AI & Automation Guide

What AI-assisted work means in Kraal

Kraal includes an AI assistant that you can reach from any view in the application. It helps accelerate recurring accounting tasks, from triggering syncs to reconciling bank transactions to creating documents.

AI-assisted workflows are intended to:

• Accelerate repetitive operational steps.
• Handle ambiguous bank reconciliation matches.
• Surface analysis, explanations, and recommendations.
• Create accounting documents on your behalf.

Three ways Kraal works for you

There are three distinct ways to put Kraal's AI to work, and it helps to know which one you want on any given page.

1. Explain (the Kraal button). A read-only briefing of the page you are on. Click Explain page in the top-right of a workspace page and the Kraal panel opens on its Ask tab with an explanation of what you are looking at and what needs attention — then ask follow-up questions in the same panel without leaving the page. It never changes anything. Use it to get oriented fast.
2. Work with Kraal (the driver). An assisted work session that drives a real workflow with you, for example a close catch-up, a transaction-processor review, a bank reconciliation, an AR follow-up, or a queue sweep. It prepares the work and proposes each change for your approval. It gains no new authority: every posting still runs through the same approval and audit rails as if a person had drafted it. Look for the Work with Kraal button, or a workflow-specific label such as Run Kraal Sweep on Work List.
3. Autonomous, reviewed by exception. For the routine, low-risk, trust-earned work in approved families, Kraal posts on its own through the supervised-decision engine and you review only the exceptions. This is governed by the Autonomy & Trust page and is always reversible. See Autonomous work and review by exception below.

Explain helps you understand a page. Work with Kraal acts on a page with your approval. Autonomous work runs the routine and escalates the judgment calls. The three are complementary, not competing.

What the AI assistant can do

Trigger syncs and check status

• "Sync my QuickBooks" — triggers a QuickBooks data sync.
• "Any sync errors?" — checks integration status and surfaces issues.
• "Sync bank transactions" — triggers a bank feed refresh.

Bank reconciliation

• "Help me reconcile the bank" — runs AI-assisted matching on unreconciled transactions.
• The AI handles ambiguous matches that smart matching alone can't resolve confidently.

Account reconciliation and close

• Ask "What is blocking this period?" or "What should happen next?" and Kraal explains the current Reconciliation Hub or Close Sheet state for the exact client, entity, and period.
• Kraal can prepare bounded actions such as starting or rerunning a reconciliation, requesting a standard client input, or building a candidate close package when the current records supply everything required.
• If the scope or action details are incomplete, Kraal asks for clarification or sends you to the exact work item. It does not guess an account type, status, or disposition.
• Approving an adjustment, accepting a judgment, signing a reconciliation, reopening a reviewed period, final approval, and locking the books remain human decisions.

See Reconciliation Hub and The Close Sheet.

Create documents

• "Create an invoice for Acme Corp" — creates accounting documents using AI skills.
• "Record a payment from Client X" — creates payment entries.

Analysis and reporting

• Get AI-powered explanations on financial reports.
• Ask questions about trends, anomalies, or specific accounts.

General assistance

• Ask about workflow status, next steps, or how to use a feature.
• The AI works within your current client context.

Guided AI playbooks

• Run approved playbooks for common accounting workflows.
• Use playbooks for repeatable work such as AP payment runs, AR collections, bank reconciliation, client document chases, close catch-up, inventory flow, queue sweeps, report pack delivery, and transaction review.
• Every consequential playbook action is proposed for approval; treat run summaries as work to review, still subject to your firm's professional review process.

Work with Kraal (the driver)

Work with Kraal starts an assisted work session on the page you are on. Instead of typing a fresh instruction, you pick up a real workflow that Kraal drives with you.

• It appears on operational surfaces as a Work with Kraal button, or as a workflow-specific label. On Work List it reads Run Kraal Sweep, and on a close it reads as a catch-up or close-period action.
• The session is resumable. You can leave and come back, and Kraal continues from where the work stands.
• Every change is proposed for your approval before it posts. The driver holds no direct posting power of its own. Approvals flow through the same authority, period, idempotency, audit, and governance rails as any human-drafted change.
• A sweep reports back what happened as completed, skipped, held for you, and rejected. Held for you means Kraal prepared the work but deliberately left the decision to a person, which is the safe default when anything is uncertain.

Use Work with Kraal when you want Kraal to do the legwork of a whole workflow and hand you the decisions, rather than approving items one field at a time.

Explain page (the Kraal panel)

The Explain page button in the top-right of a workspace page opens the Kraal panel on its Ask tab with a briefing of that exact page.

• The explanation covers what is on the page and what needs your attention, and you can ask follow-up questions in the same panel without leaving your work.
• The panel's other tabs keep the rest of the agent one click away: Today (Kraal's daily briefing and agenda), Review (everything waiting on your judgment), and Activity (the receipts ledger for the client in scope).
• It never posts, sends, or changes anything. It is purely for orientation.
• Use it when a page is busy and you want the shortest path to "what matters here and what do I do next."

Explain answers "what am I looking at." Work with Kraal answers "help me do this."

Autonomous work and review by exception

For the lowest-risk, highest-volume work, Kraal can post on its own and let your team review only the exceptions. This is the autonomy step-change, and it is governed, gated, and reversible.

What can run on its own

Kraal auto-posts an item only when it clears every rail at once: the work family is trusted for this client, the amount is inside the automatic materiality ceiling for that trust level, the evidence confidence is high enough, and the period is open.

• Can earn automatic handling: transaction categorization batches and AR reminders inside an already-approved cadence.
• Always asks a person, regardless of trust: AP payment execution, period locks, and any client-facing send.
• Cold start: a new client or an unproven family auto-posts nothing. Trust is earned from a run of clean, accepted work, never granted by default.

Recurring Journal Entries follow a separate workflow. Check Recurring Entries for the current posting behavior before relying on a scheduled entry during close.

The per-family auto-clear ceiling is automatic. It is derived from the family's earned trust and the client's materiality, and moves up or down on its own as a family proves out or gets corrected. You steer autonomy by choosing the client's mode and preset and by approving or tightening families, not by hand-tuning a per-family dollar amount. See Autonomy and Safety for the full guardrail list and the client-level caps.

Steering it on Autonomy & Trust

The Autonomy & Trust page (left nav, "Automatic posting and receipts") is the control surface:

• Kraal run policy shows whether the client is enabled for automatic posting, or paused.
• Per-Family Trust shows, for each work family, whether Kraal posts on its own or still asks first, and whether a safety brake has paused a scope after a recent correction.
• Pending Promotion Proposals are families or vendors Kraal is asking to handle on its own. Approving grants standing authority for that scope. It does not post anything to the books by itself. Only owner or firm-admin roles can approve a promotion.
• You can revoke or tighten any family at any time. Tightening only ever removes authority, never widens it.

Seeing what it did

On Daily Board, the What Kraal did without you card counts the items handled automatically since midnight and links to the audit trail. The Awaiting your judgment queue is the exception queue: only the items Kraal did not auto-clear. When you correct something Kraal posted, that family scope demotes automatically and starts asking again until it re-earns trust.

For the full walkthrough, see the scenario Let Kraal Run the Routine (Review by Exception).

Core operating loop

1. Provide a clear instruction with client and period context.
2. The AI launches a task tracked through task detail, Work List, or ChatIQ depending on where the work started.
3. Monitor status and the event feed as the task runs.
4. Review outputs and artifacts when complete.
5. Approve, refine, or rerun as needed.

Instruction quality best practices

Use prompts that are:

• Specific: name the objective and expected output.
• Scoped: include the time period and target context.
• Verifiable: ask for outputs that can be checked.

Example structure:

• Goal: what you need done.
• Scope: which client and period.
• Output: what format or result you expect.
• Guardrails: any constraints or assumptions.

Task lifecycle model

AI tasks move through these statuses:

• Queued — waiting to start.
• Running — actively executing.
• Waiting on you — paused until you provide input or approve a step.
• Completed — finished and ready for review.
• Failed — encountered an error (triage and rerun or escalate).
• Timed out — exceeded its time limit before finishing.
• Cancelled — stopped by a user.

AI-assisted work is tracked through task detail, the Activity Log, Work List, ChatIQ, or Audit Center depending on scope. Use the narrowest view that answers your review question.

Operationally:

• Treat completed as "ready for review," not automatic sign-off.
• Treat failed as a triage event — investigate, then rerun with corrected context or escalate.

Artifact review checklist

Before accepting AI-assisted outputs:

• [ ] Output corresponds to the requested scope and client.
• [ ] Key numbers and assumptions are plausible.
• [ ] Any exceptions are documented.
• [ ] Follow-up actions are assigned when needed.

Workflow library usage

Use workflow library entries when repeatable patterns exist. This improves consistency versus free-form prompting and helps teams standardize execution across clients.

For guided AI-driven work, use AI Playbooks. Playbooks give the AI a narrower objective and help keep outputs consistent across clients and periods.

Safety and governance guardrails

• Keep human validation in the loop for critical financial outcomes.
• Use role-appropriate permissions for who can initiate and approve actions.
• Maintain an auditable trail through task event logs and artifacts.
• Review proposed work before approving it, and review auto-posted routine work by exception — every automatic post carries a receipt and a one-click undo.
• Do not use playbook output as automatic sign-off for accounting changes.