Straight answers to the questions UK accountants ask us on demos. About accuracy, about client data, about what an AI Accountant actually does. If yours is not here, email contact@papercare.ai and we will answer it properly.
Reviewed by Shrineel Patel FCCA, founder of Papercare.
An AI Accountant is a new member of your team. It works inside your practice, reads your clients’ data, reviews files like a senior, drafts client communication, answers UK tax questions, and never invents a number.
That is different from a tool you operate. A tool waits to be told what to do. An AI Accountant reviews the file and comes back with the points, the way a senior would before it reaches the partner.
Papercare is an AI Accountant for UK accountancy practices. It reviews the file the way a senior would, raises review points, answers questions about your own client data, answers UK tax questions with its sources shown, and drafts client correspondence, all on top of a full cloud working papers platform.
It is built inside a working UK practice. shaped by real world accounting workflow and day-to-day practice requirements.
Working papers software decides where the file lives. Papercare reviews what is in it.
Storage was never the bottleneck. The bottleneck is that every file has to wait for one experienced person to look at it. Papercare is a second pair of eyes on every file, not a better filing cabinet, although the working papers platform is included so most firms consolidate anyway.
No. AI will not replace accountants, and Papercare is built on the assumption that it should not.
What it replaces is the wait. The review bottleneck, the third time a junior sends the same file back, the evening spent checking control accounts that reconcile perfectly well. Papercare never files, posts or sends anything without you. Judgement, client relationships and sign-off stay with the accountant, where they belong and where the regulator expects them to be.
Our founder is a practising FCCA who still reviews client files. We would not build something designed to make him redundant.
Yes. Papercare reviews the balance sheet and profit and loss account and raises review points before a partner opens the file.
It checks control accounts, looks for entries posted to the wrong code, tests ledger movements against expectations, and flags what a senior would flag. You can teach it your own review points, so it checks the things your firm cares about rather than a generic list. What it produces is a set of points for a human to work through, not a signed-off file.
Papercare is for UK accountancy practices preparing statutory accounts and tax returns, from sole practitioners to multi-partner firms.
Sole practitioners get the thing the job never gives them: a second pair of eyes. Larger firms get consistency, with every file reviewed to the same standard whether a first-year or a manager prepared it.
No. Sole practitioners and two-person firms are among the firms this helps most.
If you are the only reviewer in the practice, there is nobody to catch what you miss. That is precisely the gap an AI Accountant fills. There is no minimum firm size and no minimum client count.
Generic AI does. Papercare is built specifically so it cannot.
The jobs are split. Code does the detection and the arithmetic, the deterministic work where being wrong is unacceptable. The AI only explains what the code found. Every figure passes a verification gate against your source data before it is shown to you. If a number cannot be traced back to your ledgers, it does not appear.
Every figure shown traces back to a source in your data, and you can follow it.
Papercare shows its working. Where a review point comes from a ledger movement, you can open the transactions behind it. Where a tax answer cites HMRC or GOV.UK, the sources it searched are listed. Nothing is asserted without a trail, which is the same standard you would apply to a junior’s work.
Yes. My Tax Expert answers UK tax questions and shows the sources it searched, including GOV.UK and HMRC guidance.
It covers the ground a technical partner would be asked about, from VAT schemes and corporation tax to capital allowances, s.455 and capital gains. It is a research assistant that shows its references, not an oracle. You check its work, exactly as you would check a technical memo from a colleague.
No. Papercare never files, posts or sends anything without you.
It drafts, reviews and suggests. Every submission to HMRC or Companies House, every client email, every posted journal requires a human to approve it. That is a deliberate design decision, not a limitation we intend to remove.
It says so, and it raises a review point rather than guessing.
An AI Accountant that quietly fills gaps is worse than useless in a compliance context. Where the data is ambiguous or incomplete, Papercare flags it for a human instead of resolving it silently.
No. Your client data is never used to train AI models, ours or anyone else’s.
Where an AI model provider processes a prompt, it does so as a contracted sub-processor under our instructions, and is contractually prohibited from using that data for training. Your ledgers are not our product.
Papercare uses end-to-end encryption, role-based access controls, two-factor authentication, continuous vulnerability monitoring, and regular backups with documented disaster recovery procedures.
Access to client data is restricted to authorised personnel, and to service providers only where strictly necessary to run the platform.
Your data remains securely stored for a defined period after cancellation, then is deleted or anonymised.
In most cases personal data is retained for up to seven years after termination, to meet legal, tax, accounting and regulatory obligations and to resolve any dispute. After that period it is securely deleted or anonymised.
Papercare runs regular automated backups as part of a documented disaster recovery process, and data can be restored from them.
Backups are stored securely using industry-standard practice. In the event of a system failure, restoration is designed to maintain continuity and minimise interruption.
Access is set per person, per module, by you.
Roles and permissions are controlled at firm level, from new starter to partner, and users can be made active or inactive as your team changes. A junior does not see what a partner sees unless you decide they should.
Start with the live demo. No signup, no sales call, no email gate.
It is a complete demo practice with live ledgers and every module switched on. When you want your own data in, sign up for a trial and import a trial balance from your bookkeeping software.
No. You can run Papercare alongside whatever you use now.
Papercare is not competing for where the file is stored. It is the colleague who reviews it. That said, the working papers platform is included, so most firms consolidate once they have used it.
A modern web browser and an internet connection. Nothing to install.
Papercare runs in the cloud, so it works from the office, from home, and from a client’s premises without a VPN or a remote desktop.
Email support@papercare.ai, or use the callback button in the top right of the app to raise a ticket.
Our support team is available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm UK time. Standard tickets get a first response within one working day. Urgent issues are escalated immediately.
Everything is in the Help Centre, also reachable from the question mark icon inside the app.
Click Forgot Password on the sign-in page and follow the emailed instructions.
Usually, yes. Email support@papercare.ai or call during office hours and we will recover it where technically possible.
Yes, and we act on them. Email contact@papercare.ai with New Feature in the subject line.
Papercare is built inside a working practice, so we are our own most demanding user. Requests from firms doing the same work carry real weight.
Email support@papercare.ai with Accessibility in the subject line, including your screen reader and browser and the steps to reproduce it.
Every report is tracked on our accessibility roadmap.
Your whole bill is two numbers: a monthly platform fee, and AI credits.
The platform fee is priced by one thing only, how many of your staff need a login. Every tier includes a free batch of AI credits each month, and one-off credit packs are optional on top. See what each tier costs.
Count the people in your firm who need a login. That is your tier.
Nothing else moves it. Not how many clients you act for, not how many year-end files you run, not how much you store. Everything inside a tier is the same whichever tier you land on, so pick your staff count and the price follows.
No. There are no per-client charges and no per-file charges on any tier.
The platform fee counts people, and that is the end of it. Clients, companies, year-end files, working papers, storage and exports are unlimited on every plan, including the smallest one.
Clients and companies, year-end files, working papers, storage, and exports and updates.
Add as many clients as the book will take, run as many year-end files as the year demands, keep every record and every version, and take your data out whenever you want it. None of it is metered and none of it changes your bill.
No. Every module is included on every plan.
There is no premium tier that unlocks them. AI Review, My Assistant, My Tax Expert, My Email Composer and My Intelligence are open to a sole practitioner and a multi-partner firm alike. What differs between firms is how many credits they use, not what they can open.
Yes. The smallest tier is built for a practice with a single reviewer.
You get every module, the same unlimited clients and files, and free monthly credits, exactly as a larger firm does. There is no minimum firm size and no minimum client count. The entry tier is the first one on the pricing page.
Credits are what AI actions run on. Everything else runs without them.
An AI review of a file, a tax question, a drafted client email: each is an AI action, and each has a credit price. Think of them as the fuel for the AI Accountant rather than a charge for using the platform.
No. Only AI actions do.
Importing a trial balance, building the working papers, mapping the chart of accounts by hand, running your checklists, storing files and exporting them are all part of the platform fee. Credits are spent only when you ask the AI to do something.
No. Every plan includes free credits, and plenty of firms run on those alone.
Start on your free batch and see how far it goes. Add a pack only when you find you want more, and only for the amount you want. There is no obligation to buy credits at any point.
No. Buy a pack once and it sits in your firm’s wallet until you use it.
There is no use-it-or-lose-it deadline and no expiry date. A pack bought in a quiet month is still there in January.
Nothing dramatic. Only AI actions pause. The platform carries on exactly as normal.
Files, working papers and exports are unaffected, so the compliance work never stops because of a credit balance. Top up in two clicks and the AI actions resume where they left off.
Yes, and no card is needed to start.
Create an account, import a trial balance from your bookkeeping software, and put your own client data in front of the AI Review. You start with free credits, so you can see the AI work rather than read about it. Start the trial.
The answers above are the ones we get asked most. If yours is not here, ask a human. We will answer it, and then we will add it to this page.
