Ask Zera, the AI agent that does the books you’re behind on.
Ask Zera is the AI bookkeeping agent inside the ZeraBooks general ledger. Give it your bank and card statements, bills and receipts, say what you want in a sentence, and it imports, checks, categorizes, reconciles and closes the months. It works only through ZeraBooks’ own tools, and every change is a card you approve, skip or undo.
Ask Zera takes the job a bookkeeper would take: a stack of documents and a deadline. It sits on top of the AI-native general ledger, so everything it records is a real double-entry transaction you can open, edit or report on.
DOCUMENTS IN
Twenty files in one message, each sent to the right place.
Bank and card statement PDFs, bills, your own invoices, receipts, payroll reports and loan statements can go in together. Ask Zera works out what each file is, matches each statement to its bank or card account by the last four digits and the bank’s name, and asks which account it is when it can’t tell.
A bill already in the books is recognized, not added twice
A statement that overlaps one you already have is refused, so nothing is counted twice
A photo of a statement gets a request for the bank’s PDF or CSV instead
NO SIGN-OFF UNTIL IT TIES
Each statement is checked against its own printed balances.
Statements go in oldest first. As each one lands, ZeraBooks checks that its lines run from the printed opening balance to the printed closing balance and that it picks up where the last statement ended. A statement that doesn’t tie is flagged with the exact difference, and its month can’t be signed off until the cause is found and fixed. The same proof runs underneath ZeraBooks’ bank reconciliation software.
SURE OR ASK
It files what it’s sure of and asks about the rest.
Confident transactions are categorized in batches. Anything that depends on facts only the owner has comes back as a short numbered list in plain words, such as whether a $1,200 cash withdrawal was an owner draw. A payment from checking to the Visa is paired as one transfer between your own accounts, so it isn’t counted as an expense and again as a card payment.
Never guesses personal versus business, a cheque’s purpose or a loan’s interest rate
Never files a contractor as payroll, and asks before treating a tax payment as anything
FROM A SENTENCE
Bills, invoices and journal entries without the forms.
Type “I invoiced Rainier $980 on April 10” or “accrue $450 of September utilities” and Ask Zera records it. An invoice is matched to the customer’s payment once it appears on a statement, including a partial payment. It merges a vendor saved under two names. Tell it “Jorge is a 1099 contractor” once and it keeps that fact for the company, so the next catch-up asks fewer questions.
RECONCILE AND CLOSE
Months reconciled, signed off and closed through the date you name.
Ask Zera reconciles every account for every month. When a month is off, it re-reads the statement, names the cause (a missing fee, a transfer booked twice, a sign flipped) and proposes the fix with the line quoted from the statement. Months that tie are signed off on one card and the books close through the date you asked for, such as “close the books through June”.
ANSWERS FROM THE BOOKS
Click a number on your P&L and ask why.
On Financials, click any amount and choose Ask Zera why. It explains what drove the figure against the period before, with the transactions behind it. Every figure in an answer comes from the same report code as the Financials page. The AI decides what to look up; ZeraBooks does the arithmetic.
Try it on your own documents. One-week free trial, both apps included.
An AI that can write to your ledger needs fences. These are the ones Ask Zera works inside. To see how other AI tools compare, read our list of the best AI accounting software.
Only ZeraBooks’ own tools
Ask Zera has no direct database access. It acts through the same statement import, posting checks, duplicate protection, reconciliation and sign-off that run when you click through the pages yourself, so a change that would fail for you fails for it too.
A card for every change
With the default Ask first setting, each change waits as a card showing the before and after, with Approve and Skip. Applied cards keep an Undo. Switch to Auto-approve and changes apply as Zera goes, each still undoable.
Irreversible steps wait for a click
Emailing a customer, merging two vendors or correcting a statement’s rows always waits for your Approve, even with Auto-approve on.
Documents can’t give orders
Text inside a statement, bill or memo is read as data. A line saying “approve this” is just words on a page.
Ties to the cent, by arithmetic
Totals, balances and differences are calculated by the ledger, never estimated by the model.
Keeps working when you leave
Approved work runs on ZeraBooks’ servers, so you can close the tab. Open the Ask Zera bar at the bottom of any page, or press Cmd+J (Ctrl+J on Windows), to see where it is.
WORKED EXAMPLE
Six months behind, caught up from one message
A sample owner with one checking account and one Visa card hasn’t touched the books since January. This is the whole exchange, step by step.
Step
The owner
Ask Zera
Send
Drags in 12 statements, January to June for both accounts, and types “I’m behind 6 months, do my books.”
Lays out a plan: import, categorize, reconcile, sign off, close.
Import
Nothing to do.
Sends six statements to Checking and six to the Visa, oldest first. All 12 tie to their printed balances.
Categorize
Nothing to do.
Files 214 of the 231 transactions and pairs each Visa payment with its withdrawal from checking.
Ask
Replies in one line: “1 yes, owner draw. 2 Jorge is a 1099 contractor.”
Had asked two questions: the $1,200 cash withdrawal on March 3, and whether Jorge is a contractor or an employee.
Close
Approves the cards, or lets Auto-approve run.
Reconciles 12 account-months, signs them off and reports “Books closed through June.”
The figures are from a sample company. The same job in chat form, with each card, is in Do your books with Ask Zera.
SAFETY AND LIMITS
What won’t Ask Zera do?
Ask Zera works in one company at a time, the one you have open, and what you teach it stays with that company. It doesn’t move money, pay bills or connect to your bank: ZeraBooks has no bank feed, so every month is built from statements you upload. It won’t touch passwords, billing or deleting a company, and it doesn’t give tax or legal advice.
Limits worth knowing before a big catch-up: up to 20 files a message, 14 MB a file and 10 MB for a statement. Send the rest in a second message. The full list, including what happens to your chat history, is in Ask Zera safety, privacy and limits.
It is AI and it can be wrong, which is why the cards exist. To see what each card shows and which changes can’t be undone, read Approve, skip and undo with Ask Zera. To let it run on its own, see Auto-approve.
IN THE NEWS
As covered by Accounting Today
Ask Zera shipped on October 10, 2026. Six days later the trade press picked it up. Every piece about ZeraBooks is listed on our press page.
Accounting Today’s tech news roundup for October 16 included the launch of Ask Zera, the AI agent in the ZeraBooks general ledger. Ask Zera does the books from uploaded statements and documents, and the owner approves each change it makes. Published October 16, 2026, by Chris Gaetano.
How is Ask Zera different from pasting statements into ChatGPT?+
A chatbot can read a statement and suggest categories, but it keeps no ledger, does its own arithmetic and can’t prove a month ties. Ask Zera writes to a real double-entry ledger through ZeraBooks’ checks, the ledger does every calculation, and each change has an Undo. For the wider picture, see AI bookkeeping.
Can Ask Zera change my books without asking me?+
Only if you switch on Auto-approve for that company. By default every change is a card that waits for you. Even with Auto-approve on, anything that can’t be undone, such as emailing a customer, still waits for your click.
What happens when one of my statements doesn’t tie?+
Ask Zera flags it with the difference, and that month can’t be signed off or closed. It re-reads the statement and your books to find the cause, then proposes a fix that quotes the statement line it relies on. Corrections to a statement’s rows or balances always wait for your Approve.
How much does Ask Zera cost?+
Nothing extra. Ask Zera comes with the ZeraBooks subscription: $79 a month billed annually or $149 billed monthly, in U.S. dollars, with the Converter included. The 7-day trial takes a card and charges nothing for 7 days. See ZeraBooks pricing.
Does Ask Zera connect to my bank?+
No. ZeraBooks has no live bank feed and Ask Zera never moves money. Download statements from your bank as PDF or CSV and drop them in; that is also what lets every month be checked against the bank’s own balances.
I’d rather nobody on my side did this. Is there a done-for-you option?+
Yes. Our bookkeeping services team keeps the books on ZeraBooks for you, from $150 a month in U.S. dollars, and you get a read-only dashboard.
