Bank feeds in. Categorized books out.
Receipt OCR, GST/HST tracking, auto-categorization, reconciliation, job-costing. The agent does the data-entry layer. Your accountant does what only they can. Monthly close shrinks from two days to two hours, and your books are CRA-ready every day of the year.
Automated Bookkeeping at Compass connects your bank feeds, OCRs every receipt, categorizes transactions against your chart of accounts, tracks GST/HST by jurisdiction, and posts back to QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, or Wave with a full CRA-ready audit trail. The agent does the data-entry layer; your accountant does what only they can. Cuts monthly close from two days to two hours. Built for Canadian SMBs in trades, professional services, multi-location operators, and e-commerce. Single-entity builds run $10,000–$20,000 CAD; multi-entity or multi-currency $20,000–$35,000.
One crumpled receipt. Clean books in 4 seconds.
A preview of a bookkeeping agent built for a Canadian trades business. Same pipeline, your platform, your job codes, your CRA tax setup.
Crumpled gas receipt photographed from a truck cab. Forwarded to the agent.
Four behaviours on every transaction.
Bank feed line, forwarded email receipt, or phone photo: the agent runs the same four-step pipeline and writes back to your books.
Pulls bank feeds and receipts
Connects to your business banking via Plaid or Flinks, watches a receipts inbox, accepts phone photo uploads. All inputs flow into one queue.
OCRs and matches
Reads every receipt: vendor, total, GST/HST, date, line items. Matches it to the bank transaction. Flags missing receipts and duplicate charges.
Categorizes and tags tax
Assigns the right chart-of-accounts category, splits GST/HST, tags by project or property if you track that way. Trained on your specific history, not a generic taxonomy.
Posts to your books
Writes each transaction into QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, or Wave - exactly where your accountant expects it, with audit trail intact. Monthly close becomes a review, not a rebuild.
Same engine. Your books.
Configured for your chart of accounts, your tax setup, your job-costing model, and the accounting platform you already use.
Job-costing without the data entry
Receipts photographed from the truck, materials charged to the right job code, sub-trades categorized correctly, GST/HST tracked by province for crews working across the border. Monthly job-cost reports become a click, not a weekend.
Expense tracking per matter or client
Law and accounting firms tag every expense to the matter or client file. The agent reads the receipt, infers the matter from the context, and writes the cost back into your practice management system - ready for re-billing.
Multi-location reconciliation
Three locations, three Square accounts, one set of books. The agent reconciles deposits, splits processor fees, allocates rent and utilities per location, and produces per-location P&L without your bookkeeper touching the spreadsheets.
Shopify + Stripe + bank reconciliation
Shopify orders, Stripe fees, refunds, chargebacks, bank deposits with multi-day lag. The agent untangles the timing, allocates fees correctly, books revenue net of refunds, and flags any mismatch for review.
Canadian-first plumbing. CRA-ready audit trail.
The specific bank-feed and accounting vendors depend on your setup. The principles below hold on every build. Every categorization decision is logged and reversible. CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) format on the audit trail.
Bookkeeping questions, answered plainly.
Does this replace my accountant?
No - it makes your accountant 5x faster. The agent handles the data-entry layer: bank feed reconciliation, receipt OCR, transaction categorization, GST/HST tracking. Your accountant reviews the categorizations, handles tax planning, signs off on close, and answers the questions only they can. We have not had a single client fire their accountant after deploying this.
Which accounting platforms does it work with?
QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks, Wave, and Sage Business Cloud out of the box. Custom integrations to NetSuite, Sage 50, and industry-specific systems by quote. The agent reads and writes through each platform's API (Application Programming Interface), so transactions flow back into your books exactly where your accountant expects them.
How does the agent handle GST/HST (Goods and Services Tax / Harmonized Sales Tax)?
Knows your business is GST/HST registered, your filing frequency, your provincial mix, and the rate splits for cross-border or zero-rated transactions. Tags each transaction with the correct tax code, builds a running GST/HST liability report, and prepares the filing data your accountant submits via CRA NETFILE.
What about receipts? Most of mine are crumpled in my truck.
Photograph the receipt with your phone, or forward an email receipt to a dedicated address. The agent reads it (OCR - Optical Character Recognition), matches it to the bank transaction, files the image in your document store, and categorizes the line. The crumpled-receipt problem is solved by removing the need to ever sort them.
How accurate is the categorization?
After 60 days of training on your transaction history, accuracy runs 92-97% on standard categories. Low-confidence categorizations get flagged for human review instead of guessing. Over time the agent learns your specific vendor and category preferences, and accuracy keeps climbing.
How much does an automated bookkeeping build cost?
Cost depends on entity count, currency mix, transaction volume, and the depth of categorization rules. The bill depends on: single-entity vs. multi-entity, single-currency vs. multi-currency, the platforms involved (QuickBooks alone vs. QuickBooks + Stripe + Shopify + bank), the depth of job-costing or project tagging, and how much process mapping is needed to match your accountant's workflow. Single-entity Canadian SMB pilots are the lightest entry. Real numbers come out of the free Bearings call.
Your bookkeeper is paid to think, not retype receipts.
The average Canadian SMB owner spends 8-12 hours a month on bookkeeping busywork that adds zero value. Their accountant spends another half-day cleaning it up. Both are billing rates better spent on tax planning, cash-flow analysis, and growth. The agent on this page removes the busywork. Everyone gets their time back.
// Related capabilities
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Plot Your
Course.
A free 30-minute Bearings call. Two operators talking about your business. No deck. No pitch. Just an honest read on whether AI is the right tool - and if so, where I'd start.