Working out where to start with AI is the hard part. This session keeps it simple: a few everyday jobs that don't need much thought but quietly eat your time, run live on Alex's own company books, warts and all.
Alex posts journals into Xero from Excel, reconciles a supplier statement and has the agent fill in a budget-versus-actuals workbook. Oli then rolls an accruals schedule forward and shows how client notes and saved files give the agent a memory.
Key takeaways
- Give the agent instructions in plain English, the way you'd brief a colleague. It reads your files, asks about anything it isn't sure of and waits for your sign-off before posting.
- Journals: upload your journal files and it drafts each one, checks it balances and lets you choose draft or approved, cash or accrual, and attach evidence before you post to Xero.
- Supplier statements: it matched every line of one statement and found a duplicate payment to a consultant on another.
- Ad hoc Excel work: give it a budget workbook and ask it to fill in the actuals. It worked out the file's structure and completed it from the ledger in about three minutes.
- Accruals: upload last month's schedule and it ties the opening balance, finds missing accruals and reversals, applies your materiality rule and drafts the journal for review.
- Client and practice notes act as the agent's memory, for example your fixed asset policy or which contractors need an accrual every month.
- You can watch the agent's reasoning step by step, so you can check how it reached each answer.
- Existing Translucent customers can turn the agents on with no setup. New users connect Xero or QuickBooks and the agents start working on that data straight away.
Read the transcript
Alex: Hi everyone, and welcome to our second fireside. Thanks for giving us your lunchtime. I'm Alex, one of the co-founders, and I'm joined by Oli, another co-founder. Today we're covering the basics of getting started with Translucent. We're recording, so we'll send the recording afterwards, and there's a Q&A box for your questions.
Alex: The plan: a quick explanation of Translucent's AI agents in plain terms, why we're running these sessions, then two demos. I'll show some simple everyday jobs, and Oli will run a more complex job to show what the agent can do when you work with it.
Alex: Our first poll asked where you are with AI. Lots of you have used it for general things like marketing content or documents, and fewer on the books. That matters, because we want you to think of Translucent as your new bookkeeping assistant. If you use ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot, it works the same way. The difference is that our agents sit on top of your accounting data. They have direct access to all your transactions, accounts and history, and finance-specific rules that tell them how to act. They aren't guessing from files you've copied and pasted.
Alex: You give them instructions in plain English, the way you'd brief the person next to you. They read the files, do the job and come back with questions on anything they're not sure of. Anything you've asked them to post or draft comes back to you for review and sign-off first.
Alex: We're not trying to replace judgement. We want to take away everything that happens before your judgement is needed: the typing, the ticking, the data collection, copying from one file to another. Every conference and software vendor is talking about AI transforming the practice, but very few firms are feeling the benefit yet, mostly because they don't know where to start. These firesides are about practical ways to start: real work on real data, every three weeks, shaped by your questions.
Alex: We'll run things live so you can see how long they take. I'm using my own company's books, so this is real data. If you're an existing customer, you'll recognise the side panel with our original products. The new section at the top is jobs: specific tasks I've started with the agent.
Alex: To start one, I click New job, choose post a journal, pick May and June, and add my files. That gives the agent direction. We've written a run sheet for each job, so it knows what to do when posting to Xero, and the files tell it what to post. It starts straight away, and you can open its thought process to see the steps and skills it's using. Users have told us trust is the big thing, so you can read exactly how it reached an answer.
Alex: While that runs, here's a supplier statement reconciliation I started earlier. I asked it to reconcile a supplier statement against the ledger. For one supplier, all 19 statement lines matched. For my marketing consultant, 10 of 11 matched, and the one that didn't was because I'd paid them twice. It gives me the output, and I can open the statement itself to check the charges, payments and opening and closing balances it reconciled.
Alex: Back to the journal job: I'd given it PDFs by mistake, so I restarted it with the right Excel files. That's live demos for you.
Alex: You don't have to use one of our defined jobs. If an awkward task lands on your desk, just ask. Here I've asked it to complete a budget-versus-actuals workbook with this year's actuals and uploaded the file. It reads the file from scratch, works out the structure and fills in the actuals columns. Writing back into Excel matters because that's where most of you work: you keep your process, roll work forward and reconcile spreadsheets against the ledger. This morning it took about three minutes, enough time to make a coffee.
Alex: Meanwhile the journals are ready. For May it's a sales and merchant fees reallocation, with debits and credits checked to balance. I click post, it posts to Xero and prepares June. You can edit any journal before posting, choose draft or approved, cash or accrual, and attach supporting files. We're now making it handle files with dozens of journals, and several files at once. And the budget workbook is done: every actual filled in, and when I checked it against my P&L this morning it was right.
Oli: Our long-term aim is to help with the whole month-end close. Last time we showed prepayments. We also have a direct connection to Companies House, so you can tie the shareholding in Xero back to the Companies House records. Today I'll run accruals and show our file management and memory.
Oli: Accruals work best if you have a template you always use. I uploaded my May accrual schedule and asked it to update it for June. It ties the opening balance, then looks for accruals it should post: monthly entries and reversals, consistency with the prior three months, and anything in the transactions after month end that looks like an accrual. It calculated materiality from a document explaining our approach, tied the opening position, found missing journals and pointed out that I need to post the May reversals in June.
Oli: It then drafts the journal. You stay in charge, so there's a review step: check it, and if you're happy, post it to Xero. Because we have a live two-way feed with Xero, it then pulls the actual balance into my Excel sheet and shows the monthly movement tying back. We have prepayments set up the same way, and deferred income is next.
Oli: We've also added client and practice notes. You can record accounting policies, such as fixed assets always on a straight-line basis, or tell it that if no invoice arrives from certain contractors in a period, it should create an accrual. You can save files to the client's files and import them into any chat, so the agent has the extra context each time. It acts as a memory.
Oli: Someone asked about Google Sheets. Not yet. We'd love to connect to your drive so the agent can find your month-end file itself. For now you upload Excel or Google Sheets files and download the result.
Oli: I'm an accountant and I do our books, so I know how many small things never get done. The other day I asked the agent to find and merge duplicate contacts in Xero, something I'd never have found time for.
Alex: We use it a lot internally, and those peripheral jobs you've always wanted to tick off become very quick. Sometimes it's just data gathering, like finding journals created in July but posted to other periods. The point is that there are defined jobs you can launch, and it can pick up ad hoc work as long as you give it clear instructions, the right documents and oversight.
Alex: If you're an existing customer, there's no setup: ask us and we'll turn it on. If you're new, we'll set you up with a trial, and the agents start working as soon as you connect your Xero or QuickBooks files. We're onboarding new users every week and supporting each one properly. Tell us which jobs give you headaches and we'll show them in a future fireside. Thanks for joining.