Ask Your Books a Question
The question always arrives at the wrong time. It is Tuesday afternoon, you are pricing a job or deciding whether to take on someone new, and you want to know whether last month was better or worse than the one before. Or whether that large invoice ever landed. Or what your accountant is still waiting on from you.
You have books. You get management accounts. But the answer to a specific question, right now, has always meant writing an email and waiting for someone to look. Not because anyone is slow — because it is a queue, and your question is in it.
Certanta clients can now just ask.
What that looks like
Inside your accounts in the client portal there is a box. You type a question the way you would say it out loud, and the answer comes back in a few seconds, off your own ledger. Ask how last month went and you get something like this:
August 2026 came in at a profit of HKD 58,035, as posted through 31 August. A little softer than July: revenue eased about 4% to HKD 404,680, but gross margin held and overheads were flat, so profit slipped only around HKD 4,000.
Not a dashboard to interpret. An answer, with the numbers in it.
The three things clients actually ask
In testing, almost everything falls into three buckets.
How are we doing? Last month against the month before, the quarter so far, where the money went. The kind of thing you would otherwise wait for the monthly pack to tell you.
Who owes us, and how late are they? Your receivables, aged, with the invoices behind them — the answer you want before you decide whether to chase someone.
What are you still waiting on from me? This is the one that comes up most, and the one that saves both sides the most time. It lists the transactions on your bank that have no paperwork against them yet. No email thread, no "I think we still need the March receipts" — just the list, on screen, whenever you want it.
That last one quietly removes the most tedious exchange in bookkeeping.
Why you can trust the number
An answer that arrives in two seconds is only worth having if it is right, so the design went into exactly that.
It does not do the arithmetic. The assistant never adds up your ledger. Every total, movement and aging comes from the same reporting engine that produces your management accounts and your year-end audit pack; the assistant asks it for the figure and tells you what came back. The reason is not that these systems are bad at sums — it is that they are usually right, and "usually" is not a standard you can keep a set of books to.
It only sees what a person has already checked. It reads posted entries: the ones a bookkeeper has reviewed and signed off. A receipt you uploaded this morning is not in the figures yet, and if you ask about it the assistant says it has not been posted — not that it does not exist. Every figure it quotes also carries the date it runs to, because an open month runs to the last entry posted, not to today.
It shows its working. Under each answer is a line naming what it read. If a number ever looks off, you can see where it came from.
What stays with people
It will not tell you whether to make an offshore profits claim, or how a transaction should be treated. Ask a tax question and it declines and offers to put it to your accountant — drafting the message, showing you the wording, and sending nothing until you say so. It cannot post, reclassify or change anything either. It reads.
That division is the point rather than a limitation we are apologising for. The quick factual lookups — what is the number, who owes what, what is missing — are exactly the questions that should not need a person. Which leaves your accountant's time for the ones that do.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from the AI in other accounting software?
Most of it sits on books you keep yourself, so the answer is only ever as good as the data you typed in. This sits on books a bookkeeper has reviewed and posted, which is why it can answer with a straight figure rather than a caveat. It also never calculates anything itself — every total comes from the same engine that produces your management accounts and your audit pack.
Can it see my books if I am not a Certanta client?
No. It only reads the books of a company you are already signed in to in the client portal, and that check runs on every question rather than once at login. There is no way to ask it about another company's numbers.
Does it use my books to train an AI model?
No. Your ledger is read at the moment you ask, used to answer, and not retained for training. We use Anthropic's API, where business inputs are not used to train models.
What if an answer looks wrong?
Every figure comes from a lookup against your posted ledger, and each answer names what it read, so you can see where a number came from. If it still looks wrong, that is a bookkeeping question rather than a software one — ask the assistant to raise it and it will draft a message to your accountant and send it once you approve the wording.
Will it tell me whether to make an offshore profits claim?
No. It declines tax and legal questions and offers to pass them to your accountant. It reports what is in your books; deciding what a position should be is judgement, and that stays with people.
Try it on a real set of books
The self-guided demo opens a company with a full year behind it — ledger, statements, documents, outstanding items. Ask it anything you would ask your own accounts. Nothing to install, no sign-up.
Open the demoFigures above are from the demo company, not a real client. The assistant is live on the demo and is being switched on for client accounts. This article is general information, not advice for your specific situation.