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Accounting

Accounting Without an Accountant

For a One Person Enterprise, accounting often means a spreadsheet, a shoebox of receipts, and a stressful tax season. AI agents can bring order to this — not by replacing your accountant, but by ensuring you are organised enough to make their job (and yours) far cheaper and less painful.

Claude Code can categorise transactions, generate invoices, track expenses, and prepare summaries your accountant can work from directly.

Transaction Categorisation

If your bank allows CSV exports (most do), Claude Code can categorise transactions automatically.

Basic workflow:

  1. Export transactions from your bank as CSV
  2. Save to /accounting/raw/transactions-2026-03.csv
  3. Run:
Read /accounting/raw/transactions-2026-03.csv.
Categorise each transaction using these categories:
Software subscriptions, Travel, Meals, Office supplies,
Professional services, Income, Transfers.
Flag any transaction over £500 for review.
Output a new CSV to /accounting/categorised/2026-03.csv
and a summary by category.
  1. Review flagged items, correct any miscategorisations
  2. Import to your accounting software or hand to your accountant

Refine with a rules file:

Create /accounting/rules.md with your standard patterns:

- "AWS" → Software subscriptions
- "Eurostar" → Travel
- "Client payment" → Income

Reference it in every categorisation prompt to improve accuracy over time.

Invoice Generation

Claude Code can generate professional invoices from a template in seconds.

Template-based invoice:

Generate an invoice using the template at /templates/invoice.md.
Client: Acme Ltd
Services: 3 days of AI consulting at £800/day
Date: 4 March 2026
Invoice number: INV-2026-007
Due: 30 days
Save to /invoices/INV-2026-007.md and convert to PDF.

Keep a simple clients.md file with client names, addresses, and payment terms. Claude Code can reference it without you repeating details each time.

Expense Tracking

Rather than logging expenses manually, build a habit of photographing receipts and dropping them in a folder. Periodically run:

Read all images in /receipts/2026-03/.
For each receipt, extract: date, vendor, amount, and category.
Append each to /accounting/expenses-2026-03.csv.

(Requires a vision-capable model and the filesystem MCP.)

Integrating With Accounting APIs

If you use Xero, QuickBooks, or FreeAgent, check whether an MCP connector exists for your platform. If not, Claude Code can prepare import files in the correct CSV format for batch upload.

Convert /accounting/categorised/2026-03.csv to Xero import format.
Map categories to Xero account codes using /accounting/xero-codes.md.
Save to /accounting/xero-import-2026-03.csv.

Tax Prep Assistance

At year end, Claude Code can produce a summary document that makes your accountant's work faster (and your bill lower):

Read all files in /accounting/categorised/ for the 2025-2026 tax year.
Produce a summary with:
- Total income by client
- Total expenses by category
- Top 10 expenses
- Any months with negative cashflow
- List of all invoices over £1000
Save to /accounting/tax-summary-2025-26.md

Skills to Develop

  • How to export transactions from your bank and accounting software as CSV
  • Basic double-entry bookkeeping concepts (even if you never do it manually)
  • How to structure an invoice template that works for your jurisdiction
  • Understanding what your accountant actually needs from you at year end

Innovative Ideas

  • Real-time cashflow dashboard: Have Claude Code generate a simple HTML cashflow chart from your transactions CSV each week
  • Late payment chaser: Ask Claude Code to check your invoices folder, identify any unpaid after 30 days, and draft a polite follow-up email
  • Budget vs actual agent: Maintain a budget file and have Claude Code compare it against actuals each month, flagging variances
  • Expense anomaly detection: Ask Claude Code to flag any category where spending this month is more than 20% above the 3-month average