THIS WEEK RECONCILED
The review no one has time to do properly
Ask most people what AI does for a firm and they'll say data entry. That saves time. Review is where it’s actually useful.
A fresh, tireless first pass over a file catches what a tired reviewer at 5pm on a Thursday misses: the miscoded line, the entry that never got posted, the transaction that doesn't quite smell right. It doesn't sign anything. It just hands you a flagged list instead of a blank page.
Run it before your own review and you'll get through the file faster and catch more errors. This week we show you how to make AI your first reviewer.
RECONCILED ROUNDUP
Worth knowing this week
AI review tools are maturing
Sage Intacct's 2026 R3 release added AI anomaly detection that flags unusual supplier bill amounts and unrecognised supplier email addresses. Why it matters. A first-pass AI review is becoming a standard step in the workflow.
A cautionary tale on over-trust
Deloitte Australia had to partly refund a AU$440,000 government report after it was found to contain AI-generated errors, including a made-up quote from a judge and references to research that doesn't exist. Why it matters. AI is the first reviewer and never the last. Treat its output as a starting point and make the call yourself.
RECONCILED IN PRACTICE
Make AI your first reviewer
Before you start your own review, hand the file to Claude and let it do the tired-eyes pass for you.
Give it the file. Trial balance, P&L and nominal ledger.
Ask for flags, not fixes. Miscoding, missing or duplicated entries, unusual transactions and disclosure points.
Work the list. Some flags will be false positives, and that's fine. You start from a list of questions instead of a blank page.
Client data. A trial balance and nominal ledger are client data, so run this on a Team or Enterprise plan under your firm's AI policy.
YOUR QUESTIONS RECONCILED
"If AI does the first review, what's left for me to check?"
The part that was always yours: judgement. Materiality, the story behind the numbers, whether a flag actually matters, and the disclosure calls that need a professional to make them.
You're also checking the flags themselves. A reviewer that never gets tired still gets things wrong, in different ways from a person. The signature is still yours, and so is everything that makes it worth signing.
PROMPTS RECONCILED
This week's prompt
Give Claude the file and this instruction. Try it on a copy or a low-stakes file first, and check the result before you rely on it.
"Review this trial balance and nominal ledger [attach]. Flag miscoding, missing or duplicated entries, unusual transactions and anything I should query before finalising. Don't fix anything. Give me a table with three columns (the item, why you flagged it, and the amount), sorted with the largest amounts first."
This prompt is the quick version. Our full file-review skill, the one we run on every limited company file, is coming to subscribers soon.
Your turn
Where do the errors usually hide in your files? Hit reply and tell us the mistake you dread finding late. We'll build prompts that catch it early.
Aaron & Loz
P.S. New to Reconciled? Get Signed Off, 4 free Claude skills UK Accountants will use this week. Setup takes ten minutes.
Aaron Burton FCCA CTA · Laurence Maynard FCCA MAAT · Richard Allen
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Reconciled is for informational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes professional accounting, tax, or legal advice. Always apply your own professional judgement before acting on anything published here.