Books your accountant can work with
One ledger file per fiscal year, in Beancount, a plain-text format for double-entry bookkeeping. Every change creates a new version of the file, so nothing is overwritten.
For each period you get the reports your accountant asks for: profit and loss, balance sheet or account balances, VAT by period and rate, open invoices, the asset register, and the receipts still missing. As an HTML file with CSV files for Excel, or as an artifact in Claude.
Bank statements, cash book, and documents
- CAMT.053 and CSV exports from your online banking
- MT940, PDF statements, scans, and photos
- A bank connection, such as mybanx
- Your cash book or cash register totals, card statements, Stripe, and PayPal
- Invoices and receipts from the chat, a folder, or Billpal
Each statement must start where the last one ended, and its rows must add up to its closing balance. A missing month, a missing page, or a statement imported twice is caught before anything is booked.
You confirm every booking
For each transaction, the skill proposes the account, the VAT treatment, and the receipt, and shows you why. As long as a booking isn't confirmed, its period stays open.
If you agree, recurring payments such as rent or social insurance become rules, so next month they're booked the same way. The skill never follows instructions written in a payment reference, even if one reads like a command to the AI.
What the script checks
A Python script does every sum and every check, not the model:
- Debits equal credits, and every account matches its bank statement
- VAT split by rate and treatment, including reverse charge and intra-EU purchases
- Payments matched to invoices by name, IBAN, or invoice number, never by amount alone, including early-payment discounts and one payment for several invoices. You confirm each match
- Depreciation, low-value assets, and the private-use share, such as part of a car or phone
- No booking in a closed period. A correction is a reversal, never an edit
When a period is complete
A month or quarter is complete when every booking and every VAT treatment is confirmed, every account has its statements, nothing is left on the suspense account, where unclear payments wait, and no document is still in review. Until then, the skill lists what's open instead of calling the period complete.
Missing receipts come first in every check, because they're the first thing your accountant asks for.
Cash basis or accrual, with your own chart of accounts
Cash-basis accounting, such as the German and Austrian Einnahmen-Ausgaben-Rechnung, or accrual accounting with an account for each customer and supplier. The skill comes with SKR03 and SKR04 for Germany, the Austrian standard chart, and a QuickBooks-style chart for the US. Your accountant's own chart works too.
For Austria, it splits payments to the tax office account (Abgabenkonto) by tax, books social insurance contributions (SVS) without VAT, and keeps the cash book.
Invoices and receipts from Billpal
Connected to Billpal, the skill reads your invoices and receipts with the amounts, VAT, and lines you've already checked, including your corrections. Documents still in review are held back.
If you ask, the skill marks an invoice as paid in Billpal once its payment is booked and you've confirmed the change.