Choose the operation before the product
A finance team usually starts with an unresolved task: invoices waiting for review, payments that cannot be matched, or a cash report assembled from several accounts. Naming that task gives you a useful way to compare agents. “Help finance” gives a vendor too much room to demonstrate an impressive conversation that never reaches a financial record.
Consider a fictional distributor, Northstar Supplies. Its accountant receives a supplier invoice for $875, checks the purchase record and prepares an entry. Later, the company receives an $800 customer payment against a different $875 sales invoice. Both workflows involve invoices, but they require different source records, permissions and reviewers. An agent suited to the first is not automatically suited to the second.
Start with the workflow map. The links below lead to category guides, each with an example and a way to evaluate the next step. We use these categories to organize work, rather than suggesting that any one product performs every task in a category.
Find your financial workflow
Scroll the table to compare all columns.
| Workflow | Agent contribution to evaluate | Responsible decision |
|---|---|---|
| Banking | Retrieve account evidence or prepare a defined instruction | Authorized bank user checks permitted action |
| Accounting | Propose entries with source references | Accountant reviews classification and period |
| Accounts payable | Prepare invoice drafts and investigate exceptions | AP owner approves the invoice and separate payment |
| Reconciliation | Suggest allocations and explain unmatched balances | Finance reviewer confirms ambiguous matches |
| Treasury | Analyze dated balances and cash assumptions | Treasurer approves any subsequent funding action |
| Controls | Connect authority, actions and financial evidence | Named owner checks scope and recovery |
Make the action boundary visible
An assistant that explains a balance needs permission to read the relevant records. An agent that prepares a journal needs permission to create a proposal. Posting that journal changes the books; sending a bank instruction changes the payment workflow. Those are separate actions even when one screen presents them together.
For Northstar, the first useful boundary might be preparing invoice drafts for an accountant. The agent can suggest an expense account and attach the source document. The accountant checks the suggestion before the accounting system records an approved entry. A future payment action requires its own authority; approving the draft does not silently grant that authority.
Use the responsibility sequence to describe the proposed setup. Read, prepare, approve and execute are our evaluation labels, not a universal industry certification. A product may cover several stages while leaving a human responsible for the decision between them.
Describe the authority you are granting
- Read
Retrieve permitted source records and their timestamps.
- Prepare
Create a traceable proposal without treating it as approval.
- Approve
Have the authorized person confirm the specific version and amount.
- Execute
Use the permitted system action and retain its result.
Read product evidence in context
Basis describes agents built for accounting teams. Dext documents AI Assist within Costs and Sales. Microsoft documents a Payables Agent that prepares purchase invoice drafts in Business Central. These are useful starting points for a shortlist, but a product name alone says little about your integration or your approval policy. [1] [2] [3]
We distinguish a documented capability from an observed result. A vendor's description tells you what it offers. A demonstration can show a chosen task. Your own controlled evaluation can show whether that task works with your documents and rules. Neither a marketing percentage nor a successful sample should stand in for the evidence needed to approve access to a live ledger.
When reading a comparison, check what was actually compared. Two tools may both suggest categories while only one creates invoice drafts in your ERP. The relevant difference is the financial output and its review path, rather than the length of their feature lists.
Start with a bounded evaluation
Give Northstar's proposed agent a small, representative set of copied or synthetic documents. Include an ordinary invoice, a duplicate, a missing reference and an ambiguous supplier. Write the expected response before running the workflow. A useful result includes a clear refusal or escalation when the evidence is insufficient.
Record who owns each exception and how the accountant can recover from a wrong proposal. Keep payment credentials outside a draft-only test. If the first task is reconciliation, require the result to show allocated money, remaining invoice balances and unapplied receipts separately. A plausible summary is insufficient when those totals do not agree.
The category guides explain the workflow; the detailed guides provide worked examples; the control checklist turns unresolved questions into assigned actions. Move to a wider scope only when the evidence supports that specific change in responsibility.