What Your AI Assistant Can Read and Change
Once an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT is connected to your church (see Connect an AI Assistant (MCP Connector)), it can do most of a bookkeeper's everyday work with you: review the bank import, find and correct transactions, reconcile, pay bills, keep the budget, record the Sunday offering and prepare reports. This article lists, area by area, what it can read, what it can change, and what stays on the TimelyChurch website.
Three rules apply to everything below:
- Reading needs only the connector to be on. Changing anything also needs Allow AI tools to propose changes to be on for your church.
- The assistant works with the permissions of the person who connected it and with the areas your plan includes -- see AI Assistant Permissions, Privacy and Plans.
- Nothing changes without an approval. The assistant shows a preview of exactly what it will do. Most changes apply after you approve in the chat; a few need an administrator's approval on the website first. Those are marked below. See Approving Changes an AI Assistant Proposes.
Bank-Import Review
The review queue is where rows from an uploaded bank file wait before they reach your books (see Bank CSV Import).
The assistant can read
- The rows waiting for review, with their suggested or chosen category and payee, amount, date, bank memo, fee, type, split lines, notes, fund and bank account. It can narrow the list: only rows that still need a category, rows whose memo contains a word, one payee, one suggested category, money in or money out, one account, or rows changed since it last looked.
- A summary of what is left -- how many rows and how much money per suggested category, per payee, per memo or per month.
- What a payout deposit from Stripe contains: the charges, fees, refunds and disputes behind it and the totals per fund. The gift-by-gift lines with donor names appear only when the connected person may see donors.
The assistant can change (after you approve in the chat)
| What | Notes |
|---|---|
| Set the category, payee, donor, fund, tracking class or fee category | Many rows and several fields in one proposal -- for example 12 rows to "Utilities" and 30 rows to "Rent" at once. |
| Change a row's type | Income, expense, a transfer between two of your own accounts, or a refund for an earlier expense. |
| Split a row | Across 2 to 20 category lines that add up to the row's amount -- or remove the split. |
| Set a note, the payment method, or whether a gift is anonymous | One of these at a time. |
| Exclude rows, or bring excluded rows back | An excluded row never reaches your books. |
| Accept rows into your books | All the rows in the proposal are accepted, or none. Every row must already have a category of the right kind (an income category for money in, an expense category for money out) or be a transfer with its other account chosen. |
Categorizing never posts anything by itself -- accepting is always a separate step with its own preview.
Transactions in Your Books
The assistant can read
- A search of your posted transactions -- hand-entered ones, accepted bank rows, gifts, bill payments, refunds, fee lines and journal entries -- by date, account, category, payee, fund, tracking class, type, amount, reconciled or not, or a word in the description, reference or check number. A search covers the last three months unless you ask for other dates, and at most 24 months at a time.
- One transaction in full: its notes, split lines, what it is linked to (the other side of a transfer, a refund, a fee line, a bill, the bank row, the gift), the names of its receipts, and its recent change history.
The assistant can change
| What | Approval |
|---|---|
| Record an income, expense or transfer transaction | In the chat |
| Change the category, payee, fund or tracking class, or the description, notes, reference number or check number, of posted transactions | In the chat |
| Move hand-entered transactions to another account; mark a transaction as a transfer between your own accounts, or undo that | In the chat |
| Delete posted transactions (an accepted bank row goes back to the review queue) and restore deleted ones | In the chat |
| Create a journal entry of 2 to 20 lines (only when the connected person uses the Full Accounting view) | In the chat |
| Record a refund on an expense, in full or in part | In the chat |
| Correct the amount or the date of a hand-entered transaction | On the website, then in the chat |
Your books protect themselves here as they do on the website, and in places more strictly. The assistant is refused -- and tells you why -- when a change would touch the money on a transaction that is reconciled, belongs to a closed fiscal year, or is tied to a gift, a bill payment, a refund or a split. (Text such as the description or a note can still be corrected on a reconciled transaction.) A gift is never deleted or refunded this way (see What Stays on the Website), and an expense that is a bill's payment cannot be refunded: void the payment instead.
Bank Reconciliation
The assistant can read where each bank account stands: the last completed reconciliation, the one in progress with its difference, and how many deposits and payments are still unreconciled.
The assistant can change
| What | Approval |
|---|---|
| Start a reconciliation (statement date and ending balance) | In the chat |
| Check items off as cleared, or uncheck them | In the chat |
| Cancel a reconciliation in progress | In the chat |
| Complete a reconciliation | On the website, then in the chat |
Completing locks the period for good -- there is no reopening -- which is why an administrator has to approve it on the website. As on the website, the difference must be exactly $0.00 and no item in the period may be left unchecked. See Bank Reconciliation.
Bills
The assistant can read your bills: payee, bill number, dates, amount, what has been paid, what is still due, and which are overdue.
The assistant can change (after you approve in the chat)
- Record a new bill.
- Edit an unpaid or partially paid bill.
- Pay a bill, in full or in part, from one of your bank accounts. The expense is created for you, as on the website.
- Void a bill's payment, with a reason. This needs the Void permission on the Accounting row of the connected person's role.
Deleting a bill and the repeat settings of a recurring bill stay on the website. See Bills and Payments.
Budgets
The assistant can read your budgets with their planned totals, the expense lines of an active budget that have reached 90% of their planned amount, and the full budget vs. actual report.
The assistant can change (after you approve in the chat)
- Create a draft budget -- empty, copied from an earlier budget, or with one line per category taken from what you actually received and spent in a period.
- Set planned amounts on the lines of a budget. Lines are added or updated, never removed.
- Activate a draft budget.
- Close an active budget. A closed budget cannot be reopened or edited again; the preview says so.
A budget never moves money. Removing a line and deleting a budget stay on the website. See Budget Management.
Recurring Transactions
The assistant can list your recurring transactions, set up new ones, edit them, post or skip the next one, and pause or resume them. Those with Auto-Post on are posted for you on their due date. Deleting one is done on the Recurring Transactions page. See Recurring Transactions and Auto-Post Through an AI Assistant and Recurring Transactions.
Receipts and Invoices
The assistant can read which receipts are attached to a transaction -- file name, size, type, when it was added and by whom. It never receives the file itself; open the transaction in TimelyChurch to view it.
The assistant can change (after you approve in the chat)
- Attach a receipt from Drive. The file must already be in your church's Drive, be one the connected person can open there, and be a PDF, JPEG, PNG or HEIC of 10 MB or less. A transaction holds up to 5 receipts. The assistant cannot browse Drive, and it cannot take a file from a web address or from the chat.
- Remove a receipt. The stored file is deleted for good.
Neither is possible on a transaction dated in a closed fiscal year.
Giving
The assistant can read giving totals, giving by fund, pledge campaign progress, failed and retrying online donations, your deposit batches, and whether your year-end giving statements are ready (how many donors, how many without an e-mail address, how many gifts are not linked to a person). Statement readiness is counts only and needs the Bookkeeper level.
The assistant can change (after you approve in the chat)
- Record a gift given by cash, check, envelope, direct deposit, Cash App, Zelle, Venmo, PayPal or another offline way -- from one person or anonymous, across 1 to 10 funds. It is the same as Record a gift on the website: the gift gets a receipt number, posts to your books and appears on the donor's giving statement. To find the giver, the assistant searches people by name and gets back names only.
- Close an open deposit batch.
- Mark a closed deposit batch deposited into one of your bank accounts -- the same as Mark Deposited on the website. No income is added: the gifts in the batch are already counted as income, and marking the batch deposited moves them onto the bank account, so that account goes up by the batch total. Each gift keeps its own date, fund and reference. The preview shows the batch, the bank account, how many gifts move and how much the account goes up by -- totals and counts only, never a donor. This needs the Administrator Giving level.
The assistant is refused, with the reason, when a gift in the batch is already deposited to a different bank account, is not in your books yet, falls in a closed fiscal year, is already reconciled or checked off in a reconciliation in progress, or is dated inside a completed reconciliation. Reopening a deposited batch is done on the website and moves the gifts back. See Deposit Batches.
Who sees donor names is explained in AI Assistant Permissions, Privacy and Plans.
Accounting Lists and Reports
The assistant can read
- Your accounts with their balances, and your categories, payees, funds and tracking classes.
- The financial position, the treasurer report and budget vs. actual.
- The 1099 vendor report for a year -- who was paid how much, and whether a tax ID is on file. The tax ID itself is never shown.
- Whether a year is ready to close: unreconciled transactions, open deposit batches and unpaid bills that still block it.
- The finance audit log -- who changed what, with the values before and after.
The assistant can change (after you approve in the chat): add a payee, category, fund or tracking class when one is missing. If one with the same name already exists, nothing new is created.
Events and Serving
The assistant can read upcoming events and their details, who is serving, open serving needs, and your serving teams and their rosters.
The assistant can change (after you approve in the chat): create a single event, and assign a volunteer to an open serving position.
What Stays on the Website
| On the website only | Why |
|---|---|
| Refunding a gift, and editing or deleting a gift | A refund goes back to the giver through your payment processor and changes their giving statement. Use the refund option on the gift. |
| Card and online gifts, pledges and campaigns | Online gifts come in through your giving page, and pledges and campaigns are managed on the website. The assistant records offline gifts only. |
| Reopening a batch, opening a batch and adding gifts to it | The assistant can list batches, close an open one and mark a closed one deposited. |
| Close Fiscal Year | Closing a year cannot be undone. The assistant can only check whether a year is ready. |
| Generating and e-mailing giving statements | Statements go to your donors. The assistant can only check readiness. |
| Uploading a bank file | You upload the file; the assistant works on the rows afterwards. |
| Deleting a bill, a budget or a recurring transaction; recurring bill settings | -- |
| Adding or archiving accounts, opening balances | The assistant can add payees, categories, funds and tracking classes only. |
People, families, groups, check-in, communication and the other areas of TimelyChurch are not available to an assistant.