Introduction

Better Accountant is an AI-assisted accounting workbench for firms that handle document-heavy client work and need source-backed year-end review, not just extraction.

It is built around a practical loop:

1. Collect source documents in a firm-scoped data room.
2. Validate, deduplicate, and store files before expensive processing starts.
3. Parse documents into text, pages, and accounting facts.
4. Review engagement checkpoints that explain what changed, why, and which source evidence supports it.
5. Reconcile bank activity, draft or post journal entries, prepare workpapers, and finalize financial snapshots.
6. Keep billing, limits, roles, and provider keys enforced in the backend.

The product is not a black-box bookkeeping bot. It is a controlled workbench for accountants who need traceable status, recoverable failures, source citations, and explicit review checkpoints.

Who it is for

Better Accountant is designed for accounting firms, firm operators, and finance reviewers who work across multiple clients and engagements.

The first release focuses on firms that need to move from messy client files to reliable workpapers with less manual sorting, extraction, and follow-up.

Core surfaces

Surface	Purpose
Dashboard	See work that needs attention across documents, clients, usage, and setup.
Data Room	Upload, classify, filter, retry, archive, and export source documents.
Clients	Keep client records, entity metadata, and engagement context together.
Engagements	Track period work, checkpoint exceptions, review status, chat, worksheets, and reconciliation.
Settings	Manage AI providers, team access, billing, usage, and workspace defaults.

Operating model

The browser never writes accounting state directly. The app calls Convex mutations and actions, and Convex enforces organization scope, plan limits, storage limits, duplicate detection, queue state, and accounting invariants.

The parser service is isolated behind a shared secret. AI runs through encrypted bring-your-own-key provider credentials.