Book a Demo AI RECEPTIONIST · CPA PRACTICE
The AI receptionist for CPA firms answers the year-round line — copy requests, close status, estimate vouchers, new-client consults — and books, screens, and routes inside Karbon, Canopy, and QuickBooks Online, so your CPAs stay in the workpapers and billable hours stay billable.
One demo line · every tax & accounting workflow
Try: “I have the documents you asked for.”
No signup, no sales rep — just call it.
Handle an inbound chat asking about return and refund status, verify the client with masked details, report the accurate e-file and refund status, explain the timing honestly, and give a clear next step — without exposing sensitive data or guessing at IRS timing.
Hi, you’ve reached Meridian Tax and Accounting — this is Simone. How can I help?
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Handle an inbound chat asking about return and refund status, verify the client with masked details, report the accurate e-file and refund status, explain the timing honestly, and give a clear next step — without exposing sensitive data or guessing at IRS timing.
+270 moreResolution rate
Always available
Languages
Avg. handle time
Platform integrations
Keep your stack. Lumi works on top of it.
No rip-and-replace — Lumi layers onto your practice-management, accounting & payroll software. 270+ integrations.
QuickBooks Online
XeroSISage IntacctBIBILLGuGustoUCUltraTax CSLaLacerteDrDrakeCACCH AxcessTaxDome
Canopy
KarbonSaSafeSendCalendlyWhat is an AI receptionist for CPA firms?
An AI receptionist for CPA firms answers the phone at a full-service practice — bookkeeping, monthly close, payroll, and individual and business returns — where deadline work runs twelve months a year and every interruption lands on billable time. It verifies the caller, reads engagement status from Karbon, Canopy, or TaxDome, relays what’s already in the file — a return copy request, an estimate voucher, where the close stands — books new-client consults on the right partner’s calendar, and chases open items and e-signatures. It answers factual questions about the firm in 70+ languages — and consistent with Circular 230 it is administrative only: it never gives tax or accounting advice and never represents the taxpayer, routing every substantive question — elections, deductions, treatment — to a licensed CPA. It verifies identity before disclosing anything, uses client information only to serve the client (§7216), and operates inside the firm’s WISP. Lumi is the front desk a firm can’t hire right now.
The difference a business owner feels
A voicemail or answering service
Lumi
A message slip still lands on a CPA’s desk — the interruption just arrives an hour later. A call answered from the engagement record never lands there at all — and the client hangs up served, not queued.
Answering the call is just the front door
Taking the interruption off a CPA’s desk is where Lumi starts. It keeps going — reading status, screening new engagements, chasing open items, nudging signatures — always routing anything substantive to your licensed CPAs.
Voice, SMS, web chat, WhatsApp, email — the owner who calls about the close and emails a bank request an hour later stays one engagement thread. Nobody re-explains their situation to the firm twice.
Status questions get answered from the engagement record in Karbon, Canopy, or TaxDome — not from a CPA's memory. The people doing the close stay in the close; the answer comes from the file.
Under Circular 230, Lumi answers factual questions about your firm and process — never whether to elect, what to deduct, or how to treat a transaction. Every substantive question routes to your licensed CPA with the caller's context attached.
The accounting pipeline is thin and a good firm administrator is hard to find and harder to keep. Lumi covers the reception layer — answering, screening, scheduling — so the humans you do hire work above the phone, not underneath it.
Open-items chases for the close, engagement-letter and 8879 walk-throughs, invoice questions, estimate and extension reminders — the follow-up cadence a lean firm never has a spare hour to run.
A prospective business client screened on the first call — entity type, services needed, current software — and booked with the right partner, written into your practice system before anyone calls back.
70+ languages, 24/7 — the restaurant owner who can only call after the dinner rush gets a real conversation at 10 PM, and the intake lands in your system in English for the team.
QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage Intacct, Gusto, BILL, Karbon, Canopy, TaxDome, CCH Axcess, UltraTax CS — status, intake, and bookings land where your team already works. No rip-and-replace. 270+ tools.
The interruption tax
A full-service firm runs on concentration — a close to reconcile, a return to finish, a payroll to get out. None of these calls needs the person doing that work. They need someone to check the file, relay the answer, and book the meeting.
The lender wants two years of returns by Friday. A pure clerical request — yet at most firms it lands on a CPA's desk mid-close, because only the CPA knows where the file lives.
A business owner asking for a status that's already recorded in Karbon or Canopy. Thirty seconds of lookup that costs a staff accountant twenty minutes of lost concentration.
The voucher was prepared and delivered months ago. The caller just needs it relayed from the file — not a fresh calculation, and not a partner pulled out of a workpaper.
A prospective monthly-bookkeeping-and-tax engagement — recurring revenue — calling whoever picks up. If your line goes to voicemail during close week, the next firm gets the retainer.
A substantive question the front desk must never answer under Circular 230 — captured with context and routed to the licensed CPA, never improvised by a receptionist.
At a firm where every hour is spoken for by a deadline, the phone is a tax on the work itself. A system should absorb the administrative calls — and hand your CPAs only the ones that genuinely need a license. These calls land every month of the year — and here is the calendar they land on.
Why phone coverage can’t be seasonal
Tax-only shops get a breather in May. A full-service practice doesn’t — the compliance calendar hands you a deadline every month, and the monthly close runs underneath all of it. Whatever month the phone rings, it’s interrupting something due.
Monthly close, payroll runs, and client questions — every month, underneath everything above.
A seasonal answering plan covers four of these months and abandons the other eight. Lumi covers all twelve — answering, screening, and booking through every deadline on the board, so the front desk never takes a season off and neither does your pipeline.
No rip-and-replace
Your practice management, your ledgers, your payroll, your calendar — Lumi works inside them, not instead of them. Status lookups, intakes, bookings, and open-items chases post straight into the systems your team already trusts — 270+ tools in all.
QuickBooks OnlineXeroSISage IntacctBIBILLGuGustoUCUltraTax CSLaLacerteDrDrakeCACCH AxcessTaxDomeCanopyKarbonSaSafeSendCalendlyCase file · full-service CPA firm
~140 business clients + individual returns · Karbon + QuickBooks Online · before: one administrator between four CPAs and a line that never stopped
January 1099s through October extensions — no seasonal re-staffing
every call answered live while the team stays in the ledgers
copy requests, status calls, and reschedules off the billable desks
recurring engagements captured on the first call, not a callback list
“We couldn’t hire a second admin — we tried for a year. Now the copy requests, the ‘is my close done’ calls, and the estimate questions never reach a CPA’s desk; Lumi answers them from Karbon and books the new business consults straight onto my calendar. Anything that smells like advice comes to me, exactly as it should.”
Illustrative composite from typical year-round results — names and figures are illustrative, not a guarantee of results, until our first public CPA-firm case study lands.
Switched on for the whole calendar
Every play is wired before the next deadline lands — inbound reception that protects the work and outbound follow-up that keeps closes, estimates, and signatures from slipping. Turn any one on or off; add your own.
Built for a firm bound by Circular 230
A CPA firm’s phone line needs walls, not improvisation. These four are wired in before the first call — so the front desk stays administrative and the practice of accounting stays with the people licensed to practice it.
Under Circular 230, Lumi never gives tax advice and never represents the taxpayer before the IRS. It answers status, relays what's already in the file, schedules, and chases documents. Whether to elect, what to deduct, how to treat a transaction — every substantive question goes to your licensed CPA with the caller's context attached.
Lumi confirms the caller against your records before relaying any engagement status, voucher, or client detail — and uses client information only to serve that client (§7216). Nothing is repurposed, nothing is sold.
It works within your written information security plan — access scoped to the minimum necessary, every interaction logged back to the engagement. A front desk held to the same controls as your staff.
Lumi reads and writes the practice software your firm already runs — Karbon, Canopy, TaxDome, QuickBooks Online — so nothing migrates and nobody relearns a system. Your ledger stays the ledger.
Objections, welcome
No — and it's built not to. Consistent with Circular 230, Lumi is an administrative front desk: it answers status, relays what's already in the file, schedules consults, and chases documents. It answers factual questions about your firm — your services, your process, your fees — but never whether to make an election, what's deductible, or how to treat a transaction, and it never represents anyone before the IRS. Every substantive question routes to your licensed CPA with the caller's context attached.
Lumi verifies the caller's identity against your records before disclosing any engagement status, voucher, or client detail. It uses the information a client shares only to serve that client, consistent with §7216 — never repurposed, never sold — and it operates inside your firm's written information security plan: access scoped to the minimum necessary, every interaction logged back to the engagement. Bring your specific obligations to the demo and we'll walk through exactly how data flows.
The recurring administrative load: return-copy requests for lenders, close and return status questions, estimate-voucher lookups, invoice questions, appointment scheduling and reschedules, PBC and open-items chases, and 8879 e-signature nudges. Each one is answered from your practice software — Karbon, Canopy, TaxDome — rather than relayed as a message slip that still interrupts a CPA an hour later.
Yes. A full-service front desk means the monthly-close client asking for financials, the payroll client with a timing question, and the tax client wanting status all reach the same receptionist. Lumi works on top of the stack those engagements run on — QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage Intacct, Gusto, BILL — alongside your tax and practice-management software, and routes anything requiring judgment to your team.
It's covering the hire you likely can't make. The accounting staffing pipeline is tight, and firms tell us admin roles sit open for months. Lumi takes the reception layer — answering, screening, scheduling, chasing — so the administrator you do have works above the phone: onboarding, billing, workflow. If you're a partner answering your own line during close week, it gives you back the block of hours the deadline actually needs.
Flat monthly pricing, sized to your call pattern and the channels and workflows you switch on — not a per-minute meter that punishes deadline months. A solo practitioner and a four-partner firm are scoped differently, so the honest answer depends on your setup. Book a demo, tell us your volume and practice software, and we'll put a number in front of you to weigh against the admin salary you've been trying to fill.
Guides & comparisons
Give her your firm line.
Open the demo and treat it like a Tuesday in your firm — request a document, ask for status, ask about your invoice, then ask something only a CPA should answer. Watch it serve the first three from the file and route the fourth to a licensed pro. Then bring your call pattern and your practice software to a walkthrough.
(520) 464-4494
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