Explainer · Bookkeeping desk
AI assistant for bookkeepers: the four piles it works
An AI assistant for bookkeepers works the four piles that come back every week: bank reconciliation, coding transactions to accounts, the source document behind each entry, and the reminders on overdue invoices.
It reads what arrives, proposes the entry with its reason attached, and puts anything it could not read in front of you with the missing field named. The work it takes is preparation, and the acceptance stays yours.
That is the line between this desk and the one next to it: a bookkeeper records, an accountant reviews and signs, and the software drafts for both. The category explainer covers the full task split, the two occupations side by side, and ten questions to put to any vendor.
On this page: four piles · one receipt end to end · the numbers · what it will not do · FAQ
Desk at a glance
Bookkeeping
The desk, pile by pile
What arrives, what comes back, what waits for you
Products in this category demo the middle column and stay quiet about the third. The third column is the one that decides your month-end: what the software refuses to guess, and how it tells you it refused.
01 · reconciliation
Bank reconciliation
What arrives
A statement or bank-feed export on one side, the list of open invoices and bills on the other.
What the assistant returns
Payments paired with the invoice or bill they settle, each pair carrying both amounts and both dates. Everything that failed to pair lands in one list instead of a forced match.
What it holds back
A part-payment split across two invoices, a bank fee bundled into a transfer, an amount sitting between two candidates. Those come back as questions with both candidates attached.
02 · coding
Coding and posting
What arrives
A transaction with a merchant string, an amount, a date, and whatever card or project metadata rides along.
What the assistant returns
A proposed account from your chart of accounts with the reason printed beside it: the merchant it recognized, the rule it followed, the earlier entry it matched.
What it holds back
Whether a purchase is capitalized or expensed. That answer follows your policy and your jurisdiction, and it changes the tax result.
03 · source docs
Source documents
What arrives
Receipts, supplier invoices and statements, forwarded or uploaded as they turn up.
What the assistant returns
Merchant, amount, date, tax lines and currency as structured fields, attached to the entry they belong to, so a month-end packet carries the document behind every line.
What it holds back
A field it could not read. The draft carries a pending marker where the figure would go and the line waits for a person, because a silent default is how a wrong number enters a ledger.
04 · receivables
Overdue invoices
What arrives
The list of open invoices with their due dates and their ages.
What the assistant returns
One reminder per overdue invoice, in the tone you set, with the amount and the age of the debt attached to the draft.
What it holds back
Whether to send it. Every message waits for a person; the assistant has no send path of its own.
The same split across the whole accounting function, task by task, sits on the AI accounting assistant explainer, and the Unistaff role that runs this desk is on solutions / accounting.
Worked example
One receipt, end to end
Five steps, from the photo somebody forwarded to a line you accepted. Step four is the one worth asking a vendor to demonstrate live.
Arrives
A supplier receipt lands by forward or upload, as a photo, a PDF or an email body.
Read
Merchant, amount, date, tax lines and currency come off it as fields you can sort and search.
Proposed
An account from your chart of accounts is attached, with the reason for that account beside it.
Held
Anything unreadable carries a pending marker where the figure would go, naming the field it missed.
Yours
You accept, correct or reject the line. Your correction is the record the next receipt from that merchant follows.
A bookkeeping desk, in four numbers
15 h
Weekly hours the bookkeeping preset hands over, out of a 25-hour desk
ROI calculator preset — assumption, not a measurement
$2,598
Monthly loaded cost of those hours at $40 an hour
Open model: hours × loaded rate × 4.33 weeks
$149/mo
Flat price for one AI employee on that desk
Starter plan — published price
$49,210
Median US pay for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024
The three left-hand figures come from one open model — hours handed over × loaded hourly cost, against the flat monthly price — and every input is yours to change.
Pay figure: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024 — bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks.
Limits · Bookkeeping
What it will not do
Five limits, each a property of the product rather than a policy in an onboarding call. Ask any vendor for their version of this list; a product with no stated limits has yet to be examined.
Never
It cannot move money
The product ships no payment connector, so paying a supplier, issuing a refund and moving a balance sit outside what any configuration of it can do. Bookkeeping work leaves it as drafts and reconciliation prep.
Never
It cannot send a message on its own
Reminders to customers and questions to suppliers are written and then held. A person reads the draft and sends it, which keeps the customer relationship where it belongs.
Not today
It has no link into QuickBooks, Xero or a bank API
Meta ads is the one connector in the product. Documents and exports reach the assistant by form, forward and upload. A connection into an accounting system is scoped and built as part of a deployment, and it appears on the integrations page when its code ships.
Never
It cannot sign a filing
A tax authority holds a named person or firm responsible for what is filed. Software carries no standing and no liability, so the signature stays with your accountant.
Not today
Self-serve export is on the not-built list
Your data, conversations and documents stay in your account, and export or deletion happens on request. The security page keeps the built and not-built controls in one list so you can check before you commit.
Connector status is kept on the integrations page, the approval and kill-switch gates on the product page, and the built versus not-built control list on security.
Which desk are you buying for
Three labels that shop differently
Software marketing treats these three as synonyms. They buy on different evidence, and the demo that convinces one bores the other.
Bookkeeper
Buys on throughput and on behaviour under a bad document. The metric that matters is entries accepted without a correction, measured against the pile that went in. This page is written for that desk.
Accountant
Buys on the review packet: exceptions surfaced early, every figure traceable to its source document, deadlines carried on a list. The two occupations, with pay and outlook side by side, are compared on the category explainer.
Meeting assistant
A different product entirely: it joins a client call, transcribes it and drafts the follow-up, while the ledger stays untouched. Unistaff ships no meeting or transcription connector today, and the integrations page carries a status on every row.
Where Unistaff fits
A bookkeeping desk on a flat monthly rate
Our accounting role carries the open invoices, the receipt pile and the deadline list, and writes each reminder for you to send. It runs on the platform gates: drafts wait for a person, stored secrets are sealed with AES-256-GCM before the database, and one switch halts outbound writes.
Configuration from a role template takes under an hour and needs no code. Documents reach it by form, forward and export today, and a link into your accounting system is scoped as part of a deployment. We print that here so a logo cannot imply otherwise.
Frequently asked questions
It works the recurring piles on an operational desk: pairing payments with open invoices and bills, proposing an account for each transaction, pulling merchant, amount, date and tax off a receipt, and writing one reminder per overdue invoice. Each result is a draft with the reason beside it, and the bookkeeper accepts, corrects or rejects it.
The engine is the same and the output differs. A bookkeeper's assistant produces records: extracted fields, proposed codes, matched transactions. An accountant's assistant produces a review packet: the exceptions, the unmatched lines, the deadlines and the source document behind each figure, arranged for sign-off.
A separate category. A meeting assistant joins a client call, transcribes it and drafts the follow-up; it touches no ledger and reconciles nothing. Practices with heavy client-call loads often run both, usually from two vendors. Unistaff ships no meeting or transcription connector today.
It removes the retyping and the collecting, which is where the hours go. Judgment stays: whether a purchase is capital or operating, which period a prepayment lands in, whether an odd amount is fraud or an error, and whether a reminder should go out at all. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects recording roles down 6% through 2034 while review roles grow 5%, which is the same split seen from the labour-market side.
None out of the box. The platform ships one connector, Meta ads, and bookkeeping work arrives through forms, forwarded documents and exports. A QuickBooks or Xero connection is scoped and built as part of a deployment, and it lands on the integrations page when the code behind it ships.
The draft carries a pending marker where the figure would go and names the field it missed, and the line waits for a person. Holding the line is the point: a plausible default entered quietly is harder to find at month-end than a gap.
$149 per month on Starter, $599 on Scale, custom on Enterprise, charged per employee per month. The ROI calculator's bookkeeping preset models a 25-hour desk with 60% of it handed over at a $40 loaded hourly cost; those inputs are assumptions you can change, and the price is the published one.
Your chart of accounts, the tone you want reminders written in, the escalation ladder for overdue invoices, and a route for documents to arrive by. Configuration from a role template takes under an hour and needs no code; anything that requires a connector into your accounting system is scoped separately.