Some jobs are never quite important enough to fix but take hours every month. In this session Oli uses payroll as the worked example, on Translucent's own books.
He posts the payroll journal from a payroll report, reconciles three months of payroll against the ledger, and turns a finished chat into a saved job the agent follows the same way next month, for one client or across a whole practice.
Key takeaways
- Payroll journal: upload the payroll report and bring in the saved department allocation and employee files. The agent drafts the journal splitting salaries across department codes, and you check it against the report before submitting to Xero.
- Payroll reconciliation: give it several months of payroll reports and it reconciles each account against the ledger. In the demo it found a pension difference that was a transposition error.
- It reads PDFs, Excel files and screenshots. Oli has used it to reconcile a full year of payroll journals and pension files against HMRC records.
- Every match links to the transaction in Xero, so you can audit anything with one click.
- Turn any finished chat into a reusable job. The agent writes up the method, inputs and steps for you to review and edit, then saves it to the client's files.
- Save a job to your practice files and you can run it for any client in the practice.
- Already have written instructions, such as a VAT working file? Upload them and the agent turns them into a job it can follow.
- Nothing is posted to Xero automatically. There's always an approval step between the agent and your books.
Read the transcript
Alex: Hi everyone, and welcome to Fireside number four. We're recording and will send it out afterwards. It's great to see so many returning faces: about half of the people registering have been to one before. I'll stay quiet today and answer questions in the chat, and Oli will do the talking.
Alex: A quick reminder for anyone new: Translucent is an AI platform built to automate the manual, recurring work that accountants, bookkeepers and in-house finance teams do every month. You give it instructions on how you do the job and the documents it needs, as you would a new team member. It asks clarifying questions about how you want the job done, does the work, and comes back for review and sign-off. Today we'll go straight into the monthly payroll process, and show how to save a job so you can reuse it in later periods.
Oli: I'm a trained accountant and I run Translucent on our own books, so I'll show you what I've been doing with payroll to save time: booking the payroll journal from the report, a reconciliation, and building a reusable job.
Oli: From the job list I pick journal entry, choose the entity, select last month and add the September payroll report. Then I bring in two files saved for this entity: our department allocation by percentage and the employee master file. Saved files can be brought into any chat. It's like giving someone just the two documents they need, rather than dumping every file on their desk. I add a little context, asking it to split salaries across each department code, and let it run. Bigger jobs can take a few minutes, and you can open its reasoning if you want to see what it's doing.
Oli: While that runs, I'll start another. A common problem: my payroll figures differ over the last few months and I need to reconcile each account. I upload the payroll reports for the last three months, pick the reconciliation job, and ask it to reconcile June, July and August. I recently did this for our year-end: a full year of payroll journals, pension files and screenshots from HMRC, and the agent reconciled them. It reads PDFs, screenshots, anything.
Oli: Next, how to make a repeatable job. We've built many jobs you can pick, but you may have one that's specific to your company. Here's a chat where I reallocated payroll journals from a single account across each department account. To turn it into something the agent follows every month, I run the define accounting job skill at the end of the chat. It asks a few questions or simply writes the document: when to use it, the inputs, and the steps it will follow. You review it, ask the agent to change it, and when you're happy, save it.
Oli: Saving to client files means it lives with that company and you can bring it into any chat for the agent to follow. It's like giving a new hire your playbook. If you're a practice, you can save it at practice level instead, for a job you want to run across all your clients, and bring it into any client in the practice.
Oli: Here's the draft. I ask it to add a step for the month, it asks a clarifying question, and then offers to save it to the client files. I approve. You can also download it as a text file, edit it on your laptop and upload it again. Some users upload instructions they already have, like a VAT working file, and ask the agent to turn that process into a job. It checks what it can do and creates the job from your existing instructions.
Oli: Now in a new chat I import the saved job and ask it to run on the September books.
Oli: The journal entry is finished. It has drafted the journal from the payroll report. Comparing figures, employer National Insurance agrees and the pension figure agrees, so it's drafted correctly. It never posts to Xero automatically: there's always an approval step, so it can't change your books without permission. I submit it and it goes into Xero. I then ask it to fill in our pension template file, ready to upload to the pension provider.
Oli: The reconciliation is a bigger job, as it checks all the data in our books. There's a progress bar showing where it is in the plan. You can make a cup of tea, or start other jobs, as I do.
Alex: While Oli finds a finished run: we always run these demos live, nothing preloaded. For you, the point is that you can start several jobs at once and let them run while you do other work.
Oli: Here's one I made earlier. It compared all my ledger accounts against the payroll reports for three months. Salaries agree, everything agrees except the pension contribution. It looks like a classic transposition error, where two digits were swapped: the difference divides exactly by nine. It also gives line-by-line matches against the supporting documents, with a link to each ledger transaction that opens it straight in Xero, so it's easy to audit.
Alex: Payroll is a job repeated every period, by practices across many clients and by groups across many entities. You build it once, save it as a method and repeat it, starting further along each time. Investing in that setup and writing down the method is where the time savings really come from.
Alex: What's next: we're building a new jobs management screen where you create the set of jobs you do each period and roll them forward, followed by scheduling, so jobs run at a set point in the month and are ready for review when you arrive. Journal, invoice and bill posting are already live, credit notes are coming shortly, and the agent can already update your chart of accounts, tracking categories, coding and tax rates. Prepayments, accruals and deferred revenue work today, and they're getting a big update in the next few weeks.
Alex: We're bringing new users onto the platform now and supporting each one through setup. Answer the poll if you'd like access or a call. We'll be back in three weeks. Thanks for listening.