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As of 11 August 2026, AI can only partly categorise a year of business transactions.
Most people should hand this to a purpose-built tool.
Can you do it?
30 minutesto a draft.
4 hoursto something you’d act on.
Cost, all in£20/month
Skill neededpower-user
Who has to check ita colleague
What the alternative costsA bookkeeper charges roughly £45/hour; a year of backlog is typically 6–10 hours.
If this goes wrong: a year of mis-categorised transactions propagates into your accounts and you find out at filing time, when unpicking it costs more than the bookkeeper would have.
What to actually do
Use a tool built for this
The route this page recommends
Purpose-built software does the mechanical share of this.
FreeAgent
£19 (Sole Trader)
Its bank-feed rules engine does the recurring 80% mechanically, which is exactly the part AI does confidently and you still have to check; here it is deterministic instead.
GnuCash
Free
Free and local: if the year of data is sensitive enough that uploading it anywhere feels wrong, this is the credible no-cloud route.
Hand it to a person
Second choiceA person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.
Where to find a person today
ICB Find a Bookkeeper
The Institute of Certified Bookkeepers’ public directory of licensed bookkeepers, searchable by location and service.
A licensed bookkeeper carries this end to end and answers for the categories chosen; the directory is the vetted way to find one near you.
Do it yourself
The distant thirdA chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 4 hours until you can act on the result.
Prompt
Here is a CSV export of 12 months of business bank transactions. Categorise each row against the attached chart of accounts. Flag every row you are less than certain about rather than guessing — a wrong category is worse than an unanswered one.
Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.
What it gets wrong
- Recurring payments to ambiguous payees (a director’s card at a supermarket) get confidently mis-filed; judgement calls need your context.
- Transfers between your own accounts are routinely categorised as income or expense.
- It will not ask about VAT treatment unless told; UK VAT edge cases need a human pass.
What caps this at PARTLY: context depth and judgement under ambiguity.
How we scored this
Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.
| Axis | Score (0–2) |
|---|---|
| Output | 2 |
| Inputs | 1 |
| Verification | 1 |
| Liability | 1 |
| Effort delta | 2 |
| Total | 7 / 10 |
The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.
Handed to AI by 1 person.
FAQ
- Can AI categorise my business bank transactions?
- Partly. It labels the routine share well, but recurring payments to ambiguous payees get confidently mis-filed, and transfers between your own accounts are routinely marked as income or expense. Budget around four hours to verify a year of output before it touches your accounts.
- Can I use ChatGPT for my bookkeeping?
- For a one-off backlog, yes, with checking. Paste a CSV export and your chart of accounts, and tell it to flag anything uncertain rather than guess. It will not raise UK VAT treatment unless told; VAT edge cases need a human pass either way.
- What is the best tool to categorise a year of transactions?
- FreeAgent at £19/month (Sole Trader): its bank-feed rules engine does the recurring share deterministically, which is exactly the part AI merely does confidently. If uploading a year of finances anywhere feels wrong, GnuCash is free and runs locally.
- How much does a bookkeeper charge to sort a year of transactions?
- Roughly £45/hour, and a year of backlog typically takes 6 to 10 hours, so £270 to £450. The AI route costs a £20 monthly subscription plus around four hours of your own checking time.
Nearby answers
- Can AI check whether my expense categories are correct?YES
- Can AI clear my suspense account?PARTLY
- Can AI compare my bank balance with my accounting ledger?YES
- Can AI extract data from my business receipts?PARTLY
- Can AI find missing transactions in my bookkeeping?YES
- Can AI reconcile my business credit card?YES
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