Bookkeeping software for a five-person accounting firm.

List how bank activity arrives, who codes, who reviews, how statements are collected, who reconciles, how questions reach company owners, and which reports are delivered. Count the systems and spreadsheets that hold state along the way.

A feature checklist that ignores handoffs will overvalue broad modules and undervalue the bookkeeping path the team uses every day.

Five people need a shared view of the portfolio, but not every person needs every company or permission. The software should show the selected company clearly and enforce access on the server, API, and agent paths.

A firm-wide queue must be able to explain its counts. Staff should move from the signal to the company and source records without guessing which books are active.

A small team benefits from bank rules, AI research, recurring checks, and report preparation, but only if it can distinguish what completed from what was merely suggested.

Ask whether warnings remain visible, whether posting is separate from coding, whether sensitive actions require confirmation, and whether an agent can prove its result.

Implementation should still be deliberate, but the everyday workflow should not depend on maintaining complex project boards or rebuilding bookkeeping status manually. The system should derive state from the accounting work where practical.

Start with a narrow pilot: a few representative companies, a clear source cutoff, known exceptions, and a measured close. Expand only after the team understands the operating model.

Weight scope and permissions, bank workflow, reconciliation, reporting, migration, API or agent access, support, security controls, and total cost. Treat unsupported must-have workflows as a hard gap rather than a low score.

Price should include review labor, migration work, add-ons, connected accounts, AI usage, and the cost of retaining another system for missing capabilities.