yes. HORIZON includes a full accounts receivable and accounts payable module. Create and send invoices with line items, tax calculations, payment terms, due dates, and recurring schedules. Enter and track vendor bills, schedule payments, and flag contractor payments for year-end 1099-NEC reporting. Every invoice and bill flows directly into your general ledger as a double-entry journal entry. When an invoice is paid, the payment is matched against the open receivable and the ledger updates automatically. HORIZON tracks aging for both AR and AP with dedicated aging reports.

Yes. HORIZON integrates with Stripe Connect and Square to enable online invoice payments. Your customer receives a payment link to pay by card or bank transfer. Payments are automatically matched against the corresponding open invoice and posted to your general ledger. Stripe fees are tracked separately so your net revenue is reported accurately. For recurring clients, scheduled invoices generate automatically with payment links included. All transactions are visible in your bank reconciliation workflow once they settle, giving you a complete end-to-end payment audit trail.

HORIZON's reconciliation engine automatically matches imported bank transactions to existing ledger entries. High-confidence matches are posted without any manual work; anything below the threshold is queued for your review. The system learns from your decisions: once it has seen how you handle a particular merchant consistently, it creates a permanent rule so future transactions from that merchant categorize automatically. The workflow covers statement import, transaction matching, balance verification, adjusting entries, and period close. Once all items are matched and balances agree, the books are locked for that period.

HORIZON integrates with most major U.S. payroll providers for payroll synchronization. Each payroll run is automatically converted into a balanced journal entry. Contractor payments flagged as 1099-eligible are tracked separately throughout the year. HORIZON does not process payroll directly - it syncs from your existing payroll provider and handles the accounting side: journal entries, expense categorization, payroll tax summaries, and reporting.

Yes. HORIZON uses multiple independent layers of data isolation to ensure your financial data is never accessible to another business, and that no single failure can expose it. These layers work at different levels of the stack, so there is no single point of failure. If any layer fails to initialize at startup, HORIZON shuts down rather than running in a degraded state. Journal entries are immutable once posted, books stay locked after close, and all access events are logged in the audit trail. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Yes. HORIZON includes fixed asset management and inventory tracking as part of the core platform. For fixed assets, record the asset with purchase date, cost, and useful life. HORIZON calculates depreciation automatically each period and posts the corresponding journal entries. For inventory, HORIZON tracks quantities on hand with reorder alerts. Inventory value is reflected in your balance sheet in real time, and cost of goods sold is posted automatically when inventory is consumed or sold. Both asset types are fully integrated into your books.

HORIZON generates 18+ reports across five categories. Financial Statements: Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement, and Changes in Equity. Sales & Receivables: Sales Report and AR Aging. Expenses & Payables: Expense by Vendor and AP Aging. Accounting Records: General Ledger and Trial Balance. Tax Forms & Reports: Form 4562 (Depreciation), Form 941 (Quarterly Tax), Form 940 (FUTA), Payroll Tax Summary, Schedule M-2 (Retained Earnings), Schedule L (IRS Balance Sheet), Form 1125-E (Officer Compensation), and Schedule M-1 (Book-to-Tax Adjustments). All reports support period-over-period comparison and drill-down to individual transactions. Generated in real time from live ledger data.

Yes. HORIZON is designed so that audit readiness is a byproduct of normal operation, not a separate preparation step. Journal entries are immutable once posted; the only way to correct an error is through a new correcting entry. Books stay locked after close - a closed period cannot be reopened through any pathway in the platform. The complete audit trail covers every posting, categorization decision, reconciliation match, rule creation, and period close, each with a timestamp and user attribution. All 18+ standard reports can be exported and traced back to source transactions.

Pricing starts at $499 per month for complete bookkeeping automation: bank sync, automatic reconciliation, 18+ financial reports, invoicing, payroll sync, cash flow forecasting, AI budget recommendations, and the AI financial assistant. SOC 2 / HIPAA readiness is included on all plans. Advanced at $1,299/month adds goals tracking with live economic benchmarks, customer and revenue concentration risk, industry benchmarking, Business and Market Intelligence, and multi-entity books. Professional at $2,999/month adds 365-day forecasting, regulatory and trade intelligence, cyber threat monitoring, sanctions screening, and 24/7 priority support. Annual plans save two months. All plans include a 14-day free trial with no credit card charged until day 15. HORIZON also offers a live test drive at drive.bzhorizon.ai so you can explore the platform with sample data before committing.

Yes. Bravo Zulu Intelligence is a veteran-owned technology company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. The name comes directly from military tradition: "Bravo Zulu" is the NATO phonetic alphabet rendering of the naval signal flag combination BZ, historically flown to communicate "well done" to another vessel or unit after a successful operation. That standard of precise execution, verified outcome, and no ambiguity is the design principle behind HORIZON. Bravo Zulu Intelligence was founded in 2024 and is actively growing its customer base among small businesses that want institutional-grade financial tools without the institutional overhead.