"I'm in the Midwest. We're all very skeptical. We like things conservative and old school. I'm the exception to that."
About 80% of JCG's clients have a small business attached to the return. That means Schedule C, E and F work sitting on top of a heavy load of K-1s and 1099-Bs, and all of it has to be keyed in before anyone can review anything.
The constraint was staffing that front line. Competent seasonal preparers are hard to find, expensive to train, and gone the following year. Forecasting how many to hire was a standing risk, with idle payroll on one side and a short-staffed crunch on the other. Cory looked at offshoring and turned it down on his own comfort and his clients'. He tried two other prep tools and turned those down too. He had been actively looking for something like Filed for about three years before he found it.
"I had to have competent students, which is very difficult to find because nobody wants to stay at that level. Either they're a student and they want to move on... the cost of that, the cost of the training, the cost of finding people." Cory Gayman, JCG Tax Advisors
A pilot of 150 returns, then a pod
Cory found the product in November 2024, under its earlier name, Numiro. Year one was a real pilot and nothing more: Cory plus one staff member, about 150 returns. Year two he systematized it, with three staff aged 25 and under on a CPA or EA track, plus one staffer with nine years at the firm put in charge of owning the workflow so Cory did not have to stay hands-on. Where it earns its keep is the forms-heavy returns. K-1s, 1099-Bs and investment accounts, the ones nobody wants to type. Adoption was not instant and not universal. One employee in his sixties took work to bring around, and so did some of the younger staff. Nobody left and everyone got on board, though Cory says they are all still pretty hesitant.
What is next
Business entity returns, and a clean P and L path in particular, are the gate on wider adoption. Nonprofit work was still fully manual at the time of this conversation. Cory expects 2026 to be the season the small business path gets ironed out.
His words for what happens then: "we're going to run really fast with Filed." Filed's business return support went live a month after this conversation, covering 1065, 1120, 1041 and 990, the exact set that was sitting on his desk that morning.
