What IQ Books Does On Its Own, and What It Asks You First

Three kinds of automation

“Automated” covers very different things. A note that stock is running low does no harm if it is wrong. A journal posted to the wrong account does. So IQ Books treats them differently, and every suggestion carries a label saying what accepting it would do.

Four of the ledger changes only ever ask, whatever your settings: writing off a bad debt, claiming VAT bad debt relief on one, posting the corporation tax charge, and moving a bank line coded unlike the rest. Each is a judgement call, and it stays yours.

What it checks, area by area

The bank

• Lines from a bank feed are coded on arrival by CodeIQ’s eight-phase pipeline: transfers, invoice matches, your own history, a shared merchant database, card category codes, meaning, your corrections, then VAT. They wait in Review unless you switch auto-post on.
• Money counted twice: a bank line posted as income or spending while the same money is already a receipt, payment or refund in the books. RiQ proposes matching them so the money counts once.
• Lines coded unlike the rest: a merchant that has gone to one account at least five times in the year, posted once to an account your books never otherwise use for it.
• Month-end bank reconciliation: from the 5th, once a feed’s month-end balance has settled, a bank that agrees with the books is recorded as reconciled; one that does not is shown with what stands between them.

Sales and credit control

• This month’s invoice drafted for customers billed the same each month, and an invoice drafted from a customer’s purchase order emailed to your email-in address. Neither is issued by itself.
• A quote accepted on its page makes a draft invoice, and RiQ points it out.
• Unused credit notes set against the same customer’s open invoices, and supplier credits against bills you still owe.
• Each week, who to chase and the next step for each. Statutory late payment interest can be drafted for business customers if you switch it on.
• Invoices unpaid six months past due suggested for writing off, with VAT bad debt relief where it is due.

Purchases and documents

• A bill emailed to your email-in address from a supplier already in your books, read cleanly, is filed as a draft with the document attached, then offered for issuing.
• Bills that look entered twice, bill lines linked to the purchase order lines they bill, and a bill over its order’s price or quantity pointed out before it is issued.
• With payment runs on, a draft run a couple of days before your pay day, holding back suppliers without verified bank details and anything that would take cash below the amount you keep in the bank.
• CIS subcontractors to verify with HMRC before their bills are paid.

Stock

• A purchase order drafted when a product reaches its reorder level, and a warning when one will run out before more could arrive.
• Slow-moving stock, a margin dropping well below its usual level, and stock held at more than it sells for, proposed for a write-down.
• A reminder to count stock from a month before the year end.

Projects, budgets and expenses

• Each month, a project’s unbilled time and costs drafted into an invoice.
• A project at 80% of its budget and again when it goes over, a task past its estimate, and a budget line overspent.
• Submitted expense claims with something for the approver to look at: over a limit, a receipt that is also on another claim or a bill, or the same spend claimed before.

Month end and year end

• Prepayments spotted on bills that cover several months, and accruals for steady monthly costs that have not come in this month, reversing on the 1st.
• Foreign bank balances and open foreign invoices and bills revalued at the month-end rate.
• Equipment, vehicles, furniture or machinery of £1,000 or more posted to an overhead, proposed as a fixed asset.
• A year-end checklist of what is unfinished, from 30 days before the year end, and for a limited company the corporation tax charge once the year has ended.
• A check in the 10 days before each VAT return is due: lines still in Review, drafts dated in the period, a bank that does not reconcile.

Keeping watch

• Cash forecast to go below zero in the next 13 weeks, and targets you set going off course.
• Unusual entries: amounts far outside the usual for their account, round or just-under-a-threshold amounts, cash posted at weekends or on bank holidays.
• Changes worth a second look, such as a supplier’s payment details changing or the books being unlocked back to an earlier date.

Deciding how much it does by itself

Settings, Automation has one setting for the organisation (Off, Suggest only or On) and one for each kind of check:

Only owners and admins can change these settings. A member with read-only access can see what RiQ found but cannot act on it. Any suggestion can be dismissed, or put off with Not now until tomorrow, next week or next month.

What it costs

The checks read your own books, so they cost nothing. Credits are spent only on steps that use AI: CodeIQ coding a bank line is 4 credits, and reading a document is 10. Coding a line yourself is always free. The free plan includes one organisation with the whole ledger and 1,000 free credits, so you can switch everything on and see what it finds before paying for anything.

How it compares with other AI accounting software

Every major ledger now automates the bank line. By their own accounts:

• FreeAgent says its AI auto-explains over 80% of bank transactions at 90% accuracy (FreeAgent, October 2026).
• Xero says JAX reconciles transactions at 97% accuracy, with auto-reconcile on its Grow plan and above (Xero).
• QuickBooks’ Accounting Agent groups the transactions it is confident about under Ready to post, for you to review and post in one click (Intuit).
• Briefcase’s Autopilot publishes a transaction by itself only after at least three consistent past ones, growing more confident as you approve its suggestions unchanged (Briefcase).

Those figures are all about the bank line, which is where most bookkeeping time goes. IQ Books codes bank lines too, and then runs the same set of checks over the rest of the ledger: credit notes, purchase orders, stock, payment runs, credit control, projects, budgets, expenses, accruals, currency revaluation, bad debts and the corporation tax charge. If you are weighing up Briefcase Ledger against IQ Books, we have compared the two in more detail.

What it does not do