Handing work over only saves you time if you trust how it comes back. In this session Oli sets up month-end jobs live in Translucent, from a process document or from scratch, and runs them on a demo company connected to Xero.
You'll see how a job's plan is agreed before it runs, how the agent reads the invoice behind each transaction and flags mismatches, and how journals come back for review before anything is posted.
Key takeaways
- Set up a job by uploading the process document you already use, or describe the job and the agent asks questions until the plan is clear.
- Group jobs into a project, such as month-end, year-end or a quarterly VAT review, and run the whole project each period.
- Before each run, the agent shows the plan it agreed with you and the instructions it will follow, so every month is done the same way.
- It reads the invoice attached to each transaction in Xero or QuickBooks and flags anything that doesn't match what was keyed in, such as the wrong supplier or a missed prepayment.
- It updates the Excel schedules you upload, such as prepayments and fixed assets, and ties them back to the balances in your books.
- It proposes journals for you to review. Nothing is posted to Xero until you approve it.
- Jobs that need your input are flagged, and work only moves to closed once someone on your team has reviewed and approved it.
Read the transcript
Alex: Hi everyone, and welcome to another Fireside. Thank you for giving us the time. Each session we aim to give you one or two things you can take away, whether you're new to Translucent or have been using it for a while.
Alex: Today is simple. You've set up Translucent and onboarded your new AI assistant. Now what? How do you get the productivity gains everyone says AI should give you? We'll run through a few slides quickly, then Oli will take you through a live demo, and we'll finish with what's coming next.
Alex: For anyone new: Translucent is an AI agent platform built to automate the manual finance work that accountants, bookkeepers and in-house finance teams do every month. It sits on top of your Xero and QuickBooks data. You give it the instructions and documents for a job, it does the work, and it brings it back to you for review and sign-off.
Alex: Handing work over only saves you time if you trust how it comes back. So today we'll show you how to create jobs that are done the way you would do them: the agent follows the same steps, reviews the same data and accounts, and gives you the same output each month that you'd produce yourself.
Oli: For those who don't know me, I'm an accountant working on the product, and before that I worked in-house as a fractional finance lead, so I've been through the pain of closing month-end late on a Friday. What we're building is the way to close it faster.
Oli: Here I've set up a demo company and added all our month-end jobs. You can set up any project you want, for example year-end or a quarterly VAT review, save it, and run it for the periods you choose. Then you set up the jobs inside it. There are Translucent jobs ready to use, such as accruals, prepayments and fixed assets, or you can make your own.
Oli: To make your own, you explain the job to the agent in one of two ways. If you already have a process document, upload it. I'll upload a PDF review document and the agent reads the process. If you don't have one, just describe it, for example "I want to run a director's loan review", and the agent comes back with questions: what format do you want the output in, which accounts should it look at. Answer them and it builds a plan you can read.
Oli: Once you're happy with the setup, you add the job to your board and it runs every month. Each month you kick off a new run and all your tasks are added.
Oli: When you start a job, it first shows you the plan you agreed and the instructions it will follow. In this prepayments example it ties the opening schedule back to the books, with a direct sync to Xero so it can pull the data at any time. Then it looks through the ledger for invoices that should be prepayments but are coded elsewhere, and raises them for review. I uploaded my September workbook, it worked through the steps and updated the schedule for October, tying the balance back to the books.
Oli: It also raised a couple of findings. It spotted an October invoice that looks like a prepayment and asked if I want it recoded to account 620. And by reading the underlying invoice, it found a supplier mistake: the bill was coded to one supplier, but the invoice is from a different one.
Oli: From there I can ask the agent to correct things or post journals. Here it has proposed my prepayments release journal. I check the coding, then post it back to Xero and submit it.
Oli: The agent flags where it needs help. That job needs attention because it has questions for me. Meanwhile my fixed asset close has run, found nothing that needs recoding, updated the Excel schedule I uploaded and proposed the depreciation journal, so I can submit that and close it off.
Oli: You kick off all your tasks, give the agent the documents, and everything moves to approved and closed, but only once you've reviewed and submitted it. That way you manage your whole month-end in one place and end up with a closing workbook. You can also upload one month-end schedule for a whole group, and the agent works across every entity and ties it back in one Excel workbook, so you can review it tab by tab.
Alex: That's the goal: make this structured and as repeatable as possible. One thing that might have gone unnoticed is that the agent now reads the actual invoice. Across the platform, not just in prepayments, it can open the attachments in your Xero or QuickBooks file, read what's on the invoice and check it against what was keyed in. If something doesn't match, it flags it and suggests an adjustment.
Alex: We also showed our plans for the first time. You choose how much work to hand over: start with a couple of jobs, such as posting a few journals or some variance analysis, and move up as you hand over more.
Alex: What's next: we're relaunching prepayments as a fully agentic job, and over the next few weeks we're working with accounting practices to build a BAS review for Australia and a VAT review for the UK and South Africa.
Alex: If you'd like access, or you want us to set up your month-end processes with you, book a call and we'll take you through it. Thanks for joining, and we'll be back in three weeks.