Karbon's leaders, CEO Stuart McLeod and CTO John Freeman, founded PayCycle in 2009 and sold to Xero in 2011. The Karbon leadership has several Xero veterans, including Ian Vacin, VP of product marketing. Vacin was VP of marketing and product at Xero, the cloud-based accounting software vendor, from April 2012 until June 2015 when he moved to Karbon.

The company said it made the name change because it discovered Australian accounting software vendor Reckon had a module named Practice IQ.

Carbon is hosting introductory webinars in the United States and Australia. It is also offering training webinars and another series that offers advice on running a practice. A product release overview is scheduled for January 19 and will be repeated three times in February.

The description of the company's approach is given on its LinkedIn page "By bringing email out of everyone's inbox, Karbon adds visibility to your practice and increases productivity of your team, becoming your firm's central place for all your clients' information, work and communication."

When Vacin joined, the company was called Balanced Labs and its website then talked about the company's developing a SaaS tax application, and needing an engineer to work with the CTO on that application. A job description for a lead mobile developer says mobile capabilities are central Karbon's approach. "We are looking to build cutting edge products across starting with iOS and then Android and Windows Desktop/Mobile platforms," it says.