# AI bookkeeping cleanup

2 articles

Cleaning up after AI should cost more than the bookkeeping did

Cleaning up after AI should cost more than the bookkeeping did

A returning client chose our cheaper self-service tier, left the integrations broken, and handed us a year-end file so damaged we spent more hours than the full-service fee would have covered — then balked at the bill, took the discount, and left anyway. Every firm runs some version of that inversion: the cleanup, the harder job, is the one we discount. As "my AI does the books" spreads, here's the pricing mechanism that stops it.

Peter McCarroll
Peter McCarroll
The $49 close assumes a system that hasn't yet been built

The $49 close assumes a system that hasn't yet been built

In one 48-hour stretch this month, AI's price sheet fell again — Meta, GPT-5.6, and Grok all repricing the intelligence behind the $49 close. But the vendors selling that close won't quote a flat price for it, because the thing that varies was never the intelligence — it's the system underneath. Run-time is commoditized; designing that system and standing behind it isn't, and that's where the fee now lives.

Peter McCarroll
Peter McCarroll