Accounting AI course

Teach accountants their own work with an agent they can review, reverse, and sign. Do not pitch Naologic in the classroom. The course is completable on PDFs, CSVs, Excel, bank exports, and a synthetic general ledger. Product appears only as an optional conversation after the person has already felt the operating record and the ledger disagree.

This page is a GTM education design. It is not a generated audience GTM guide and not a canonical sales problem catalog. The 20 problems below are a synthesized practical set for this course, not a ranked survey result.

Context

Accountants are not a side audience. Inside a manufacturing company they are often the technical evaluator of a system change. Outside the company they keep the books and can kill or bless that change. We earn the right to be trusted by teaching work they already do, then leaving the next step optional.

This design applies when we want in-house accountants, comptrollers, and external accountants (CPA and bookkeeping firms) to experience agentic work that stays under their control, online or in a room, and eventually to consider us as a vendor. It does not apply to a product walkthrough, a CPE filing, or new P_000xx sales records.

Axioms

• Trust is earned by teaching their work, not pitching ours.
• In-house accountants and comptrollers are employees of the operating company. External accountants keep the books and are not employees of that company.
• The course must be completable without Naologic. Product may appear only as an optional later bridge.
• Every agent action ends in human review, evidence, and a reversible sign-off.
• Do not mint canonical sales problem records from this course. Do not claim unproven product capabilities.
• Online and offline are two deliveries of the same 20 problems, not two curricula.

Assumptions we are using

"Accounts are external" here means external accountants (CPA / bookkeeping firms) who keep the books. In-house accountants and comptrollers are employees of the operating company. That split matches how finance work sits in our signals: with a dedicated officer, or with the chief executive or an outside accountant, and with the controller as technical evaluator when both a CFO and a controller are in seat. See SG_004 and SG_005.

Labs run in the habitat accountants already have (Excel, PDF, QuickBooks exports, email dumps). That follows the live objection that many accountants would rather keep QuickBooks than switch ledgers.

Indirect tax and payroll are data-completeness problems parameterized by jurisdiction. They are not tax-code lectures and they are not a fork of the 20.

Guidance

1. Who this is for

One course contract, two instances.

Instance	Who	Duty
in_house	Staff accountant, controller, comptroller employed by the operating company	Sign the employer's books, close, controls, and management support
external	CPA or bookkeeping firm that is not an employee of the operating company	Keep client books, produce workpapers, answer PBC, protect the engagement

P2 in the persona list is the overlapping function (finance stewardship, controls, reporting, cash, credibility of the numbers). Titles do not prove authority. The course teaches the work, not a buying role.

Every problem below is a class. Fill in_house and external as instance fields. Do not maintain two drifting courses.

2. What this is not

• A product demo, a Logic Pilot lab, or homework that requires a Naologic login.
• Accredited CPE, unless a later owner actually files it. Learning objectives below are written so they could support CPE later (task, evidence, sign-off) without claiming accreditation.
• Canonical sales problems. Related mismatches live in P_00002, P_00010, and P_00011. This course may point at them. It must not duplicate them as new IDs.
• A claim that these 20 items are "the official top 20" from any named survey.

3. Lesson invariant

Every lesson is the same machine. Only the mismatch changes.

1. Situation — when this problem exists (in_house vs external).
2. Operational mismatch — what has stopped lining up. It must be testable, not a complaint.
3. Evidence you must keep — source files, tie-out, who signed.
4. Agent grind — extract, match, draft, list exceptions. The agent does not post.
5. Human judgment — materiality, cutoff, posting, duty to employer or client. The person must not delegate these.
6. Sign-off — accept / accept-with-notes / reject. Say what is reversible.
7. Workpaper out — one artifact they leave with.
8. Prohibited — what the lesson must never claim, including any Naologic capability that has not been classified native, configured, integrated, or roadmap.

Learning objective shape (reuse on every lab): given the source files, the person produces a workpaper that ties to those files, records the agent's exceptions, and signs accept, accept-with-notes, or reject.

Online: the person runs this against a provided dataset, and may optionally use their own files. Offline: pairs run the same dataset on paper plus a projected agent. The facilitator teaches the review, not the prompt. The prompt is a means.

4. The 20 problems

Five clusters, four problems each. For each problem: mismatch, two instances, what the agent may do, what the human must keep.

Cluster 1 — Close and cutoff

1. Month-end that never finishes

Close is a calendar date, not a finished state. The checklist lives in someone's head.

• In-house: the controller will not release close while AP, inventory, and payroll still arrive as chat messages.
• External: the firm cannot finish the client's month because the client has not sent the last statements, and nobody owns a written remaining list.
• Agent may: draft a close checklist from last month's workpapers, mark received vs missing source files, list blockers by owner.
• Human only: declare close complete; waive a missing item; post the period lock.

2. Cutoff and missing bills (GRNI / unbilled receipts)

The books close while goods and invoices are still in transit.

• In-house: receiving has entries the AP subledger does not; warehouse knows; finance guesses.
• External: the client says "that's all the bills" while packing slips and vendor emails show otherwise. Exceptions should become PBC items, not silent accruals the firm invented.
• Agent may: match receipts to invoices and vendor emails; list unmatched receipts and unmatched bills; draft accrual candidates with source cites.
• Human only: materiality of the accrual; posting; telling the client or the warehouse the books will wait.

3. Bank reconciliation at volume

Timing differences and unmatched lines bury the real exceptions.

• In-house: controller reconciles operating cash and merchant accounts before releasing close.
• External: firm reconciles client bank feeds; exceptions become PBC items, not silent adjustments.
• Agent may: match bank lines to GL and subledger; split timing vs unknown; produce the unmatched list with suggested matches.
• Human only: clear an unknown item; record a bank error vs a book error; sign the rec.

4. Prepaids, deferrals, and recurring entries

The calendar is the system of record.

• In-house: insurance, rent, and subscriptions sit in a spreadsheet the closer remembers.
• External: recurring client entries live in the preparer's notes; a new staff member misses one and nobody sees it until review.
• Agent may: roll last period's schedules forward; flag lapsed amortizations; draft the next month's recurring list from contracts on file.
• Human only: change an amortization period; add or kill a recurring entry; post.

Cluster 2 — Spend (AP)

5. Invoice capture from PDFs and inboxes

The bill exists. The coded draft does not.

• In-house: AP reads a shared inbox and types into the ledger.
• External: the client forwards a ZIP of PDFs, or nothing, the week of close.
• Agent may: extract vendor, date, amount, tax, and line text; suggest a GL code from history; flag missing fields.
• Human only: coding on a new vendor or a new kind of spend; posting; paying.

6. Duplicate vendors and duplicate payments

Master data drift, not careless people.

• In-house: the same supplier exists as "Acme", "ACME Inc", and a personal card name.
• External: three client entities paid the same invoice; the firm sees it only when the vendor calls.
• Agent may: cluster vendor names and bank details; list possible duplicate invoices by amount, date, and invoice number; draft a merge candidate list.
• Human only: merge vendors; void or reverse a payment; accuse anyone of fraud.

7. PO / receipt / invoice exceptions

Three documents should tell one story. They do not.

• In-house: three-way match. Quantity, price, or terms broke.
• External: the client sent the PDF and nothing else. There is no PO in the pack.
• Agent may: line-match PO, receipt, and invoice; list quantity, price, and tax exceptions with source cites.
• Human only: accept a price variance; pay unmatched; change receiving.

8. Vendor statement reconciliation

Supplier truth vs the AP subledger.

• In-house: month-end statement from a large vendor does not tie to open payables.
• External: the client forwards the statement and asks "is this what we owe?" with no aged AP export.
• Agent may: match statement lines to open items; list on-statement-not-in- books and in-books-not-on-statement.
• Human only: concede a balance to the vendor; write off; post.

Cluster 3 — Cash in (AR)

9. Cash application and unapplied cash

The remittance does not match open items.

• In-house: lockbox or merchant batch hits cash; AR still shows the invoices.
• External: the client's bank feed shows deposits; the invoice list is a week behind; unapplied cash is a parking lot.
• Agent may: parse remittance advice; propose applications; list leftover cash and leftover invoices.
• Human only: write off a difference; apply cash across customers; post.

10. Collections worklist

Aging is not a plan. Who to call and why is reconstructed every week.

• In-house: credit and AR rebuild the call list from Excel after every export.
• External: the firm is asked "who owes us" and rebuilds from a stale aging plus emails.
• Agent may: rank open items by age, amount, and last activity; draft a call list with last invoice and last promise-to-pay found in the files.
• Human only: credit hold; settlement; what to say to the customer; any legal step.

11. Billing vs revenue

Deferred revenue, milestones, and deposits sit in the wrong bucket.

• In-house: the invoice went out; revenue policy does not match billing.
• External: the client invoices on cash-ish timing and wants "accrual books" without a contract file.
• Agent may: list invoices, cash, and contract clauses side by side; draft deferred vs recognized candidates with cites.
• Human only: revenue policy; materiality; posting.

12. Credits, short pays, and deductions

The cash arrived. The explanation did not.

• In-house: customer short-paid; deduction codes live in emails.
• External: the client says "they always take 2%"; the files do not show a term.
• Agent may: match payments to invoices; isolate short-pay amounts; pull deduction language from remittance PDFs.
• Human only: grant the deduction; dispute it; issue a credit memo; post.

Cluster 4 — Operating record vs ledger

These four are still the accountant's problem. They happen to be the place manufacturing companies feel the mismatch first. Teach the reconciliation. Do not claim a named ERP is broken. Do not require our software to finish the lab.

13. Inventory quantity vs GL inventory

Recorded quantity and the inventory GL do not tell one story. Related in spirit to P_00011.

• In-house: cycle count differs from the operating quantity; the GL inventory account is a plug.
• External: the client sends a count spreadsheet and a trial balance; the firm cannot see movements.
• Agent may: compare count, perpetual quantity, and GL balance; list variance layers (timing, unit cost, missing movement) as hypotheses with cites.
• Human only: post an inventory adjustment; declare shrink; blame a system or a person.

14. WIP / job cost that will not tie

Hours, material, and billings live in three places.

• In-house: jobs are open on the floor; the ledger has a WIP balance nobody can rebuild.
• External: the client has job spreadsheets, timesheets, and invoices; the firm is asked to "make WIP make sense" from those files alone.
• Agent may: assemble job-level hours, receipts, and billings; list jobs that cannot tie; draft a WIP rollforward skeleton.
• Human only: percentage complete; write-off of a job; posting.

15. Margin not stateable below company

Revenue sits on the customer and the order. Cost sits on production. Nothing reconciles them at a site or a unit. Finance presents numbers it cannot trace to the operating record. Related in spirit to P_00002.

• In-house: leadership asks for margin by line or plant; finance rebuilds it by hand or declines.
• External: the client wants "profit by job" from a company-level P&L plus a production export.
• Agent may: map revenue lines to cost lines that share an identifier; list what cannot be joined; draft the questions that would make a lower-level margin testable.
• Human only: publish a margin figure; price from it; claim the join is complete when it is not.

16. Management questions rebuilt in Excel

The transaction lives in the operating system. The answer is reconstructed after export. Related in spirit to P_00010.

• In-house: every recurring management view is an export plus a spreadsheet the closer owns.
• External: the client asks for the same pack every month; the firm rebuilds it from new exports and last month's formulas.
• Agent may: reproduce last month's pack from this month's exports; list formula breaks and missing columns; draft a tie-out to the trial balance.
• Human only: send the pack to leadership or the client; change the definition of a metric.

Cluster 5 — Control, capacity, and signing off an agent

17. Workpaper version truth

Which file is the file. Review notes live in email.

• In-house: three close folders, two named Final, comments in Slack.
• External: reviewer comments in email; the preparer updated a different workbook.
• Agent may: list files by name, date, and hash; extract review notes; produce a "current binder" checklist of required workpapers vs found files.
• Human only: declare the signed workpaper; delete or archive; sign the review.

18. PBC / audit evidence pack

The request list is the work. The pack is late, incomplete, or untraceable. Heavier for external accountants; in-house still owns support.

• In-house: audit PBC lands on the controller; evidence is screenshots without a tie-out.
• External: the firm is both preparing client workpapers and answering the auditor; the same gap shows up twice.
• Agent may: map PBC items to files on hand; list missing items; draft a cover sheet with source cites.
• Human only: send the pack; represent completeness to an auditor; change a prior-period number.

19. Access, segregation, and who changed the books

Including what an agent is allowed to touch.

• In-house: the closer can post and also approve; the agent would inherit that if given a login.
• External: staff have client-book access that is broader than the engagement letter; an agent with that access would be the firm's problem.
• Agent may: from an export of users and posting logs, list SoD conflicts and postings with no second reviewer; draft an agent permission list (read / draft / never post).
• Human only: grant or revoke access; accept an SoD conflict; let an agent post.

20. Signing off agent output

The meta-skill of the whole course: materiality, incomplete extraction, invented matches, and duty to the employer or client.

• In-house: the controller is still the signer of the employer's books when an agent drafted the rec.
• External: the firm is still the signer of the work product when an agent filled the binder.
• Agent may: produce the draft and a self-check list (empty fields, unmatched items, numbers that do not foot).
• Human only: the sign-off. Accept / accept-with-notes / reject. Nothing in this course delegates that.

Use problem 20 as the last lab in every delivery. Earlier labs practice the same sign-off; this lab names it.

5. Online delivery

Same 20 problems, same rubric.

• Spine: 10 sessions (two problems each) or 20 short labs. Session 10 is problem 19 plus problem 20, or problem 20 alone if 19 was taught with 17–18.
• Materials per lab: one-page problem brief, dataset (PDF / CSV / Excel / bank export / synthetic GL), agent instructions, review rubric, sign-off block.
• Optional office hours for review practice, not for product questions.
• Own-files track: the person may repeat a lab on their files. We do not require it. We do not store client or employer data as a condition of finishing.

The person should leave each lab with one workpaper. Completing all 20 (or the offline subset plus take-homes) is enough for a certificate we issue ourselves. That certificate is not CPE.

6. Offline delivery

Same 20 problems, same rubric, different packaging.

• One full day: five clusters, one worked problem per cluster in the room, the other three as take-home labs with the same datasets.
• Five half-days: one cluster per session, two problems live, two as take-home.
• In the room: printed one-pagers, paired review, a projected agent that is allowed to be wrong. The teaching moment is the review of the mistake.
• Facilitator rule: teach judgment and evidence, not prompt trivia.

Worked-in-room default (if you must pick five): problems 3, 5, 9, 13, and 20. They cover rec, capture, cash, ops-vs-ledger, and sign-off without requiring our product.

7. Trust sequence and optional invitation

Conversion is a sequence, not a pitch. Keep it off the homework.

1. Usefulness — time returned on work they already do.
2. Control — the agent proposes; they post, reverse, or reject.
3. Evidence — a workpaper they could hand an auditor or a partner.
4. Invitation — only then, and only if the operating record and the ledger disagree in a way they already felt. Never as homework.

Stage	What they get	What we never do
Attend	Labs, workpapers, review rubric	Product demo as lesson 1
Finish	Certificate of completion we issue ourselves (not CPE)	Urgency, limited-seats theater
Optional	A conversation if ops and ledger disagree	Homework that requires a Naologic login

If they ask what we build, answer in their language: systems that learn the work, keep the person in control, and make important actions reversible. Name Industry Core, Builder, or Logic Pilot only if they ask, and classify every capability as native, configured, integrated, or roadmap before recommending anything. Advanced finance replacing a ledger package is not a classroom claim; treat it as roadmap if it is mentioned at all.

The invitation is not a module in the 20. It is a door after cluster 4 or after the course, labeled optional, with freedom to leave it closed.

8. Facilitator and author notes

Do

• Meet hesitation with clarity, evidence, control, or continuity. Never with pressure.
• Keep synthetic datasets boring and complete enough to tie out. Include at least one agent failure in every live demo.
• Speak to the person doing the work. Do not call them users.
• Parameterize jurisdiction on tax and payroll completeness. Do not teach a code section.

Do not claim

• Quantified close-time or labor savings without evidence for that person.
• That Naologic replaces QuickBooks, or that accountants should leave QuickBooks to finish this course.
• That the finance module is complete.
• That a named ERP is generally incapable of reporting or inventory accuracy.
• That these 20 problems are empirically ranked by a named survey.
• Any product capability that is not classified native, configured, integrated, or roadmap.
• CPE credit.

Do not write

• New canonical problem records (P_000xx) from this page.
• A second curriculum for online vs offline.
• Agent posting, agent signing, or "the agent is the reviewer."

Related knowledge

• Work with Wonder — trust, control, reversible action, learn the work.
• Personas — P2 finance function.
• Signals — SG_004, SG_005.
• P_00002 — margin not stateable below company.
• P_00010 — management questions rebuilt outside the operating system.
• P_00011 — recorded inventory vs physical stock.
• Sales communication instructions — capability classification; no pressure; choice stays with the person.
• CEO scene videos — 1:1 scene to a named P1; this course is teach-first, not a personalized pitch.
• CFO advice — one-to-one advice from P2, not this classroom.
• CEOs and AI — P1 AI slice may send a controller here; the course still completes without product.
• GTM content structure — this page is not a generated audience GTM guide; keep that structure for those guides only.

Change log

• 2026-08-22 — First draft: trust-first agentic course design, 20 practical problems, dual audience instances, online and offline delivery, optional invitation only after ops-vs-ledger work.