Which AI Agents, Plugins and Connectors Actually Do the Books? A Six-Question Test (2026)

Every assistant now says it can help with your books. ChatGPT has plugins. Claude has connectors. Grok Bot has a plugin marketplace. Cursor has one too. Underneath them is a protocol called MCP, and on top of them is the word everyone is using this year: agent.

I spent eight years running a bookkeeping firm before building Switchbooks, and I have watched a lot of owners get burned by the gap between "can help with your books" and "can do your books." This guide is about that gap. What doing the books actually means, which assistants can be connected to a real ledger today, what the QuickBooks plugin does and does not say, and a six-question test you can run in ten minutes before you trust any of them with a month.

Watch: Claude posts 150 transactions from one message

Here is what it looks like when the assistant has real tools and a real database. I connect Claude to Switchbooks from the directory, log in, open the demo company's bank feed so you can see the pile of unposted transactions, and then say one thing: "do my bookkeeping for Dunder Mifflin."

Claude comes back with 150 transactions categorized and posted, revenue grouped by customer, cost of goods and payroll in the right places, and the ten checking-to-savings transfers matched so the money counts once. Then I ask what we made this year, and it pulls the P&L: revenue, gross profit, and net income at 23 percent. The same numbers are in the app. Then I ask it to break sales down by customer, and it adds four subcategories and moves forty transactions. The whole thing is one conversation. The same connection, with the same tools, now works in ChatGPT.

What "do the books" actually means

When a bookkeeper says the books are done for September, five things are true.

1. Every bank and card transaction is categorized and posted to the ledger, not sitting in a spreadsheet.
2. Transfers between accounts are matched, so the $3,200 you paid the credit card from checking is one movement, not an expense on one side and income on the other.
3. Adjusting entries are booked: payroll splits, depreciation, accruals, the owner's draw.
4. Each account is reconciled to its statement, to the penny, through the end of the month.
5. The statements tie out. The balance sheet balances. Net income on the P&L is the same number that moved equity.

Behind those five is a sixth that nobody puts on a checklist: the decisions are remembered. Amazon over $200 is equipment. The Square charge on Fridays is the contractor. If the assistant forgets that between months, your P&L cannot be compared month to month, and comparing months is most of the reason the P&L exists.

Any AI that cannot do all six is helping with the books. That is fine, and it is still useful. But it is not doing them.

The three kinds of AI you will meet

A chat with a pasted statement. You export checking, paste it in, and ask for categories. Every assistant does this reasonably well, and it is where most people start. It fails on transfers, because it sees one account. It cannot reconcile, because it has nothing to reconcile against. It forgets. I wrote up exactly where it breaks, with ten real rows.

An assistant connected to a ledger through a connector or plugin. The chat is the same, but behind it sit tools that act on real books: post this row, match these two, book this entry, reconcile this account, run this report. This is what MCP, the Model Context Protocol, made possible, and it is why the directories filled up this year. The assistant's memory stops mattering, because the ledger holds everything.

An agent inside the accounting software. Same tools, but the assistant lives in the app, sees the page you are on, and can hand you a preview before anything big. In Switchbooks this is Elliott.

Switchbooks offers the second and third, and they are the same tools. Whether you say "post what is in To Review" to ChatGPT, Claude, or Elliott in the app, the same code posts the same rows, records the same change, and offers the same undo.

The six-question test for any AI that says it does the books

Connect it to a company with at least a checking account and a credit card, or a demo company, and ask these six things. Each one takes about a minute and each one catches a specific way the "98 percent right" books go wrong.

1. The transfer test. "Find the last payment from checking to the credit card. How did you book it?" The right answer is a matched transfer with no expense. If it says "credit card payment, expense," your costs are being doubled.
2. The both-sides test. "Run the balance sheet as of last month end. Does it balance?" If the assistant cannot produce one, it is not working in a ledger.
3. The reconcile test. "Reconcile checking to the statement ending last month with a balance of [your number]." You want a preview showing what matches and what does not, and a finish step that waits for you.
4. The memory test. Make a rule in plain words: "Amazon charges over $200 are equipment." Then ask it to categorize a new Amazon charge for $350. Then close the chat, open a new one, and ask again.
5. The undo test. "What did you change today? Undo the last one." If there is no list and no undo, every mistake is yours to find and fix by hand.
6. The permission test. Disconnect and reconnect read-only. Ask it to post something. The right answer is a clear no, with where to turn changes on.

An assistant that passes all six is doing the books. One that passes the first two but not the rest is reporting on books someone else keeps. One that passes none is a smart spreadsheet, which is still better than nothing, but you should know which one you have before April.

Where to connect, assistant by assistant

Assistant	Where it is	Reads the books	Makes changes	Notes
ChatGPT	Switchbooks in the plugin directory. Click Install plugin.	Yes	Yes, if allowed	Connecting a bank, imports and the owner request link stay in the app.
Claude	Switchbooks in the Claude directory. Click Connect.	Yes	Yes, if allowed	Can also connect a bank from the chat through Plaid's own sign-in page. Team and Enterprise admins may need to add it first.
Cursor	Switchbooks in the Cursor marketplace.	Yes	Yes, if allowed	Same sign-in, same tools, from the editor's chat.
Grok Bot	Switchbooks in the Grok Bot marketplace.	Yes	Yes, if allowed	A Grok Bot plugin, not available in Grok chat.
Any MCP client	Server URL https://app.switchbooks.ai/api/mcp, listed in the official MCP registry.	Yes	Yes, if allowed	OAuth, no client ID or secret needed.
Inside Switchbooks	Elliott, the built-in agent, on every page.	Yes	Yes	Previews before anything big, and undo for what he did.

The permission choice is the same everywhere: read-only, or allow bookkeeping changes. You can connect read-only first and reconnect later. Every change made through any of them is recorded in Switchbooks and most can be undone from the chat. None of them can sign in to your bank, move money, invite or remove people, share a report, change billing or delete the company. The full setup for each is in the connect tutorial, and the complete tool list is on the AI assistants page.

What about the QuickBooks plugin?

Intuit has a QuickBooks plugin in the ChatGPT directory, and if you are staying on QuickBooks you should look at it. Its listing describes financial insights and benchmarking against similar businesses, generating profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet and aging reports, managing invoices, estimates, payments, customers, products and payroll from the chat, and uploading or pasting transactions for analysis.

That is a real list, and for reporting and invoicing it may be exactly what you want. The question this guide is about is a different one: can the assistant categorize and post the bank feed, match the transfers, reconcile the accounts and remember your decisions? I cannot answer that for someone else's plugin from its listing, and neither can you. Run the test below.

Start here

1. Create a free Switchbooks account and connect a bank. That is where the ledger comes from.
2. Install or connect Switchbooks in the assistant you use: ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor or Grok Bot, and tick Allow bookkeeping changes.
3. Run the six questions above on your own books. Then say "do my bookkeeping."

Switchbooks is $25 per month per company, every feature and every connection included, with a 10-day free trial.