Keeping your own books #

This guide is for business owners who want to keep their own books by talking to an AI assistant, and hand them to an accountant or tax advisor for review when the year is done. You do not need to know accounting to follow it, and you do not need an accountant to start. Their review comes at the end.

Any AI assistant that supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) can do the work. The examples use Claude Desktop because it is common, but the steps are the same in other MCP clients.

Your assistant is not your accountant. It records what you tell it and reports what the books say. Decisions about tax treatment, registrations and filings belong with a qualified advisor, which is why this guide ends with a handover.

1. Create your account and your business #

Sign up at microbooks.io. Every plan starts with a free trial, and no card is needed to start.
In the dashboard, open Entities and create your business: its name and its reporting currency, the currency your accounts will be prepared in. The reporting currency cannot be changed later, so pick the one your tax returns are filed in.

2. Connect your assistant #

Install the MCP server with pipx install "metafrasi[mcp]".
In the dashboard, open Developers → Connect AI assistant and create a connection token. The page shows a ready-made configuration with the token filled in.
Add these three lines to the env block of that configuration before pasting it into your client:
```
"MICROBOOKS_SETUP_TOOLS": "1",
"MICROBOOKS_CONFIRM_POST": "1",
"MICROBOOKS_PERIOD_CLOSE": "1"
```
MICROBOOKS_SETUP_TOOLS lets the assistant create accounts, taxes and reporting periods. MICROBOOKS_CONFIRM_POST makes your client ask you before anything is posted to the ledger, so nothing is committed on the assistant’s say-so alone. MICROBOOKS_PERIOD_CLOSE is needed at year end and adds nothing you will use before then. See Tool groups for exactly what each one adds.
Restart your client and ask: “Call get_ledger_setup and tell me what you see.” It should name your business and its reporting currency.

3. Set up your books in conversation #

Tell the assistant about your business in plain language and let it propose the setup. Ask it to dry run each step first, so you can read what it would create before it does.

A reporting period. The books are kept in yearly reporting periods, and nothing can be posted until the current one exists.

“Create a reporting period for 2026.”

A starter chart of accounts. Describe the business and ask for a short list. A typical small business needs:

Account	Type	What it’s for
Main bank account	`BANK`	Money in and out of the bank
Cash / mobile money	`BANK`	Petty cash, M-Pesa or similar
One per regular client	`RECEIVABLE`	What each client owes you
One per regular supplier	`PAYABLE`	What you owe each supplier
Sales	`OPERATING_REVENUE`	Income from your main business
Cost of sales	`DIRECT_EXPENSE`	What it costs to make or buy what you sell
Rent, utilities, software…	`OVERHEAD_EXPENSE`	Running costs
VAT / sales tax	`CONTROL`	Tax collected and paid, held on behalf of the tax authority
Owner’s capital	`EQUITY`	What you put into the business

“I run a small design studio. Suggest a chart of accounts for me, then dry run creating it.”

Taxes. If you are registered for VAT or sales tax, create the tax and point it at the CONTROL account.

“I charge 16% VAT on all my sales. Set that up.”

Opening balances, if the business was trading before you started. Use your last bank statement and what clients and suppliers owed you on the day you start.

“On 1 January I had 120,000 in the bank, Acme owed me 30,000, and I owed Printwell 8,000. Record those as opening balances.”

Then ask for a trial balance. If the opening balances don’t net to zero, ask the assistant to go through them with you and find the difference.

Setup tools can delete things. With MICROBOOKS_SETUP_TOOLS on, the assistant can remove accounts and taxes, and manage_entity can delete the whole set of books. Deletes go to the recycle bin, but read every confirmation carefully. If you rarely add new clients or suppliers, switch the setup tools off once setup is done and on again when you need them.

4. Record day to day #

Tell the assistant what happened, as you would tell a bookkeeper:

“Invoice Acme 50,000 plus VAT for the March retainer, due in 30 days.”
“We paid Printwell 8,000 from the bank today.”
“Acme paid 58,000 into the bank.”
“I moved 20,000 from the bank to M-Pesa.”

Each entry is created as a draft. Read what the assistant tells you it recorded (amount, accounts and tax) and only then tell it to post. Posted entries are permanent; a mistake after posting is fixed with a correcting entry, which the assistant can make for you, and both stay visible to your accountant.

Post or discard each draft in the same conversation you created it in. Drafts don’t appear in reports, so one left behind is a gap in your books that the month-end reports won’t show you.

Keep receipts and invoices for everything you record. Your accountant will want to see them.

5. Check your books each month #

A short routine at the end of each month catches most mistakes while they are still easy to fix:

Reconcile the bank. “Show me the bank account statement for March.” Compare it line by line with your actual bank statement, and record anything missing.
Chase what you’re owed. “Which clients are overdue, and by how much?”
Check what you owe. “Which supplier bills are still unpaid?”
Look at the results. “Show me the income statement for March, and the balance sheet at the end of the month.”

6. Hand over to your accountant #

When the year is done, your accountant or tax advisor reviews the books, posts any adjustments, and closes the year.

Give them access. In the dashboard, open Developers → API tokens and create a separate token named after your accountant. Give it books:read only if they will just review, or books:read and books:write if they will post adjustments themselves. They can connect their own MCP client with it, or use the API directly, which can also produce the reports as PDF. Everything done with the token is done under your account, so revoke it when the work is finished.
Send them the statements. Ask the assistant for the trial balance, income statement, balance sheet and cashflow statement for the year, and the aging of receivables and payables at year end.
Open the adjusting window. “Move the 2026 reporting period to adjusting.” While a period is adjusting, only journal entries can be posted to it, so your accountant can make their corrections without ordinary trading entries landing in the year they are reviewing.
Close the year together. Once the adjustments are in, the period close tools prepare the closing entries, show them for review, and post them only after you confirm. Let your accountant review them before you confirm.
Revoke the accountant’s token, and create the next year’s reporting period.

Where to go next #

Safety model: what the assistant can and cannot do to your books.
Tool catalog: everything the assistant can do by default.
Operating notes: reading errors, previews and what to do if a write times out.