What is the finance engine?
Most field-service platforms end at the invoice. The job is done, the invoice goes out, and the moment the money lands you are handed to a separate accounting package, a bookkeeper, or a spreadsheet. Biloh keeps going. The same platform that quoted the work and dispatched the contractor also reconciles the bank, codes the spend, closes the period, and produces the BAS and the year-end reports, and every step is available to an AI agent over the Model Context Protocol.
The practical difference is who does the bookkeeping. With Biloh connected to an AI assistant, the operator says:
"Import this week's bank statement into the everyday account, match the deposits to invoices, code the rest, and tell me what is still unexplained."
and then, at the end of the quarter:
"Close September, close the July to September quarter, and give me the BAS figures and the pack for my accountant."
The agent calls the same tools the web app uses. The figures it reads back are the figures the accountant sees.
What does it actually cover?
| Stage | What Biloh does | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| Bank feed | Register each real account (everyday, tax set-aside, contractor buffer), import a statement CSV, tie every line by the bank's running balance | The balance chain |
| Money in | Rank deposits against outstanding invoices, match, learn the payer for next time | Reconcile money in |
| Money out | Settle contractor bills against debits, code supplier spend to a category with its GST, pair receipts from the shoebox, split mixed lines | Reconcile money out |
| Own money | Pair the two halves of a transfer between your own accounts so it reaches no report | Envelopes |
| Close | Month, quarter and financial-year closes on one ladder, refused while the bank feed has a hole | Close a month and a quarter |
| BAS | G1, 1A, 1B and net GST on the ATO labels, with an exceptions list for GST held out for missing evidence | Cash-basis BAS from the bank feed |
| Reports | Cash P&L ex-GST, balance sheet that balances by construction, TPAR, depreciation schedule, aged payables | Finance MCP tools |
| Accountant | One ZIP per month, quarter or year with every report, the evidence and a manifest | Prepare the BAS and the accountant pack |
| Compliance | A calendar of BAS, super and TPAR due dates that seeds itself, plus your own renewals | Prepare the BAS and the accountant pack |
Why is "refuses" a feature?
An accounting engine that will do anything you ask is one that will quietly produce a wrong BAS. Biloh is built to refuse, and to say why, before any row is written:
- A statement that does not chain onto the account's last balance is refused
with
wrong_account_or_gap, naming the expected and actual figures. Zero rows land. Either it is the wrong file or a week is missing, and both have the same fix. - A period close is refused with
bank_completeness_failedwhile any line in the range fails to tie, naming the first break's date and the gap in cents. - A purchase above the receipt-only threshold with no tax invoice has its GST held out of 1B and named in the exceptions list. The worksheet never overstates a claim and never silently drops one.
- An asset is never depreciated by a method nobody chose.
create_assetrequires the method, and an instant write-off above the tenant's threshold is refused with the threshold named. - The income-tax provision in the tax envelope is zero until you and your accountant set the percentage. The platform never guesses a tax rate.
The full list is in bank import and close refusal codes.
What is it honest about not doing?
Every report says its basis on its face, and the balance sheet carries a
not_here_note naming what it does not hold. Today the engine is:
- Cash basis. Income is recognised when the money lands, a purchase when it is paid. Accrual reporting exists for the AR and AP reconciliation view, but the close, BAS and P&L are cash.
- Australian. GST at 10%, the ATO's BAS labels, financial years ending 30 June, TPAR by 28 August, super quarters. The tax locale is a tenant setting and the design is not tied to one jurisdiction, but Australia is what ships.
- Not payroll, not inventory, not accruals. No wages, no stock, no work in progress, no loans or hire-purchase the platform has not been told about.
- CSV bank feed. Bank lines come from an internet-banking export (or a data-recipient feed where enabled), never from a general ledger, and the chain guard means a skipped export is caught, not assumed.
If a business needs those, Biloh can still be the operational system and mirror invoices and bills to Xero. The Xero connection tools exist for exactly that shape.
How does an agent drive it?
Every stage above is an MCP tool with a plain-English description, a
"use when / don't use when" block, its preconditions and its side effects.
An agent that has never seen Biloh can read get_bookkeeper_worklist, work
each stream, and close the month, and Biloh's own smoke runner does exactly
that with a fresh, context-free agent every fire.
Closing the books by chat
walks through the conversation end to end.
Where does it sit against the rest of Biloh?
The finance engine consumes what the operational side produces. A completed job becomes an invoice; a released work order becomes a payable; a signed proposal sets the expected income. So the books are not a parallel record to be reconciled against operations, they are the operations, priced and dated. That is why a matched deposit can name the client, the site and the visit it paid for, and why the TPAR is produced from the payment ledger rather than assembled by hand in August.
Next steps
- New to Biloh's books: close your first month.
- Evaluating the tool surface: finance MCP tools.
- Tuning behaviour per business: finance settings.