Books demo tour · Part 6 of 6
A team of bots. One person in charge: you.
Anything you can do manually in the app, your AI can do through MCP - with one deliberate exception, signing a reconciliation - so run it like a team. Put one bot on the feeds, another on bills, a third on month-end journals; give routine work a fast, inexpensive model and judgment-heavy work a frontier one. Ask a bot to summarize before it acts and it will; tell it to go ahead and it posts. Either way you stay in charge, because posting is not what makes work final here - your review, your signature, and your lock are.
Illustrative client book: Hudson & Vale CPAs, LLP keeping the books of Harborlight Community Health Center, Inc. - a fictional nonprofit community health center. Fictional firm, client, and data.
Task assignment
Different bots, different jobs, one review queue
| Bot | Task | Model | Cadence | Today |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feeds bot | Sync feeds, propose categorizations, flag restricted funds | fast / inexpensive | Every morning | 38 proposed |
| AP bot | Read inbox bills, propose entry + payment schedule | mid-tier | Twice a week | 4 bills drafted |
| Close bot | Draft month-end journals in Drive, queue for posting | frontier model | Month-end | 2 JEs awaiting you |
Pick the model per task in your assistant - simple categorization doesn't need the model that reasons through a grant release. All three bots converge on one review queue: yours.
The bot does the heavy lifting
- Each bot works its lane through the same scoped MCP tools - feeds, AP, journals, payroll, reports.
- Routine tasks run on fast models; complex judgment drafts run on frontier models you choose.
- A bot can propose in chat or post directly - and every posted row stays undoable and on the record.
You stay in control
- You see every bot's work in one review queue and one audit trail.
- Anything a bot posted, you undo in one click - until you lock the period.
- Add or remove a bot's company access in Settings at any time.
Drill down & fix
Click from the balance sheet to the entry - and fix it
Every amount on the balance sheet, income statement, trial balance, and cash flow drills down to the entries behind it, and every entry opens in a full editor. Manual or uploaded, draft or posted - it is the same entry, the same editor, the same audit trail. If you have ever clicked into an imported journal entry in other software and found it locked, this is the part of the tour to watch.
| Balance sheet line | Amount | |
|---|---|---|
| Office & program supplies | $18,432.10 | ← click the amount |
| Inventory - clinic supplies | $6,204.88 |
| JE # | Date | Description | Amount | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JE-2026-06-118 | 06/14 | Staples #2201 - clinic supplies | $214.67 | Edit |
| JE-2026-06-131 | 06/21 | Med supply restock - imported from Drive workbook | $1,882.40 | Edit |
The 06/21 entry came in through a Drive workbook import - and it drills down and edits exactly like the hand-keyed one above it. Switch the account from supplies to inventory, move a line from Grant A to Grant B, fix the description - and save.
The bot does the heavy lifting
- Edits posted entries in place on your express instruction (books_journal_edit_posted) - old ledger impact reversed, new lines applied atomically, grant links re-synced.
- Bulk cleanup from a list of reference numbers in one batched pass, with a preview of every account delta before anything moves.
- Fixes the words too: descriptions and memos get updated so the trail reads right, not just the numbers.
You stay in control
- The bot never edits a posted entry on its own initiative - only when you expressly ask, and your stated reason is recorded on the audit trail.
- The closed-books lock guards everyone equally: once a period is closed or the closing date is set, neither you nor the bot can touch an entry until a person reopens the books. It is the only lock in Books, and it is yours.
- Uploaded entries are never second-class: the same editor opens whether the entry was keyed, imported, or drafted by a bot.
The control model
Posted, then locked - two states, and one lever is yours
The question every firm asks about an AI touching the ledger is: what stops it going wrong? The answer is not that the AI is prevented from posting - it is that posting does not mean final. Posted work is a draft until you close the period, and closing it is the one control that makes anything final.
| State | What it means | Can it be undone? |
|---|---|---|
| Posted | In the ledger and visible in reports - but still a draft in every way that matters | Yes. One click, by you or by your AI. The undo removes the effect rather than stacking a reversal on top of it. |
| Locked | You set a closing date over the period - your acceptance of the month | No. Nothing posts into a locked period and nothing is pulled out of one, by you or by the assistant, without your password. |
Both states apply whether a person or an AI did the work, because they are enforced underneath both - not by asking the AI nicely. There is deliberately no third state: a signed bank reconciliation is a signature, not a lock. It records who prepared and who reviewed the workpaper and freezes that report as signed, so the document keeps saying what it said. It does not freeze the ledger - undo a transaction inside a signed month and that month stops tying, and the app tells you so instead of quietly refusing. We had two locks once. One of them was really a speed bump, and two rules meant nobody could tell which one had stopped them.
The bot does the heavy lifting
- Ask for a plan first and you get one - what posts, where, and what it is unsure about.
- Tell it to just do the work and it posts directly. That is the point of MCP.
- It cannot post into or undo out of a month you have locked, and it will tell you it hit the lock rather than route around it.
You stay in control
- Review the Posted tab at your own pace - undo anything that reads wrong.
- Excluded rows sit in their own tab, so a skipped transaction is visible rather than lost.
- Lock the month when you are satisfied. That is your acceptance, and the software treats it that way.
Audit trail & reports
Every action on the record, every report on demand
07:31 feeds-bot · books_bank_sync_feed_connection · 3 accounts
07:32 feeds-bot · propose_categorization × 38 · awaiting approval
09:14 d.okafor · approved batch (36) · rejected (2)
11:02 ap-bot · books_ap_propose_pay_bill · ConEd $1,893.40
16:40 close-bot · book_je_drive_import · JE-2026-06 Accruals.xlsx
16:41 — queue idle · 2 drafts awaiting your post
| Report | Basis | Ask your bot for it |
|---|---|---|
| Income statement · program vs. admin | Accrual | “June P&L by program, compared to budget” |
| Cash flow & financial ratios | Cash | “How many months of runway at June's burn?” |
| Vendor 1099 summary | Calendar YTD | “Who crosses the 1099 threshold so far?” |
| Tax readiness | — | “What's still missing before we hand off to tax?” |
▶ Watch: three bots, one review queue, one audit trail
Screens are illustrative: Hudson & Vale CPAs and Harborlight Community Health Center, Inc. are fictional.