Tally AI bookkeeper

Tally is LedgerHQ's supervised AI bookkeeper. It helps a firm understand what needs attention, inspect current bookkeeping context, prepare work, and perform approved actions through LedgerHQ's normal accounting services. Tally is not a separate back door into the database and it does not get to invent its own accounting workflow. When Tally changes books, it must use the same guarded paths the app, API, and MCP tools use.

That distinction matters. A chat answer can explain a transaction, but a bookkeeping action has to pass scope checks, duty settings, authority limits, approval rules, and the same posting or reconciliation service that a human workflow would use.

Full-Page Tally And The Drawer

Use the full-page Tally workspace when the firm wants to supervise work across companies, review Activity, configure Tally, inspect history, or approve prepared actions. The full-page workspace is firm-scoped. It is the best place for broad questions like "What needs attention across the firm?", "Review what posted this week", or "Help me get this company ready for close."

The drawer is for context while users work elsewhere in LedgerHQ. A firm user who opens the drawer from a company page gets a company-scoped Tally conversation. That helps Tally answer questions about the page the user is already looking at. A non-firm or portal-style session may still use the support-chat path rather than the full Tally bookkeeper path.

The drawer and full page are connected conceptually, but they serve different moments. Use the drawer to ask "What am I looking at?" or "Why is this row not ready?" Use the full page to supervise work, check Activity, attach evidence, or make decisions.

The Main Conversation

The main /tally chat opens blank and ready. It no longer creates an automatic morning proposal, daily briefing, or spinner just because the user opens the page. Ask Tally what you need, or use Activity to review work that has already happened.

Tally uses one persistent firm-scoped conversation by default. The Clear action resets the visible chat when the user wants a clean start. Older conversation rows remain stored for audit/history, but the live chat and model turn only load the recent conversation window so day-to-day work does not become noisy or overly expensive.

The History drawer shows compact recent daily logs. Use it when the user wants to look back at what was discussed without loading older messages into the active conversation.

The composer shows the active AI provider and its available models. Connected providers can be switched without leaving the conversation. See Tally AI providers and models for firm setup and routing.

Users can send another message while Tally is working. That interjection joins the active turn so the user can correct scope or add information without waiting for a long task to finish.

Jobs, Automations, And Actions

Tally uses several layers:

• Conversation is the chat thread where users ask questions, give instructions, attach evidence, and receive answers.
• Jobs are durable pieces of work, such as a cleanup sweep, statement review, reconciliation worksheet, or month-end close check.
• Automations are scheduled or condition-based routines that create jobs when the company's queue says work is due.
• Actions are the concrete things Tally prepares or performs, such as coding a row, sending a request, posting a scheduled journal entry, or marking a close ready.
• Approvals are the human decision layer for work that needs review before Tally can continue.

This structure keeps Tally inspectable. A chat answer can be informal, but a job, automation run, approval, and action leave a durable trail.

What Tally Can Work On

Tally can help with current LedgerHQ bookkeeping surfaces: bank feed review, category suggestions, recent coded/posting review, transaction searches, statement coverage, client requests, bank reconciliation, scheduled journal entries, month-end close, reports, fixed assets, core journal entries, and selected guarded accounting actions.

Tally can also create or update support tickets, search the Help docs, inspect allowed firm/company context, and use uploaded evidence when the user provides it.

Tally can guide a new-book startup from bank files, statements, spreadsheets, QuickBooks exports, or other balanced accounting history. The startup remains open through researched decision batches and a revision-specific financial approval. See Start new books with Tally.

Tally should not promise unsupported modules or hidden broad-suite workflows. If a user asks about something outside the current LedgerHQ bookkeeping surface, Tally should say what LedgerHQ supports today and create a support ticket or feature request when appropriate.

Activity Is The Supervision View

Activity is where users review Tally's work and waiting items. It shows current activity, waiting-on-you items, automation cards, run history, and actions that need attention. If the main chat is the conversation, Activity is the operating board.

Use Activity when a user wants to know:

• which jobs ran today;
• which automations are paused or failing;
• what needs approval;
• which companies are waiting on documents, coding, reconciliation, or close;
• whether Tally already attempted a task.

Safety Boundaries

Tally is designed to help with accounting work without hiding the important controls from the user. Book-changing work must pass the configured duty mode, company scope, authority level, approval rules, period locks, and service-level validation. Large, ambiguous, externally visible, destructive, sensitive, or billing/integration-changing work should require explicit user intent or a confirmation step.

The Tally options menu includes Pause Tally and Report a problem. Pausing stops new Tally work until an authorized firm user resumes it. A problem report records the issue for support and can pause Tally at the same time. Use these controls when observed behavior raises a safety or data-quality concern; they are not substitutes for ordinary task instructions.