The AI Assistant — Complete Guide

What It Is (and What It Isn't)

Most "AI" in accounting software is a help chatbot — it tells you which menu to click. The iAccounting AI Assistant is different: it is an accountant that acts inside your books. It has direct, tool-level access to your company file and can draft vouchers, create ledgers and stock items, run any report, reconcile GSTR-2B, prepare GST JSON files and open screens — all from a sentence typed in plain language.

Three things it is not, and it's worth being clear about them up front:

• It is not a black box. By default nothing reaches your books without your approval. Entries wait in a review dialog where every field is editable.
• It is not a replacement for knowing your business. It reads a narration and proposes the most likely ledger. You are the one who knows whether that ₹40,000 to "Sharma & Co" was a purchase or a loan repayment.
• It does not file anything with the government. It prepares GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B in portal JSON format and saves the file. Filing stays a deliberate act you perform yourself.

Opening the Panel

Three ways in — all reach the same panel:

A few behaviours worth knowing:

• It is a docked side panel, not a floating window — it sits on the right and your work screen keeps the rest. You can drag the splitter; the width is remembered between sessions (minimum 340 px, and it will not take more than half the window).
• It is open by default the first time you run the app. F12 toggles it, and Esc hides it.
• The conversation is saved per company, inside the encrypted company file. Reopen the company tomorrow and you'll see "— continuing your earlier conversation —" above where you left off.
• Switch companies and the thread switches with it: "🏢 Switched to <Company> — earlier conversation restored." Your Geeta Bansal chat never bleeds into your Shri Krishna Polymers chat.

The very first time you open it, a short four-page tour called "Meet your AI accountant" appears. It's worth reading once; it won't come back.

The Panel, Part by Part

From top to bottom, here is every control and what it's for.

The toolbar

The 📋 Commands strip

A collapsible tree of one-click commands sitting between the toolbar and the conversation. In Hindi it reads 📋 कमांड सूची; in Hinglish, 📋 Commands (kya kya kar sakta hai) — literally "what all can it do". More on this below.

The conversation and the input box

• The message box is multi-line. Enter sends; Shift+Enter starts a new line — so you can paste a whole paragraph of instructions.
• 📎 attaches files.
• While the AI is working, the status line at the very bottom shows ◐ Thinking… 4s · 🔢 1,820 tokens, and when it finishes, 🔢 2,140 tokens used for this task.
• When entries are waiting for you, a banner appears at the top: 📝 Review & approve — 2 master(s) + 3 voucher(s).

Your First Conversation

Open a company, press F12 and type this exactly:

Here is what happens, step by step:

1. The AI reads it and checks your books — is there a ledger called Rajesh Traders? Is there a stock item Cement? What GST rate does that item carry?
2. It drafts what's needed: a Sales voucher with the ₹12,000 taxable value, CGST 9% and SGST 9% (or IGST if the party is inter-state), the cash leg, and — if Rajesh Traders doesn't exist yet — a proposal to create that ledger under Sundry Debtors.
3. The banner appears: 📝 Review & approve — 1 master(s) + 1 voucher(s).
4. You click it. The Review & correct entries dialog opens with every line editable. Wrong rate? Change it here. Don't want the new ledger? Remove that row.
5. You click ✅ Approve & post. Now — and only now — the ledger is created and the voucher is written to your books.
6. Because it's a Sales voucher, iAccounting immediately offers to print, save as PDF, or print to a thermal printer.

The entry that lands in your Day Book is a completely ordinary voucher. You can open it, edit it, delete it, and it appears in every report exactly like one you typed by hand. Nothing about it is second-class.

How to Talk to It

Write the way you'd speak to a munim, not the way you'd fill a form.

Languages

It understands English, Hindi, Hinglish and Indian regional languages, including Roman-script versions of all of them — "kal Sharma ji ko 5000 cash diya" works exactly as well as the same sentence in Devanagari. Hinglish is what most users actually type, and it is a first-class input, not a fallback.

It also politely ignores the words that carry no accounting meaning — ji, please, kar do, kardo, kr do, na, zara — so "zara balance sheet dikha do ji" is understood as "show the balance sheet".

Being specific pays

• Name the party. "Paid Rajesh 5000" is better than "paid 5000" — the second one usually lands in Suspense.
• Say the date if it isn't today. "on 12 April" or "last Tuesday" both work.
• Say the mode. "in cash", "by cheque", "UPI", "NEFT" — this decides the second leg of the entry.
• Say GST or not. "plus 18% GST" vs "inclusive of GST" produce genuinely different vouchers.
• Batch freely. "Book these three: 4500 electricity, 1200 courier to Blue Dart, 800 tea and refreshments" gets you three vouchers in one review.

Voice & Hands-Free

Speaking is often faster than typing, especially for shop owners and for anyone whose comfortable language isn't English.

1. Click 🎤 Speak. The status shows "🎤 Recording… click Stop when done (max 30s)."
2. Say the transaction. Click ⏹ Stop.
3. You'll see "⏳ Transcribing your voice…", then the text lands in the input box where you can correct it before sending.

Transcription is done by the AI rather than the built-in Windows speech engine — a deliberate choice, because the Windows engine handles Hindi, Hinglish and accented Indian English poorly, and this one is trained on exactly that.

🙌 Hands-free takes it further: it auto-sends as soon as you stop speaking and reads the reply aloud, so you can run a whole conversation without touching the keyboard. Pair it with 🔊 Speak replies when you're doing something else with your hands. Rupee amounts are read out as "rupees", not "₹".

Recordings are capped at 30 seconds — long enough for any single instruction. If nothing is captured, go to 🎚 Sound and check the device, the mute state and the level meter (and your laptop's physical mic-mute key, which catches people out constantly).

The 📋 Commands List

Not sure what to ask? Expand the 📋 Commands strip. It's a grouped tree of ready-made commands across seven categories:

Two kinds of command live in that tree, and the difference matters for your wallet:

• Form commands open a screen instantly and use no AI tokens at all. If you just want the Balance Sheet on screen, clicking it here is free; asking the AI for it is not.
• Prompt commands fill the input box with a template containing a {placeholder} that's pre-selected — type over it and press Enter.

The commands you use most float to the top of the list over time, so the tree quietly reshapes itself around how you actually work.

Attaching Documents — the 📎 Button

This is where the assistant stops being a chat box and starts being a data-entry engine. Click 📎, pick one or more files, then type a message and Send.

Accepted formats are .pdf .csv .xlsx .xls .png .jpg .jpeg .webp .txt, up to 20 MB per file. Over that and you'll see "<name> is over 20 MB." — re-export the PDF or split it. Once attached you'll see "📎 3 file(s) attached — type a message and Send."

Entry Mode — Approve vs Auto-Post

✅ Approve each entry (the default)

Every proposal queues up in the 📝 Review & approve banner and waits. Nothing is written until you open the dialog and post it. The assistant's own greeting states the contract plainly: "I'll propose entries for you to review and approve before anything is saved." This is where every business should start, and where most should stay.

⚡ Auto-post (no approval)

For high-volume users who have built up trust, an admin can switch a company to auto-post. Entries then go straight into the books, announced with "⚡ Auto-posting (no approval)…".

Turning it on is deliberately awkward, and that's on purpose:

1. Only an admin can do it — everyone else gets "Only an admin can turn on auto-post for this company."
2. A warning dialog spells out the consequence and defaults to No.
3. You must then set a rupee safety limit: "entries ABOVE this amount still need your approval. Enter 0 for no limit."
4. The setting is per company, not global. Auto-post on your own shop's file doesn't touch your client files.

And even in auto-post mode, three things always stop for you:

• Any entry above your rupee limit
• Every deletion, without exception
• Every bulk edit

You'll see them held: "🛡 Held for your approval: 2 entries are above the ₹50,000 auto-post limit; 1 deletion(s) always need approval."

The mobile app honours the same per-company setting — with auto-post off, entries proposed from your phone wait for you to approve them on the desktop.

The Review & Approve Dialog

Click the banner and the Review & correct entries dialog opens. This is a full editor, not a confirmation box:

• Every field on every proposed voucher and master is editable — date, ledger, amount, narration, tax.
• 🗑 Remove drops a single row you don't want; the rest still post.
• Cancel doesn't destroy anything — the items stay pending in the banner for later.
• Remove everything and it tells you: "Nothing left to post — all entries were removed."
• ✅ Approve & post commits. You'll get a count back: "Posted 3 voucher(s).", "Created 2 master(s)."

Deletions and bulk edits take a different, blunter route — a plain text confirmation ("Apply the following changes?") whose default button is No.

↩ Undo & the AI Action Journal

Every single write the AI makes — voucher, master, edit, deletion, bank reconciliation mark — is recorded in an AI action journal with enough of a snapshot to reverse it.

Click ↩ Undo and you get a list of recent AI actions. Pick one and it asks exactly what it will do:

If the AI has never written anything, it says so: "Nothing to undo — the AI hasn't written to the books yet."

This journal is also your audit answer. When someone asks "which of these entries were made by the AI?", the journal is the record — separate from, and in addition to, the normal voucher audit trail.

Everything It Can Do

The assistant has just over fifty tools it can reach for. You never name them — you describe the outcome and it picks. Here they are grouped, so you know what's in scope.

Making and changing entries

Answering questions about your books

Reports

Balance Sheet · Profit & Loss · Trial Balance · Day Book · Stock on hand · Receivables/payables ageing (0-30 / 31-60 / 61-90 / 90+, FIFO) · Sales summary with top-10 customers and suppliers · Per-item margins (revenue, COGS, margin ₹ and %) · Cash forecast up to 120 days ahead · Financial ratios with Good / OK / Weak verdicts · Depreciation schedule (WDV or SLM, half-year rule) · Daily briefing · Full books audit with a suggested fix per issue · Payroll preview before posting · Overdue parties with phone numbers — your chase list · and an all-companies summary across every company file you have open.

Two of these deserve a specific mention because nobody thinks to ask for them:

• "run a full audit" — checks integrity, cash and bank sanity, date problems, completeness, receivables and masters, and hands back a fix suggestion for each finding.
• "what do my ratios look like" — liquidity, solvency, profitability and efficiency, each graded, in one reply.

GST & statutory

Actions

• WhatsApp a payment reminder — "send Rajesh a reminder for his overdue bill" opens WhatsApp on your PC with the message pre-filled. Nothing sends by itself; you press Send in WhatsApp. Combine it with the overdue-parties list and a full chase round takes minutes.
• Open any screen — covered next.

It Opens Screens for You

Ask for something that's better seen than described — "open the sales invoice screen", "show me the GST advisor", "open Rajesh Traders' ledger for April" — and the assistant opens that screen right next to the chat, pre-filtered where it can be (account, from-date, to-date).

An explanatory strip appears above it:

Screens the AI opened close themselves when you start a new task, so the workspace doesn't silt up. Tick 📌 Keep open to pin one you want to keep working in. It will never close a screen you opened, and it refuses to close anything pinned.

Around seventy screens are reachable this way — every voucher type, POS, ledgers, items, price lists, all the reports, the scan screens, bank import and reconciliation, AIS, GST advisor, GSTR-1/3B, e-invoice, e-Way Bill, GSTR-2B recon, data import/export, payroll, recurring vouchers, payment reminders, the Tally connector and more.

If a screen isn't available it will tell you why rather than failing silently — for example that a screen belongs to a higher edition, that no company is open, or that "the current screen has unsaved changes" and you need to save or discard first.

The Daily Briefing Card

Open the panel on a working morning and, before you type anything, you get a briefing:

Two things make this more useful than it looks. First, it is computed locally and costs no tokens — it's free every single morning. Second, anything newly discovered since you last looked is flagged "🔎 NEW since last time: …", so you're reading the delta, not re-reading yesterday's list.

It Learns Your Corrections

When you edit something in the review dialog before approving, the assistant notices what you changed. If you keep re-pointing "INDIAN OIL" from Fuel Expenses to Vehicle Running — Tempo, it records that mapping and applies it next time.

This is why the first week feels ordinary and the fourth week feels fast. The practical advice: correct it in the review dialog rather than fixing the voucher afterwards. A correction made at review time teaches it; a correction made later in the Day Book does not.

Task Plans for Big Jobs

Give it something genuinely multi-step — "close out April: import the bank statement, reconcile it, run the audit and show me GSTR-1" — and a checklist appears above the chat:

Marks are ☑ done, ▶ in progress, ☐ pending, ⊘ skipped, and they tick over as it works. Plans run to a maximum of twelve steps. If a job is very long the assistant may pause and tell you the turn's budget ran out — just tell it to continue.

हिंदी बही-खाता Mode

Switch the app to View → हिंदी बही-खाता and the assistant changes vocabulary with it. It stops saying Dr and Cr entirely and speaks in traditional single-entry terms — जमा, नाम, रोकड़, बाकी — while silently building the correct double entry underneath. For a shopkeeper who has kept a bahi-khata for thirty years and never wanted a debit column, this is the difference between software that's usable and software that isn't.

In this mode it will also read a photograph of a handwritten रोकड़ बही page and propose one voucher per line. See the Hindi video tutorials for this in action.

Wallet & Tokens

AI work is metered against your prepaid iAccounting wallet — the same one that powers GST filing, e-invoice, e-Way Bill, WhatsApp and SMS. There is no separate AI subscription.

• Where to see it: Help → 💳 Wallet (Tokens)…, or the 💰 Wallet group in the Commands list.
• What the chat shows: only the tokens used for that task — 🔢 2,140 tokens used for this task.
• What's free: opening a screen from the Commands list, the daily briefing card, reviewing, editing and posting. You pay for the AI's thinking, not for your own clicking.
• Recharge validity: each recharge is valid for one year from its date, and spending always draws from your oldest recharge first.
• Low balance: the status bar warns "⚠ Wallet balance low (₹X) — Help → Wallet to recharge", and the briefing card warns you before credit is about to lapse.

Practical ways to spend less: leave Model on Auto so simple questions go to the cheap tier; use form commands from the 📋 list when you only want a screen; and batch several entries into one message instead of sending five.

Favorites, New Chat and Share

• ⭐ Prompts — type a message you'll reuse, then ★ Save current message. It's now one click away. 🗑 Manage favorites… lets you edit or remove saved messages. Good candidates: your month-end checklist, your standard salary entry, your GSTR-1 request.
• 🆕 New chat — clears this company's history and starts clean. It confirms first: "Start a new conversation? The current chat history for this company is cleared." Worth doing when you switch from, say, year-end work to daily billing, so old context stops influencing replies.
• 📤 Share — copy the last reply to paste into an email or WhatsApp, or share the conversation out.

Limits at a Glance

Troubleshooting

Errors appear in the status line at the bottom of the panel, prefixed ⚠ in red. Here's what each one actually means.

Behaviour problems, not error messages

1. It picked the wrong ledger. Fix it in the review dialog, not afterwards — that's what teaches it.
2. It parked an entry in Suspense A/c. The narration didn't reveal the party or purpose. Tell it who the party was; nothing is ever dropped silently.
3. It won't delete a ledger. By design — a ledger used by any voucher can't be deleted. Delete or re-point those vouchers first.
4. Answers feel stale or off-topic. Long threads carry a lot of context. Hit 🆕 New chat.
5. It stopped mid-job. Long multi-step tasks can exhaust a turn's budget. Tell it to continue.
6. It says a screen is locked. That screen belongs to a higher edition — see pricing.

25 Prompts to Try Today

Paste these straight in. They're grouped by what you're trying to get done.

Entries

1. "sold 10 bags cement to Rajesh Traders, 12000 plus 18% GST, cash received"
2. "paid 4500 electricity bill by cheque"
3. "kal Sharma ji ko 5000 cash diya, advance ke against"
4. "received 25000 from Gupta Enterprises by NEFT today"
5. "book these three: 4500 electricity, 1200 courier to Blue Dart, 800 tea and refreshments"
6. "withdrew 20000 from HDFC for office cash"
7. "fix voucher 214 — amount should be 8400"

Masters

8. "create a ledger Airtel Broadband under Indirect Expenses"
9. "create stock item Cement 50kg, unit Bag, HSN 2523, GST 28%"
10. "which of my stock items have no HSN code"
11. "move Airtel Broadband to Telephone Expenses"

Questions about your books

12. "what's my HDFC balance"
13. "kaun kaun customers ne paisa nahi diya"
14. "how much does Rajesh Traders owe me"
15. "Sharma & Co statement for April to June"
16. "find every entry about repairs to the delivery van"
17. "how did I book the Indian Oil bills last year"

Reports & review

18. "balance sheet as on 31 March"
19. "profit and loss for this quarter"
20. "receivables ageing"
21. "which items make me the most margin"
22. "cash forecast for the next 60 days"
23. "run a full audit of my books"

GST & chasing money

24. "GSTR-3B summary for June"
25. "who's overdue more than 30 days, and send the first one a WhatsApp reminder"

What's Next?

• Import a Bank Statement with AI — the dedicated grid for statement volume
• Scan Expense Bills (AI) — photograph a bill, book the expense
• GST Smart Advisor — pre-filing cross-checks and GSTIN health
• Year-End Final Entries — closing entries, depreciation and tax
• Video Tutorials in Hindi — real product recordings