Professional workbook · Accounting and finance · 3 lessons
Leave with a process from your office or finance department specified in the Agent Architect’s Kit: the person who enters transactions doesn’t approve them, the agent never files or pays, passwords and bank details stay out of reach, and the check matches the statement.
Lessons
Leave with the list of ten processes and one mapped across six links, with the separation between execution and approval written down.
Leave with your agent’s context inventory and permissions matrix, with passwords, bank details, and one client’s data never crossing over to another.
Leave with the agent specification assembled in the kit from the accounting preset and rehearsed in an AI chat.
Before you start
The six links, the long-horizon request, the chain, the context inventory, the quality checklist, and the permissions matrix are explained in the course AI Work Architect. Here they are applied to the accounting firm and the finance department. Lesson 3's practice uses the Agent Architect Kit, with the accounting preset.
Accounting and finance workbook · Lesson 1
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to list the ten processes in your firm or finance department that an agent can perform, and map one of them across six links, with the line between performing and approving clearly drawn.
Accounting and finance have an advantage over any other area when it comes to introducing agents: governance already exists. The person who enters transactions doesn’t approve them; the person who pays doesn’t reconcile them; the person who signs is accountable. These rules have been in audit manuals for decades. What’s missing is applying them to a worker that does exactly what the instructions say. This lesson takes the processes that currently consume a week at a firm or finance department and shows where the agent steps in and where it stops, always before the signature.
↓ role to study
Auditors call it separation of duties the rule that whoever executes doesn’t approve. At an accounting firm, the assistant enters transactions and the accountant closes the books. At a company, the analyst prepares the payment and the controller approves it. For the agent, the rule translates directly: it executes (checks, classifies, prepares, follows up, calculates) and never approves, never submits anything to the government, never pays, and never closes the month.
That’s the line in this workbook. On the agent’s side, everything a well-trained assistant can do without asking for a signature. On the person’s side, everything that currently requires a signature, digital certificate, or bank password. It isn’t a limitation: it’s the same line that already exists, now written down for someone who doesn’t improvise.
Helena, an accountant at a firm with 60 clients, spends the first week of each month collecting documents and the second checking filings. When she listed what the assistant does without her signature, it came to 80% of the work: checking folders, following up on missing items, calculating tax forms, and preparing the outstanding-items list. The other 20% (reviewing the calculation, filing, signing) remains with her. The agent focuses on the 80%.
Before
From day 1 to 6, Helena and two assistants open 60 folders, compare them with the expected document list, send follow-up emails one by one, and track who responded in a spreadsheet. A week goes by, and on day 7, 15 clients are still missing documents.
After
The agent checks all 60 folders in the early hours of day 2, sends a standard follow-up for missing items, checks again whenever something arrives, and on day 6 at 8 a.m. delivers the list: 44 complete, 16 with the missing items listed for each. The assistants call only the 16.
The ten critical processes that almost every accounting office or finance department has: document follow-up from clients or departments; classification of entries; reconciliation banking; ancillary obligations (guides, declarations, what the government requests every month); payroll, in the collection and review stage; accounts payable; accounts receivable and follow-up; management reports; registration (opening, changes, powers of attorney, certificates with expiration dates); and recurring questions from clients or departments.
In all of them, the agent handles the repeatable work and stops before the signature. Choose the first one using the core-course criteria (repeated, more than one person, errors cost money) and one extra rule from this workbook: start with something that doesn’t file or pay. Document requests and reconciliation are natural candidates; filing a tax return and paying a vendor can wait until after months of clean records, and may never be appropriate.
Diego, a financial analyst at a company with 200 employees, handles accounts payable: 300 invoices a month, each checked against a purchase order and receipt before going to the controller for approval. It’s process six. The agent that checks the invoice, purchase order, and receipt and prepares the batch for approval handles administrative work from start to finish. The controller makes the payments, using a bank password the agent never sees.
Applying the course-base map to the firm's most common process. Input: from the 1st to the 5th, documents arrive by email and through the firm's app; the list of what each client must send already exists. Rule decisions: client hasn't sent the statement by the 5th? Send a reminder using the template. Document without a CNPJ or month? Set it aside and ask for it again. Judgment call: accept a document after the internal deadline? The accountant decides.
Action: check the folder against the list and send the standard reminder only for what's missing. Check: no reminder mentions an item that has already arrived; the client name and deadline are correct. Exception: client with two CNPJs in the same folder, document illegible for the second time, client who changed tax regime during the month. Result: on the 6th, the accountant knows which folders are complete and what's missing from each one. The restriction that must not be omitted: data from one client must never appear in another client's message.
In Helena’s first run, the agent asked a client for a statement that was already in the folder, but had a different filename than expected. The verification “no follow-up mentions an item that has already arrived” didn’t catch it because the agent didn’t recognize the file. The new rule: documents with nonstandard filenames go on the questions list, not into the follow-up. One line, and the problem didn’t happen again.
The accounting agent goes as far as the sign-off point and stops. Everything before that belongs to the agent; the signature, certificate, and password belong to the person.
In a company’s Finance department, the process has a different name but the same structure. Input: invoices due in the next 7 days, from the management system. Rule decisions: does the invoice have a matching purchase order and receipt? Does the amount match the order within the tolerance (2%)? Is the vendor on the approved list? Judgment: pay early to get a discount? The controller decides. Action: assemble the payment batch with the items that passed, and a list of those that didn't, with the reason.
Check: batch total matches the sum of the invoices; no vendor outside the approved list; no discrepancy above the tolerance in the batch. Exception: discrepancy above 2%, new vendor, duplicate invoice. Result: the controller approves a reviewed batch instead of 300 items one by one. The agent never gets near the bank: the batch goes to the system for approval, and payment is made by whoever has the password.
Diego thought the benefit would be time savings, and it was: two days down to two hours per week. But the controller noticed another benefit: in three months, the agent caught four duplicate invoices and a vendor whose bank details had changed without an update in the vendor records. Before, someone had to notice among 300 invoices. Now it’s a rule that runs every time.
Test yourself
The controller wants the agent to execute the bank payment after checking the batch “to save another day.” According to this workbook’s rule, what do you say?
Practice now 0/4 done
In about 12 minutes, list the ten processes at your firm or in your area, choose one that doesn’t file or pay anything, and map it in six links with the signature point marked.
It's your paper or spreadsheet, with no client or supplier data: you write processes, not entries. Nothing changes in the system. If a process seems to end with an agent action rather than a signature, mark it in the margin: that's a sign the line is in the wrong place.
You’ve just applied the separation of duties to an agent before it exists. This map goes into the kit in lesson 3, and the signature line becomes the “approval: not allowed” line in the matrix.
Summary
Accounting and finance workbook · Lesson 2
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to build your agent's context inventory and decide its permissions matrix, keeping digital certificates, passwords, and banking data out of reach, with a named owner for every row.
Accounting has a type of data that almost no other department has: the key that acts on the client’s behalf. A digital certificate, a government portal password, a bank password. Whoever has the key can file, pay, and sign. An agent with that key stops being an assistant and becomes a risk no contract can cover. The good news is the same as in the previous lesson: the agent doesn’t need the key to do 80% of the work. This lesson shows where the firm’s knowledge lives, what the agent can access, and what stays locked away.
↓ role to study
The context inventory for the base course, applied to accounting, always finds the same sources: the accounting system (chart of accounts, entries, compliance calendar); the clients’ documents (invoices, statements, payroll, in the app or by email); the government portals and tables (regime limits, tax rates, deadlines); the office spreadsheets (list of documents per client, billing templates); and the criteria, which is almost always in the accountant's and senior assistant's heads: what counts as a cost and what counts as an expense for each client, what to accept late, which client has special circumstances.
The first four sources are usually searchable. The fifth is what separates a generic agent from one that feels like an insider, and it takes an afternoon of writing for each client or client type. Half a page per client, with a clear name, in the firm's folder. It's the same in a company's finance department: the tolerance criteria, vendors with special agreements, and known exceptions are with the most experienced analyst.
Helena took inventory for document collection and came up with 12 entries. Ten were accessible. Two were amber: “what each client tends to submit late and how to follow up without offending them” (in her head) and “billing limits by tax regime” (in a January email). She wrote each one in a one-page document. The new assistant read them and said that was what she had needed most since she started.
In September 2026, an accounting agent runs in three ways. In the AI chat with project folder, you keep the list of expected documents, the billing template, and the written criteria, and attach what came in each week, with no banking information and clients identified by code. In the office application (those that receive documents from clients already offer automatic billing rules). And in the integration with the accounting system through the service account, where the agent reads folders and the calendar on its own, set up by whoever manages the system.
The inventory determines which path fits. If the main sources are spreadsheets and email, the first path works, and you learn at low cost. If they’re in the accounting system, ask the vendor whether it has a service endpoint and who can open it; this sounds technical, but it’s like asking whether the system exports reports: the answer is yes or no, and someone else does the building.
At the manufacturing company, Diego had everything in the management system: invoices, purchase orders, receipts, and vendor records. The system provider confirmed a service endpoint. The only item outside the system was the tolerance by vendor (2% by default, 5% for two freight vendors), which was in the controller’s spreadsheet. It became a column in the vendor records, and the inventory was complete in seven rows, all green.
The accounting context inventory, line by line
Three categories stay out of the agent’s reach, with no “with approval” option. The keys: digital certificate, government portal password, bank password and token. Whoever holds the key acts on behalf of the client or company; the agent never has it. The banking data of partners, clients, and suppliers, as well as only what’s strictly necessary to check (the accounts payable agent checks whether the supplier is in the approved registry; they don’t read the supplier’s bank account). And the individual payroll: salary per person is personal data; the agent works with totals.
There’s a fourth category specific to the firm: tax confidentiality between clients. The agent may know sixty clients, but each message, calculation, and report deals with only one. Put the restriction in writing in the request: "data from one client must never appear in a message, report, or calculation for another". In the first version, you can even assign a separate specialist to each client in the chain, which the coordinator can do effortlessly.
Helena keeps client certificates in a small safe at the office and passwords in a password manager only she can access. When she mapped the workflow, the question “Does the agent need the certificate for any step?” was answered no every time: it calculates, checks, follows up, and prepares; she handles filing. The safe stayed locked, and that was the sentence that convinced the partners.
The seven course-base actions for the collections and obligations agent: read folders, lists, calendars, and tables can; write folder status and calculation draft can; change document classification, with senior assistant approval; send standard billing, allowed, because the text is fixed and only lists missing items; sending any other text, with approval; buy, delete e approve (transmit, submit, close), it can't. At the company, "approve payment batch" is the controller's job, and "pay" isn't even available as a tool for the agent.
Every line has a named owner, and every action is logged: what was checked, what was requested, and which list it was based on. When a client asks, “Why did you ask me for a statement I already sent?”, the assistant opens the log and answers in a minute. The answer is usually “the file name didn’t follow the standard,” which becomes a new rule.
In Diego’s manufacturing company, the matrix has eight lines and a note the controller insisted on adding: “The agent does not have, and never will have, a user account in the bank’s system.” It isn’t a line in the matrix; it’s a sentence in the footer. But that’s what got the leadership team’s approval in one meeting, because it answered the only question on everyone’s mind.
Common mistake
Pasting a real bank statement into an AI chat, with the client's name and balance, "just to see if it classifies things correctly." This happens because a bank statement looks like an ordinary document, but it isn't: it's a third party's banking data leaving the office for an external service. To test classification, use a statement with a changed name, altered amounts, and a masked account number. You can test the agent's logic the same way, while keeping the client's information confidential.
Practice now 0/4 done
In about 12 minutes, build the context inventory for the process you chose in lesson 1 (five columns) and the permissions matrix (seven actions, response, owner), with a list of what stays locked away.
It's your spreadsheet, with no client data: you note where the information is, not the information itself. No system is touched, and no permissions are granted. If you don't know who owns a line, write "?" and move on; the question mark itself is a finding to bring to the accountant or controller.
You’ve just written down where your process knowledge lives and what an agent may and may not do with it, with the keys kept out of reach. This spreadsheet becomes blocks 5 and 7 of the kit in the next lesson.
Summary
Accounting and finance workbook · Lesson 3
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to build your agent's specification in the Agent Architect Kit using the accounting preset, and test it in an AI chat with a fictional case.
You have the process with the signature line (lesson 1), the inventory, and the matrix (lesson 2). What’s missing is the page that the accountant or controller can read in eight minutes and the person who manages the system can build. The kit’s accounting preset already includes an office with 60 clients filled in across the seven blocks, with this workbook’s rules built in: don’t create a new account, don’t transmit, maintain confidentiality between clients, keep keys outside. Your job is to replace what’s specific to your office or field and rehearse.
↓ role to study
The accounting preset in the kit is an office with 60 clients, under Simples and Lucro Presumido, handling document requests and checking the month’s obligations. The rules in this workbook are already written: don’t create a new account in the chart of accounts (flag it as a question), don’t file or submit anything, send requests only with the template, keep client information confidential, keep keys and bank details out of reach, and “approval: not allowed,” with the note that filing is the accountant’s responsibility.
What changes from one office to another is predictable: the number of clients and their tax regimes, the internal deadline, the request template, what’s in the system versus in spreadsheets, and who the senior assistant is. In a company’s finance department, the whole process has a different name (accounts payable, reconciliation), but the framework stays almost the same: prepare and check, never pay or approve. The framework stays; the content is yours.
Helena loaded the preset and changed five things: the 60 clients became her 60 clients with their actual tax regimes; the deadline moved from the 5th to the 4th; the billing model became the firm’s; the escalation threshold changed to 12 incomplete folders (she has fewer overdue clients than in the example); and the test set became 15 March folders with clients identified by code. Diego changed almost the entire process, but kept the matrix from the preset with one change: “change” became “not allowed” because in manufacturing, the vendor record—not Finance—is responsible for correcting titles.
In the kit, the “load example by area” selector has an accounting option. When you load it, the “area” field is set to accounting/finance, which enables three additional checks beyond the course-wide ones: if “approve” is set to anything other than “not allowed,” the gap “the agent must never approve payments or closing” appears; if the restriction against creating new accounts doesn’t appear anywhere, another gap appears; and if no quality condition checks the balance against a statement or external source, a third one appears.
This may look like a screen full of fields, but it works like a month-end close checklist: each field is an item you fill in once, and then the kit builds the page for you. You only change what’s specific to your firm. If you accidentally delete the chart-of-accounts restriction, the gap appears below the specification before you hand it off.
When Diego adapted the preset for accounts payable, he wrote "batch assembled with all of the week's invoices" as the success criterion. The kit flagged: "no quality condition checks the balance against a statement or external source." He added: "batch total equals the total of invoices in the system, and each invoice has a purchase order and receipt." Months later, that condition caught the duplicate invoice.
Order for adapting the accounting preset
In accounting, the challenging test cases follow the month’s calendar, so keep that in mind when you build the test set. Days 1–5: a document arrives without a business tax ID or month, a client sends the February folder in March, an unreadable statement. Day 6: a client has two business tax IDs in the same folder, a client sent everything on day 1 (the agent must not follow up with them). Days 7–15: billings above the tax-regime limit, a client who changed tax regimes, a filing with a discrepancy in the calculation basis. End of the month: a new client without a document list yet.
Each case enters the test suite with a reference (client by code, month, type) and a record of what the person did at the time. No names, no real tax IDs, no real amounts unless necessary. The suite runs again after every change: when Helena moved the deadline from 5 to 4, three cases started behaving differently, and she caught it before the agent did.
Helena's test set has fifteen cases, and the most valuable was number 9: a client who sent statements from two accounts in a single file. The first-round agent read the first account and flagged the second as missing. The new rule, "file with more than one account: route to the assistant," came from this case and was added to block 6 before any real client received an incorrect reminder.
When you paste the specification into the chat with the kit’s rehearsal prompt, the chat plays the coordinator and runs a fictional case. In accounting, three gaps come up often. First: a document arrives that isn’t on the expected list, and the specification doesn’t say whether the agent should classify it, ignore it, or ask. Second: the calculation basis differs from the revenue, and the coordinator doesn’t know whether to adjust it or stop. Third: two clients belong to the same corporate group, and the client confidentiality rule doesn’t say whether they can appear in the same report.
Each one becomes a new line: "document not on the list: ask before classifying." "Conflicting data: separate it, never adjust it." "Corporate group: one report per tax ID, even with the same partner." Run three cases: one routine, one difficult, and the exception. When all three pass, the page is ready for the accountant or controller to approve and for whoever manages the system to build.
In Diego’s rehearsal, the chat, acting as the coordinator, asked: “Title 4471 has a purchase order and an invoice, but the vendor changed their bank details in the vendor record two days ago. Should I include it in the batch?” The specification didn’t address this. He added to section 6: “Vendors whose bank details changed in the last 30 days: set aside for the controller.” Ten minutes of rehearsal, and that was the line that caught a real case months later.
In your department, the first process is usually
Practice now 0/4 done
In about 15 minutes, load the accounting preset into the kit, adapt it to your firm or area, copy the rehearsal prompt, and run a fictional case in an AI chat to get the list of gaps.
The specification contains no client or vendor data: it contains rules, system names, and criteria. The test case is fictional (client identified by code, altered amounts). No agent is built, no system is touched, and nothing is transmitted or paid. If the chat "transmits" or "pays" anything in the simulation, that's a finding about your matrix: note it and press.
Passo a passo (o prompt de ensaio vem pronto do kit): 1. Abra https://inematds.github.io/kit-arquiteto-agentes/ 2. "carregar exemplo por área" → contábil. Confira que "área: contábil / financeiro" ficou marcada. 3. Adapte os sete blocos na ordem do passo 02 desta aula. Zero lacunas de contábil na lista abaixo da especificação. 4. Em "Prompt de ensaio simulado", escreva o caso fictício, por exemplo: <Cliente C-017 (fictício), Simples Nacional, mandou notas e folha até o dia 4, faltou o extrato; veio um arquivo com duas contas bancárias; faturamento do mês 48 mil reais; uma nota de fevereiro na pasta de março> 5. "copiar prompt com a especificação" → cole numa conversa nova do seu chat de IA. 6. Leia a narração: o coordenador deve parar pelo menos uma vez (arquivo com duas contas, nota de outro mês). Anote os itens de "o que faltou".
You’ve just produced and rehearsed an agent specification for your office or department before any development begins, with the keys kept out of reach and the signature in the right place. This page is what separates “let’s use AI” from a project the accountant signs off on.
Summary