1. Tell it which accounts are the business
Connect business checking and any business card, plus the personal account you pay yourself into if you want draws matched automatically. Start each close by saying which is which, using the last four digits:
"List my accounts. Treat checking ending 1842 and the card ending 7730 as the business. Treat my personal checking ending 4821 as mine, and use it only to match transfers."
Those digits are placeholders, so use your own. Save this along with the rest of the prompts in a project or a text file so it stays the same each month.
2. Sort out what isn't income or expense
Raw monthly totals count every dollar in and out, including money that only moved between your own accounts. Those lines come out before the P&L:
| In the bank data | Why it stays off the P&L |
|---|---|
| Transfer to your personal account | An owner draw moves money to you |
| Transfer from your personal account | An owner contribution isn't revenue |
| Payment to the business card | The purchases already count when charged |
| Move between business checking and savings | Same money, different account |
| Loan payment | Only the interest is an expense, and the bank line may not split it out |
| Federal or state income tax payment | For a sole-proprietor LLC, this is the owner's tax. Ask your accountant about yours |
"Pull every transaction from the business accounts for last month. Sort each one into income, expense, or not-P&L using this rule: owner draws and contributions, card payments, transfers between my accounts, loan payments and income tax payments are not-P&L. Show me the not-P&L list and everything you weren't sure about."
Read the unsure list and answer it in the same chat. A bank's descriptor is often all the agent has, so a payment to a person could be a contractor or a draw. More on card payments.
3. Build the P&L
"Using that sorting, give me the P&L for last month: income by source, expenses by category, and net. Put last month's figures beside the month before, and note any category that moved more than 25%."
Here's the shape of the result. The company and every number below are made up:
| Example LLC, made-up figures | October | September |
|---|---|---|
| Client payments | $12,400 | $11,150 |
| Software | $(640) | $(610) |
| Contractors | $(3,200) | $(2,400) |
| Advertising | $(480) | $(520) |
| Net | $8,080 | $7,620 |
Check the agent's math against your bank statement: ask for total deposits and total withdrawals per account, before any sorting, and compare them with the totals on the statement. If they don't match, look for a missed account, a charge still pending or a date range that's off.
4. List owner draws
"List every owner draw and contribution for last month and for the year to date, with date, amount and the matching deposit in my personal account. Then flag personal-looking charges on the business accounts, and business-looking charges on the personal account."
The second half catches mixed spending while the month is still fresh in your mind. The agent can flag candidates from the merchant names, and you decide what each charge was.
This list is for a single-member LLC taxed as a sole proprietor. An S-corp pays its owner through wages and distributions, and a partnership has its own rules, so if that's you, ask your accountant what to label these lines. BankBridge doesn't give tax advice.
5. Write the CSV for your accountant
"Write a CSV of last month's business transactions with these columns: date, account_last4, description, amount, type, category, note. Type is income, expense or not-P&L. Use positive numbers for money in and negative for money out. Put anything I marked unsure in the note column."
With made-up rows, it looks like this:
date,account_last4,description,amount,type,category,note
2026-10-03,1842,Example Client Inc,6200.00,income,client payments,
2026-10-05,7730,Example Software Co,-49.00,expense,software,
2026-10-12,1842,Transfer to checking 4821,-3000.00,not-P&L,owner draw,
2026-10-20,1842,Card payment 7730,-1180.00,not-P&L,card payment,
2026-10-24,1842,J Rivera,-1600.00,expense,contractors,confirm 1099Bank data reports money leaving as a positive number, so the prompt asks for the sign most spreadsheets expect. Check that against a known row before you send it. Ask your accountant which columns or categories they'd change once, then keep that format. For other export options, see exporting transactions to a spreadsheet.
Run it every month
- Put the prompts on a schedule for the 2nd or 3rd of the month, after most charges have posted. Add a line saying nobody can answer during the run, so the agent lists unsure items for you to settle later.
- On a Claude Team or Enterprise plan, an Owner adds the connector first: see the setup.
- The quarterly and year-end parts are in AI bookkeeping for LLC owners.
BankBridge costs $5 a month or $50 a year per connected bank and is read-only, so it can read these transactions and can't move money. Connect your business bank to run your first close.