Check a month of bookkeeping for mistakes

A poster used an AI agent to review fake bookkeeping and it found five of six planted errors, while also spotting problems in the answer key.

Done with Custom agent· Intermediate· Aug 2026

What they did
They built a month of pretend books for a made-up company, including invoices, vendor payments, churn figures, and six hidden errors. Beforehand, they wrote an answer key, then handed the dataset to their own agent setup and let it inspect the records without extra guidance. After that, they compared the agent’s flags with the key and found two mistakes in the key itself.
How it went
The agents identified five of the six planted errors on their own. Two agents also noticed that the grading rules had overlooked the sign-off requirement tied to the sixth issue. The test took less than 30 minutes and cost about $5.50.
Tips
For this kind of check, ask the agent to list suspected problems, cite the row or transaction, and explain why each item looks off. It can also help to tell it to stop and ask questions if a field, rule, or definition is missing instead of guessing.

Try it yourself with Claude

Review this month of bookkeeping for [business name]. I’ll give you [transactions/invoices/vendor payments/churn data/bank statement]. Look for duplicates, missing entries, wrong amounts, bad categorization, and anything that does not reconcile with [source of truth]. For each suspected issue, give the row or transaction reference, explain why it seems wrong, and rate your confidence. If any key field, rule, or definition is missing, pause and ask me before continuing. Do not edit the records. After your review, stop and ask for my approval before you would delete, submit, send, or finalize anything.

Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.

Read the original on reddit.com ↗

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