AI Features & Skills

Kraal uses AI to automate accounting workflows, extract data from documents, categorize transactions, reconcile accounts, and generate financial reports. This page covers the full range of AI capabilities available to you.

Where AI work happens

You will usually meet Kraal in two places:

• Ask Kraal — the panel beside the page. It answers first, names the page, and can take you there. Drafts wait in the Inbox. Nothing posts from the chat.
• Inbox — signatures, reviews, and anything waiting on the client, including a draft Ask Kraal prepared.

AI Skills

Skills are organized by outcome. You start them from Ask Kraal, or from the page where the work belongs. A skill is a structured automation provided by Kraal. A Saved Action is a reusable shortcut you or your firm creates.

1. Data Extraction

Upload documents — invoices, bank statements, receipts, tax forms — and the AI extracts structured data automatically. Document types are detected on upload, so you do not need to classify them manually.

2. Transaction Processing (GL Coding)

The AI categorizes transactions against your chart of accounts. Each suggested GL account mapping includes a confidence score so you can quickly identify items that need manual review.

3. Account Reconciliation

Match bank transactions to general ledger entries automatically. You can set how closely amounts must match before a match needs your review.

4. Financial Reporting

Generate standard financial reports and KPIs, including:

• Profit & Loss summary
• Balance sheet
• Variance analysis
• Cash flow statements

5. Data Analysis

Analyze and visualize financial data with charts and graphs. Capabilities include trend analysis, period-over-period comparisons, and forecasting.

6. Compliance & Tax

Apply tax codes based on jurisdiction-specific rules and validate transactions for compliance. The AI flags potential issues before they reach your ledger.

7. System Integration

Export data to external systems in standard formats:

• QuickBooks (QBO and IIF)
• CSV
• Bank import format

Cascade (Multi-Step AI Planning)

For complex requests, the AI uses Cascade to break work into a step-by-step plan. You can:

1. Submit a complex request (e.g., "Prepare the month-end close for March")
2. Review the plan the AI generates before any work begins
3. Approve the plan to start execution
4. Monitor progress through each step in real time

This gives you full visibility and control over multi-step processes.

The Kraal Button

Every workspace carries one Kraal button — the single place to meet your AI agent. It opens a side panel with four tabs — Ask, Review, and Activity, with Today set apart at the right edge:

• Ask — ask natural-language accounting questions about the client in scope and get answers without leaving your page. While Kraal works, it narrates what it is doing — "Reading trial balance…", then a done or failed mark per read — and the answer streams in as formatted text. Ask is page-aware: starter prompts like Explain this page are pre-loaded with what you're looking at, and the same Explain page buttons in page headers open this tab directly. Ask can also take you to the page you need, and it works across your whole portfolio when no client is selected — see Ask Kraal to open a page.
• Review — everything waiting on your judgment, in one ranked queue you can resolve inline. The tab shows a count when items are pending.
• Activity — the receipts ledger, so you can always see what the agent did and why, including what was handled across your clients.
• Today — the day's decisions in one list: "N decisions waiting," with each card chipped by what you'd do (unblock, approve, review, answer) and groupable by action, money, or client. Actions confirm in place with an Undo, the addressed state is shared with your team, and the bottom strip tallies what was handled today with a link to receipts.

The panel is the same Ask Kraal on every page. It follows the app's color mode, and it is an entry point, not a new authority level: every action inside it follows the same approvals, autonomy policy, and audit trail as the full workspace pages.

Ask Kraal to open a page

You do not have to hunt through the sidebar to get somewhere. While you are working in a client, ask Kraal for the page you want and it opens it for you:

• "open invoices"
• "open bills"
• "open payments"
• "open bank rec"
• "open the chart of accounts"

These are examples, not a fixed list — ask the way you would say it out loud.

When Kraal moves you:

• The page opens in your workspace with the same client still in scope. You do not have to reselect anything.
• The Kraal panel stays open, so you can keep asking without reopening it.
• A brief Kraal moved you here. notice confirms the move, and the conversation records it — for example, "Opened the Chart of Accounts page for you."

Two things worth knowing:

• Your own clicks take priority. If you navigate somewhere yourself, Kraal leaves you there. It will not pull you off a page you chose.
• Ask for a page that doesn't exist and nothing moves — Kraal answers with the closest real place to look.

Opening a page changes nothing in the books. It is navigation, not an accounting action.

One client at a time

Kraal works in the client you have open. That is the client it reads, the client it answers from, and the only client it will navigate within.

If you ask about another client's books — or ask to open one of their pages — Kraal stays put and tells you which client to switch to, so you can select it and ask again. You will not get an answer drawn from a different client's records, and Kraal will not move you into another client's workspace on its own.

Switch clients from the client selector, then ask your question again in the new context.

Working across your portfolio

With no client selected, the same assistant steps up a level and works across the clients you are allowed to see. Use it for the start-of-day triage questions:

• "who's blocked?"
• "which clients are most at risk this close?"
• "what should I do first?"

It can open workspace-level pages the same way — for example, "open accounting."

When a question really belongs to one client, Kraal says so rather than guessing: it names the client the answer lives in and carries your question over, so you can switch into that client and pick up without retyping it.

Ask Kraal Composer

For work you want to hand off, the Ask Kraal composer is the conversational assistant that turns instructions into reviewable AI tasks. Ask a question or delegate a job — about a client's financials, a specific transaction, or how to perform a task — and get answers or a tracked task in context. From the Kraal panel's Ask tab, choose Delegate to Kraal to escalate a question into the composer.

When the result includes report artifacts, review the source notes and generated files before sending client-facing material. If a result is marked provisional, regenerate or verify it from live books before delivery.

AI Playbooks

Playbooks are guided work sessions run by Kraal's AI engine on real accounting workflows. They are useful when you want a repeatable, approval-gated process instead of a one-off chat response.

Current playbooks drive work such as AP payment runs, AR collections passes, bank reconciliation, client document chases, close catch-up, inventory document flow, work queue sweeps, report pack delivery, and Upload & process review sessions.

Playbooks stay inside review and approval. Kraal assesses live state, batches the work, and proposes each consequential action; nothing is posted or sent before a person approves it, and judgment items are routed to you.

See AI Playbooks for the current playbook list and usage guidance.

AI Task Lifecycle

Every AI task moves through a defined lifecycle:

Queued > Running > Completed

Along the way a task may enter Waiting on you when it needs your input or approval before it can continue. Tasks can also end in Failed (an error occurred), Timed out, or Cancelled (stopped by a user). You can track each task's current status from task detail, the Activity Log, Work List, or the Audit Center depending on the scope of review.

Slash Commands

Type slash commands in the chat panel to trigger workflow shortcuts — for example, /pbc kicks off a Prepared by Client request.

Slash commands can be scoped to your user account or shared across your organization. Commands use a simple template syntax for configurable parameters.

Customize AI

Adjust how the AI behaves on a per-client or per-organization basis. Customization options let you set preferences for categorization rules, reporting formats, and default behaviors so the AI aligns with your firm's standards.

What Kraal does on its own

Each client is on Max or Assisted. On Max, Kraal does the routine work within the rules your firm sets. On Assisted, Kraal prepares the work and a person approves before it posts or contacts anyone. Pause stops all new automatic work.

Scheduled recurring Journal Entries are a separate workflow: Kraal generates them as drafts for review and submission. See Recurring Entries before relying on one during close.

Reading, drafting, and explaining do not by themselves post. Ask Kraal does not post from the conversation.

➡️ See How Kraal earns autonomy and Autonomy & Safety.

For how third-party model providers are used with client data, see How Kraal uses AI models.