How a 150-person accounting firm gave every employee a research assistant that never phones home.
Solstice Financial is an accounting and advisory firm with 150 staff across two offices. They advise 400+ clients on tax, audit, corporate finance, and advisory work.
Their internal knowledge is vast — 15 years of engagement files, tax research notes, client histories, precedent documents, internal policies, and regulatory briefings. It's all stored on a shared drive and in their document management system.
Nobody can find anything.
When a junior accountant needs to know "How did we handle a similar R&D tax credit claim last year?" or "What's our internal guidance on capital allowances for renewable energy installations?" — they have three options:
The real problem isn't search — it's that the firm's collective knowledge is locked in documents that humans can't efficiently navigate.
And there's a new complication: the firm's partners have said no to using ChatGPT or similar tools for internal research. Not because they're anti-AI — because client financial data, tax strategies, and advisory work product can't go through a third-party API. The ICO would have questions. The clients would have concerns. The professional indemnity insurers would have opinions.
Foundry runs on a Mac Studio in the firm's server cupboard (it doesn't need a rack — it sits on a shelf). It's plugged into the firm's network and has read access to the document management system.
It reads everything, understands it, and answers questions — locally.
Tuesday, 10:15 AM. A junior accountant, Priya, is working on an R&D tax credit claim for a software company. She's never done one before.
She types into the Foundry search bar: "R&D tax credits for software development — have we done this before?"
Foundry responds in 3 seconds:
Yes. The firm has handled 7 R&D tax credit claims for software companies since 2022.
Most relevant: The 2024 claim for BrightStream Ltd (engagement file 2024-0341) involved similar circumstances — a SaaS company claiming for backend algorithm development. The senior on that engagement was Michael Chen. Key precedent: HMRC accepted that server optimisation algorithms qualified, but frontend UI work did not.
Relevant documents: BrightStream R&D claim summary (2024-0341, p. 12-18) | HMRC correspondence (2024-0341, p. 31-34) | Internal R&D software sector guidance (April 2024)
Priya reads the BrightStream summary, finds the exact approach the firm used, and adapts it for her client. She books a 15-minute call with Michael Chen to confirm her approach rather than a 2-hour "start from scratch" meeting.
Search time: 25-45 min
Senior repeat Q&A: 5-10 hrs/week
Onboarding: 4-6 months
API cost: £600-900/month
Search time: 30 sec - 3 min
Senior repeat Q&A: 1-2 hrs/week
Onboarding: 2-3 months
API cost: £0 (local)
Annual impact: 8,000+ hours of professional time recovered across the firm. At an average charge-out rate of £150/hour, even recovering 10% of that for billable work is £120,000/year.
Foundry cost: £999 setup + £99/month = £2,187 first year. Plus the Mac Studio if not already owned (~£5,500-6,500 for an M3 Ultra with adequate RAM).
Stays cloud: Email, accounting software, CRM, cloud backup of the document management system, web research (HMRC website, legislation), video conferencing.
Does not: Give tax advice. Access client accounting systems. Send anything externally. Replace training and supervision. Hallucinate citations — every answer includes direct references to specific documents and page numbers. If Foundry can't find a source, it says so.
"I used to spend half my morning looking for a precedent file. Now I ask Foundry, get the answer, and I'm working on the actual problem in under a minute." Priya, junior accountant (6 months qualified)
"The real surprise was onboarding. New joiners are useful in week two instead of month three because they can actually find how we do things here." Senior manager
"We banned ChatGPT for client-related research in 2025. We lost nothing — Foundry does it better because it knows our firm's experience, not just the internet's." Partner, risk and compliance
Works for professional services firms with 50+ staff and 5+ years of accumulated documents, accounting/legal/consulting/advisory firms with data confidentiality obligations, firms where knowledge is locked in documents that keyword search can't navigate well.