The accounting startup turned tax preparation into a game of Pokémon Showdown

The accounting software company Open Ledger is launching a new product on time for the tax day.

Meeting PokétaxA game that helps to make taxes a lot of fun. Instead of tax forms, users take tax trainers – fitness leaders – represent different parts of a tax form, such as income, deductions and loans. Each leader asks questions that help players fill out their tax forms.

“After completing your Pokétax Run, we direct you to the IRS Direct File website to send officially,” the co-founder of Open Ledger Pryce Adate-Yebesi told TechCrunch. The game is an adaptation of the Pokémon open code called Pokémon Showdown, and he promised that this was not a joke on April Fool.

“It’s real; it works. Tax fraud is not funny – and neither IRS,” he said.

Adade-Yebesi and Ashtyn Bell launched Open Ledger earlier this year and raised a $ 3 million round led by Kindred Ventures and Black Ventures. Adade-Jebesy said his team first built this product, which is an open source as a joke. “Can we actually pull this?” He and his team were thinking. The answer was clear yes.

The game has an AI assistant that helps to organize users’ answers, and players can win badges – find new deductions – while taking tax trainers.

Taxes are such an unloved part of being a good citizen that few founders are thinking of turning the process into a game. More special, in 2023 there It was a dating style game Tax sky 3000, where users went to a meeting with an avatar named Iris who asked questions to help fill in a tax form. But it was only for the year of tax filing in 2022.

Adade-Heebesi hopes that by adding fun to such financial processes, they will be “more engaging and much less polluting the soul.”

Taxes are due on April 15.