Online bookkeeping services, with nothing to drop off
Photograph a receipt and it is in your books. Connect the bank once and the transactions arrive on their own. A trained reviewer on our staff settles whatever the AI is not sure about, so remote does not mean unattended.
AI Bookkeeping is an online bookkeeping service for small businesses in Canada and the United States. Documents arrive through the web app or a Telegram bot, bank and card transactions connect through Plaid, and a human reviewer checks anything uncertain before it posts. From $99 CAD a month, with a 15-day free trial.
Same service, different question
Answer first: this page is not a cheaper or lighter version of anything. It is the same service, answered from the logistics side.
What the service does to your books is covered on bookkeeping services: validated double-entry entries, the reviewer queue, corrections as visible reversals. What province you are in is covered on bookkeeping services in Canada. This page answers the question people actually type when they search for an online bookkeeper: how does the work get to you, and is there a person on the other end.
Four ways in, and none of them is a filing cabinet
Answer first: receipts and invoices come from your phone or browser, bank and card activity connects directly, and your accountant gets their own way in. Nothing is posted, couriered or dropped off.
The Telegram bot
Photograph a receipt at the counter and send it to the bot. It goes straight into the same pipeline as everything else. This is the one people end up using most, because it happens at the moment the receipt exists rather than three weeks later in a pile.
Upload in the web app
Supplier bills and client invoices that arrive as PDFs go in directly. Useful for the monthly batch of things that were never physical in the first place.
Connected transactions through Plaid
Bank and credit-card activity arrives on its own, continuously. You connect the account once through Plaid, which means your banking credentials never reach us at any point. There is no monthly export and no statement to email anybody.
Invited into the same workspace
Invite them by email and they get their own access to your records and reports, rather than being sent a file that is out of date the moment it lands. Invitations are single-use, matched to their address, and they expire.
What working with a remote bookkeeper actually changes
Answer first: the bookkeeping is the same. What changes is how documents travel, who holds access to what, and how long it takes for a question to get answered.
| What has to happen | Working with someone in person | How it works here |
|---|---|---|
| Getting receipts to them | Collected up and handed over, posted, or emailed in a batch | Photographed and sent the moment you have it |
| Getting bank activity to them | You export statements, or you grant read access to the account | Connected once through Plaid; we never receive your credentials |
| Where the books live | On their software, on their machine, or in a shared file | In your own account, which you keep access to |
| Being in the same city | Required, or it is remote work with extra steps | Irrelevant. Canada and the United States, same price |
| An uncertain transaction | Comes back to you as a question to answer | Goes to a reviewer on our staff, who decides it |
| Your accountant at year-end | Sent an export, usually more than once | Invited in, reading the live records themselves |
Is there a virtual bookkeeper, or is it just software?
Answer first: both, and the split is deliberate. Software does the repetitive part. A trained reviewer on our staff does the judgment part. Neither does the other's job.
This is the question worth asking any remote bookkeeper, virtual or otherwise, because the honest answers differ a lot. Some services are a person doing the work in ordinary accounting software. Some are software with a support inbox. Here, the AI prepares each entry and deterministic accounting rules check it, and anything that fails those checks or that the AI is not confident about stops and goes to a person. You are not asked to approve categories, and you are not left trusting a model unsupervised.
What the reviewer actually does when something stops
They open the source document, decide the correct accounting treatment, and post it through the same engine everything else goes through. There is no separate back door for staff and no way to edit a posted entry silently: a correction is a reversal plus a repost, both numbered and both visible in your register. You never see the queue, and you are never the fallback for a decision the software could not make.
Cloud bookkeeping services, and what that means for your access
Answer first: nothing to install, nothing to back up, and the records stay in an account you control rather than on somebody else's laptop.
The practical difference is what happens if you stop. With a desktop file or a spreadsheet held by whoever is doing your books, leaving means negotiating for a copy of your own records. Here the books are in your account, your accountant's access is something you granted and can revoke, and reports download whenever you want them. That is the part of "cloud" that actually matters to a business owner, rather than where a server happens to be.
How remote bookkeeping actually goes wrong
These are the four failures specific to working at a distance. Every one of them is a process problem rather than an accounting one, which is why naming them is worth more than promising to be careful.
The document that only exists in an email thread
A supplier invoice forwarded to a person rather than into a system is findable for about a week. At year-end it is a search term nobody remembers. Everything here lands in one pipeline whichever channel it came from, and stays attached to the entry it produced.
Statement PDFs standing in for bank data
Emailing a monthly statement is the habit remote arrangements fall into, and it is why reconciliation lags a month behind reality. Bank statement files are deliberately not a supported upload here. The platform works from connected transactions, which arrive continuously instead of once a month.
Sharing a banking login because it was easier
Handing over online banking credentials is the single riskiest habit in small-business bookkeeping, and distance makes it more tempting rather than less. Plaid exists precisely so the connection can be made without it. We never receive, store or need your banking password.
The month nobody chased you
The quiet failure of remote bookkeeping is nothing happening at all. A bank connection keeps working whether or not you send anything, so the expense side stays current, and an unmatched transaction waiting for its receipt is recorded and flagged rather than silently skipped.
What online bookkeeping services cost here
$99 CAD a month on Starter, $199 on Growth and $399 on Pro, covering up to 150, 250 and 500 documents. Being delivered online is how the service works rather than a discount tier, so there is no separate remote price.
The full breakdown of what each plan includes is on the bookkeeping services page, and both products sit side by side on pricing. If you only want receipts read and categorized without the double-entry ledger, Receipt Automation starts at $29 CAD a month for 100 documents. Prices in CAD; taxes may apply.
Questions about working this way
Anything not here, email support and a person answers.
Do you need my online banking password?
No, and you should not give it to anybody. Bank and credit-card connections run through Plaid, which handles the authentication directly with your bank. Your credentials never reach us, are never stored by us, and are not something we could hand over if asked.
How do I actually send a receipt?
Photograph it and send it to the Telegram bot, or upload it in the web app. Both land in the same pipeline. Most people use the bot for anything physical and the web app for PDFs that arrived by email.
Can I just email you my bank statements?
No. Bank statement files are not a supported upload, deliberately: a statement is a monthly snapshot, and working from one keeps your books permanently a month behind. Connected transactions through Plaid arrive continuously instead, which is what makes reconciliation current rather than retrospective.
Do I have to install anything?
No. It runs in a browser, and the document channel is Telegram, which you may already have. There is no desktop file to keep, no software version to match with your accountant, and nothing to back up yourself.
What if I want to talk to a person?
Email support and a person answers. What you will not be asked to do is answer bookkeeping questions on our behalf: when a transaction is genuinely uncertain it goes to our reviewer, not back to you as a query.
Can my accountant get in, and can I revoke that later?
Yes to both. You invite them by email, they get their own access to your records and reports, and the invitation is single-use, matched to their address and expiring. Access is something you granted, so it is something you can withdraw.
Anywhere in Canada or the United States
Being online is the whole point: there is no service radius, no travel charge and no city where this works better. If you want the provincial detail, including which sales tax applies where, that is on bookkeeping services in Canada.
Send one receipt and see where it ends up
Fifteen days free, no credit card, no obligation. The fastest way to judge an online bookkeeping service is to photograph something and watch what happens to it.
No credit card required.