AI bookkeeping: what it does, what it costs, and a two-month test

Q: Is there free AI bookkeeping software?

Kick is free for up to 250 transactions a year, and QuickBooks Free costs nothing for one bank account and two invoices a month. On Conecto, importing statements and running reports are free, and each bank line booked costs $0.02.

AI bookkeeping is software that sorts each bank transaction into the right account, matches payments to invoices and keeps the financial reports current, while a person answers what it can't tell from the bank line. You can buy it inside accounting software, as a service that closes the books for you, or hand the work to your own AI agent. We read nine providers' prices on November 4, 2026, and ran two months of a sample bike shop's bank statements through an agent.

By Amelia Cardona HernandezUpdated November 4, 2026Sources checked November 4, 202611 min read

What AI bookkeeping does, and what a person still does

Most of a small business's bank lines repeat every month: card payouts, rent, payroll and the same few suppliers. AI bookkeeping automates that part, booking those lines from rules it learns or rules it writes. It can't tell what an unlabeled payment was for. In our test below, every line the agent asked about was a check, a cash deposit, a transfer, a Venmo payment or an Amazon order.

Bookkeeping task	What the AI does	What a person still does
Card and online sales	Books each payout to sales	Splits out the card fees, from the processor's payout report
Rent, utilities and software	Books them by rule every month	Updates the rule when a payee changes
Customer payments	Matches each one to its open invoice, by number or by amount	Decides where a payment covering two invoices goes
Payroll	Books the net pay and the tax debit	Hands over the payroll register to split withheld tax from the employer's tax
Loan payments	Books the interest and principal the lender reports	Forwards the lender's statement
Checks, cash, transfers, Venmo, Amazon	Asks what each one was	Answers in a sentence
Month end and taxes	Keeps the reports current and checks them against the bank balance	Signs off on each month and files the tax return

Vendors put numbers on the routine part. Puzzle says its Starter plan categorizes 85 to 90 percent of transactions automatically,⁷ and QuickBooks lists transactions that are categorized and verified automatically on its Plus plan.¹

Three ways to get AI bookkeeping

AI bookkeeping software

QuickBooks, Xero and newer accounting apps include AI in their plans. The AI books, and you review its work.

QuickBooks Online lists an AI chat, still in beta with limited capacity, and expense categorizing from its Simple Start plan at $38 a month. Automatic categorizing and verifying of transactions comes with Plus at $140 a month, and new customers get 50 percent off for three months.¹ QuickBooks Free costs nothing for two invoices a month and one connected bank account, and Lite lifts those limits for $10 a month.²

Xero's US plans start at $27 a month for Early, which reconciles bank transactions and sends quotes and 20 invoices a month. Growing costs $59 and Established $97, with 80 percent off the first three months.⁴ Its AI assistant, JAX, answers questions about your figures and creates invoices and quotes from a chat, at no extra charge for now.⁵

On Puzzle, you close the books yourself. Its AI categorizes and reconciles transactions and drafts the financial statements, and you review and approve them. Starter costs $30 a month for one seat, and Complete, at $120, adds AI-powered reconciliations and an accuracy review.⁷

Digits lists AI bookkeeping and reconciliation around the clock on every plan, from $65 a month for Essentials, with a 30-day trial.⁹

Kick is free for up to 250 transactions a year. Its Basic plan, $40 a month ($480 billed annually), removes that limit and lists MCP and CLI access, with ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor among its connections.⁸

A service that closes the books for you

You answer the provider's questions and send the documents it asks for, and the provider closes each month.

Pilot's Essentials plan costs $99 a month for businesses with up to $100,000 of monthly expenses. Its AI categorizes transactions, reconciles accounts and closes the books each month, and you get a year-end package for your tax preparer. A US-based bookkeeper comes with the Core plan.¹⁰

Bench pairs its own software with a bookkeeper you can reach by phone, message or video call as often as you need. Bookkeeping costs $399 a month, Bookkeeping Light costs $199 for businesses with $250,000 of revenue a year or less, and the plan with tax filing costs $649.¹¹

Zeni combines AI bookkeeping with a dedicated finance team. Its Growth plan starts at $799 a month for businesses with revenue, and the price depends on your expenses, your revenue and how complex the books are.¹²

Accounting firms have their own tools. Booke AI, which categorizes bank feed transactions every day, costs $129 per business a month and offers firms their own pricing.¹³

Your own AI agent with bookkeeping tools

If you already run the business through Claude or ChatGPT, the agent can be your AI bookkeeper once it has tools for the books.

Intuit's QuickBooks connector in Claude and plugin in ChatGPT create, send and chase invoices and estimates, add customers and products, and answer payroll questions for QuickBooks customers.³ The tasks Intuit lists cover sales, payroll and lending. Categorizing bank lines isn't among them.

Xero publishes an open-source MCP server that you run on your own computer, with Node.js and a Xero developer account. Its tools list and create bank transactions, invoices, payments and journals, and pull the profit and loss and the balance sheet.⁶ Its tool list has no reconciliation tool.

Conecto, our product, hosts double-entry books as tools your agent calls. The agent imports a bank statement file in CSV, CAMT.053 or OFX, writes bank rules like Xero's, and matches each line to an invoice, a bill or an account. Importing and every report are free, a booking costs $0.01, and each bank line matched or booked by a rule costs $0.02.¹⁴ Bank lines come from statement files, with no live bank feeds yet, and Conecto files no tax returns.¹⁵

What AI bookkeeping costs a shop like our test business

Our test business takes in about $50,000 a month, has around 50 bank lines a month, sends one or two invoices and runs payroll through Gusto. This table shows each provider's cheapest plan that fits it, at list prices on November 4, 2026.

Option	Price a month	Kind	Plan that fits	Who checks the work
Xero	$27⁴	Software	Early	You
Puzzle	$30⁷	Software	Starter	You
QuickBooks Online	$38¹	Software	Simple Start, or Plus at $140 for automatic categorizing	You
Kick	$40, billed annually⁸	Software	Basic, since Free stops at 250 transactions a year	You
Digits	$65⁹	Software	Essentials	You
Pilot	$99¹⁰	Service	Essentials	Pilot
Bench	$399¹¹	Service	Bookkeeping, since Light is for $250,000 of revenue a year or less	A Bench bookkeeper
Zeni	From $799¹²	Service	Growth	Zeni's finance team
Conecto	$1.05 and $1.07 in our test¹⁴	Tools for your agent	Pay per call	Your agent, and you for its questions

The Conecto row covers the bookkeeping calls alone. Your agent's own plan, such as Claude or ChatGPT, comes on top, and so does the time you spend answering its questions. QuickBooks and Xero also discount the first three months.^1,4

The test: two months of a bike shop's books, kept by an AI agent

Halverson Cycle & Repair is a sample business we use in our docs: a bike shop with a workshop in Portland, Oregon. We wrote its September and October 2026 checking statements, with 51 and 53 lines. They hold daily Square payouts, weekly Shopify payouts, payroll through Gusto, two parts distributors, rent, utilities, a loan payment, a credit card payment and a few lines that say almost nothing. One business customer, a cargo-bike delivery company, paid two invoices.

On November 4, 2026, Claude, working in Claude Code, kept these books through Conecto's bookkeeping tools on a test copy of Conecto running the same code and prices as conecto.chat. It set up the books in US dollars from September 1, added the accounts a bike shop needs, imported each statement and booked every line. We answered its questions the way the owner would.

	September, the first month	October, with rules in place
Bank lines	51	53
Booked by bank rules	45	46
Matched to an invoice the books suggested	0	2
Booked on the agent's own judgment	0	2
Booked from the lender's statement	1	1
Questions for the owner	5	2
Bookkeeping cost on Conecto	$1.05	$1.07
Books agree with the bank's closing balance	Yes, $19,698.79	Yes, $22,837.30

In September no line had any history, so the agent read all 51 and wrote 17 bank rules for the payees it recognized. They covered card and online payouts, rent, payroll, utilities, software, insurance, parts orders, fuel, the bank fee and the card payment. One call then booked 45 lines.

It asked about the other five: a check with no payee, a cash deposit, an Amazon order, a transfer to another checking account and a Venmo payment. Our answers were a freelance mechanic for a demo weekend, cash sales from the till, shop supplies, the owner's draw and a refund for a cancelled repair. The agent turned two of those answers into rules, for the owner's monthly draw and the till's cash deposits.

In October the rules booked 46 of the 53 lines in one call, which is 87 percent. The books suggested both customer payments, one from the invoice number in the bank text and one from the amount alone. The agent booked a hardware store purchase and a post office charge on its own, and asked about a check and an Amazon order.

Almost all of the cost is the $0.02 a bank line. That came to $1.02 for September's 51 lines and $1.06 for October's 53. The 19 rules cost $0.019 and each loan entry $0.01. Setting up the books cost another $0.012, once, before the first month. Importing the statements, listing the lines and running the profit and loss cost nothing.¹⁴

Where the bank statement wasn't enough

Four things in the test needed a document beyond the bank statement. Without it, the agent can book the line but can't get it fully right.

Square paid out after taking its card fees, so booking the payouts as sales understates sales and hides the fees. Square's own payout report splits them.

Each Gusto tax debit holds the tax withheld from employees together with the shop's own payroll tax. The payroll register says how much is which.

The statement shows the credit card payment, and the purchases on the card need the card's statement, imported as a second account.

Each loan payment is part interest and part principal, and only the lender's statement says how much of each.

How to choose

If you already use QuickBooks or Xero, start with the AI in your plan,^1,5 and on QuickBooks add its connector to Claude or ChatGPT for invoices.³
If you want someone else to answer for the books, a service such as Pilot, Bench or Zeni costs $99 to $799 a month or more.^10,11,12
If you run the business through Claude, ChatGPT or another agent and want to pay per line, give the agent bookkeeping tools and keep your tax adviser for the year end.
With fewer than 250 transactions a year, Kick's free plan fits, and QuickBooks Free does if two invoices a month is enough.^8,2

How to start AI bookkeeping with your own agent

Connect Conecto to your agent with the steps for Claude, ChatGPT or another agent. Download last month's bank statement as a CSV or OFX file, give it to the agent and ask: "Set up our books in dollars from the first of last month, import this statement and book every line. Ask me about anything you can't tell." Next month, ask it to import the new statement and apply the bank rules. AI bookkeeping lists every tool your agent gets and what each costs.

This guide is general information, not accounting or tax advice for your business.

Questions

Can AI do my bookkeeping?

It can do most of the daily work. In our two-month test, an AI agent booked 104 bank lines, 91 of them by bank rules, and asked the owner about 7. A person still answers those questions, signs off on each month and files the tax return.

Is AI bookkeeping accurate enough for taxes?

It can be, once a person has reviewed it. In our test the books agreed with the bank's closing balance in both months. That shows the bank account in the books is right, and a person still checks that each line went to the right account. Card fees, payroll taxes and loan interest needed documents beyond the bank statement, and the tax return stays with your tax preparer.

Can I use Claude or ChatGPT for accounting?

Yes, once they have tools for it. With the QuickBooks connector you can use Claude for accounting tasks such as sending invoices and answering payroll questions, and ChatGPT through its QuickBooks plugin.³ Conecto's bookkeeping tools let either one import statements, book every line and pull reports.¹⁴ Without tools, they can explain accounting and draft entries, and someone has to type them in.

What is the best AI bookkeeping software?

It depends on who reviews the work. Among software you review yourself, Xero at $27, Puzzle at $30 and QuickBooks at $38 a month are the cheapest plans that fit a small shop.^4,7,1 Among services, Pilot starts at $99 a month.¹⁰ If your agent already runs the business, AI bookkeeping tools paid per bank line cost about a dollar a month for a shop like our test business.

Is there free AI bookkeeping software?

Kick is free for up to 250 transactions a year,⁸ and QuickBooks Free costs nothing for one bank account and two invoices a month.² On Conecto, importing statements and running reports are free, and each bank line booked costs $0.02.¹⁴

Will AI replace bookkeepers?

AI takes over the manual data entry and leaves the judgment calls to people. Our guide Will AI replace bookkeepers and accountants? has the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' job projections.

Sources

We read these pages on November 4, 2026. Each number in the guide links to the page behind that sentence.

Conecto publishes this guide and sells business tools for AI agents. How we write our guides. To report a mistake, write to hello@conecto.chat.

Written by Amelia Cardona Hernandez, Co-founder of Conecto. LinkedIn