Asking Haruno
What you can ask during a review, how to phrase it, how Haruno answers, and what it leaves to you.
What you can ask
You ask Haruno in the chat, in plain sentences, with the review workspace open (see Open the workspace). The review runs in the macOS app today.
This page says company. Haruno calls each company a client; that is the word in folder names, commands and the dashboard.
Most requests are one of seven kinds. Once a company has been closed, each reads the same ledger and the same checks the dashboard is drawn from, so an answer in the chat and a figure on the dashboard agree.
| Ask Haruno to | What it does |
|---|---|
| Set up a company | Reads the company's workbooks and exports, drafts its spec (the file that records which statement line each account rolls into), and stops at the questions only you can answer: materiality, expected missing reconciliations, how account numbers classify, and the accounting policy. |
| Close a month | Runs the close for the new workbooks and reads the findings out to you before anything circulates. |
| Change a mapping | Proposes the change as a reviewable edit to the company's spec, records it once you confirm, and runs the close again for that company. |
| Explain a variance | Works from the category totals behind a watchlist row or a budget line, and says which comparison the figure comes from. |
| Propose a fix | For a finding, proposes the spec change that would resolve it and shows the before-and-after effect on the statements. Where the fix belongs in the company's own books, such as a missed accrual, it says so instead. |
| Draft a disclosure paragraph | Drafts investor-facing text from the solvency indicators and the runway, states the basis of each figure, and tells you what it would need from the company to support it. It does not conclude on going concern. |
| Compare companies | Reads the same figures across the companies in the workspace, such as cash, burn, runway or open findings. Amounts stay in each company's own currency; they are never converted, and totals are never added across currencies. |
On the dashboard, some buttons write one of these questions for you with the figures filled in: Explain this variance, Ask about a month, Draft the disclosure and Propose a fix. They put the question in the chat composer, and nothing is sent until you press send, so you can edit it first. The investor report has none. The dashboard proposes, you decide. See Asking from the dashboard.
How to phrase it
You do not need a template. A request is ready when Haruno could not mistake what it is about, and four things settle that: the company, the month, the account or panel, and what the answer is for. When you answer one of Haruno's questions, also be exact about scope and units.
Name the company
With more than one company in the workspace, a question with no company in it has more than one answer. When you set up a company, give its name if you have it. Otherwise Haruno reads the reported name from the company's own files and lists it for you to confirm, rather than making one up from a folder name.
Name the month
Everything in the ledger is monthly, so a month is the natural unit: “March”, “the June close”, or “Feb 26”, which is how the dashboard writes February 2026. Quarters and years work too when you compare periods, and there they follow the company's fiscal year rather than the calendar. If a company's year does not start in January, tell Haruno once and it records the start month in the company's spec. Budget against actual and the statement package's year-to-date column are the exception: they run from January of the close year. Weekly figures are not available, because a monthly export carries nothing finer. Haruno says so rather than dividing a month by four.
Name the account or the panel
Give an account by its number and name as the chart of accounts writes them, for example 1450 Deposits Receivable. Give a panel by its name on the dashboard. This matters most for differences. Period over period, budget vs actual and the variance watchlist answer three different questions over different spans, and they disagree routinely and correctly. “Up on last month” and “on budget” are answers to different questions. See Three comparisons.
Say what the answer is for
An answer for your own review can carry check names, findings and reconciliation detail. A paragraph for an investor should not, in the same way the investor report leaves findings, mappings and reconciliation status out. “For my notes” or “for the investor update” tells Haruno which of the two it is writing.
Be exact about scope and units
When you answer one of Haruno's questions, say how far the answer reaches. One account, every account whose number starts with 62, and every company are three different answers. An exception that belongs to one company should be named as that company's, so it is not copied to the others. Give amounts in whole units even when the statements present thousands: a materiality of 1,000 means a $1,000 balance, not $1,000k.
Examples
Five requests, roughly in the order they come up: onboarding a new company, then its monthly work. The first assumes the company's files are already in its own folder in the workspace, such as workbooks/acme/ (see What a company sends). The company names are examples.
Acme just signed. Their files are in workbooks — set them up.
Close the month for Acme — the new workbooks are in.
1450 Deposits Receivable belongs in Other assets.
Explain the Travel & Entertainment variance for Feb 26.
Draft the paragraph I would put in front of an investor about Cobalt's runway.| Request | What happens |
|---|---|
| Set them up | Haruno reads the files in Acme's folder under workbooks and drafts the spec: which accounts roll into which statement line, how each subtotal composes, and which lines are presented against their natural sign. Almost all of that is read out of the workbook itself. What it cannot read arrives as a REVIEW list at the top of the draft. Read that list and answer it; each answer is written with the change printed back to you. Then the close runs. |
| Close the month | The same close with no mapping conversation, because the mapping is already an approved decision. The checks run before any report is written, the statement package and the reconciliation binder are written, the dashboard is refreshed, and Haruno reads the findings out to you. |
| 1450 belongs in Other assets | Haruno proposes the change as a few lines in the company's spec, not an edit to the workbook, and shows you exactly which lines would change before it writes anything. After you approve, it runs the close again for that company. If those months were already closed, the close refuses and names every figure that would move; your one-sentence reason reopens them and is kept beside each figure it changed. Asked out of context, add the company's name. |
| Explain the variance | Haruno says which comparison the figure comes from: the month against its own trailing three-month average, as on the variance watchlist, or the calendar year to date against budget. It quotes the totals it needs rather than the ledger, marks what is mechanics and what is judgment, and names the documents behind the month where the company sent vendor detail. A variance is not a finding. |
| Draft the paragraph | Haruno drafts from Cobalt's runway and solvency indicators and states the basis of each figure: the runway on a tile is the trailing change in cash, financing included, while the solvency panel's comes from operating cash flow when a statement of cash flows was imported. The draft states indicators, does not conclude on going concern, and says what Haruno would need from the company, such as management's plans. |
How Haruno answers
Haruno is instructed to follow the same rules for every explanation, board paragraph and variance note, and each rule gives you a way to check an answer rather than take it on trust.
Claims are anchored to numbers you can reproduce
Haruno anchors each claim to a number the workspace ledger can reproduce, and it reads that number with a read-only query. If you want to check one, ask for the command behind it: it only reads, and you can run it in Terminal from the workspace folder. Every figure can also be followed to a report the close wrote or to a source file: see Tracing a figure.
Mechanics are kept apart from judgment
An explanation separates what the numbers show from what someone should decide, and marks which is which. “Rent stepped up per the lease” is mechanics. “Consider accruing the audit fee monthly” is judgment, and it is yours to take or leave.
The same line decides which questions come back to you: whether an invoice buys a service period past its month, whether a purchase should have been capitalized, whether an account is lumpy by nature. Haruno reads out what the documents and your policy say, and hands the decision back.
Aggregates, not ledgers
Haruno works from statement lines, category totals and the dashboard's dataset. It queries for the figure a question needs and quotes only that, rather than pasting transaction detail or whole tables of company data into the conversation. This is how Haruno is instructed to work, not a filter. When you ask for detail, such as the invoices behind a month, it queries those rows and they become part of the conversation, like anything you paste in yourself.
More in Aggregates, not ledgers.
More in Data handling and security.
A blank is not a zero
When a figure cannot be stated, Haruno says why instead of estimating it. A quarter missing a month is refused, not summed short. A percentage is left out where a figure grew from zero or crossed zero, and the dollar change is given instead. A profit and loss that arrives by quarter is refused, and Haruno asks for the report by month rather than dividing a quarter by three.
Findings come before figures
After a close, Haruno reads the findings out before anything circulates, because they are the close's real work. A nonzero difference on a reconciliation is a finding, not a footnote. Questions such as prepaid_candidate and treatment_candidate are asked and never counted: they never make a month unclean and never appear in a deliverable. See Questions, not findings.
It reports what changed, and where a figure came from
When Haruno records one of your answers, it shows you what changed in the company's spec. If your answer matches what the draft already held, you hear “confirmed, no change”, not “applied”. Haruno also names the source of a figure where it matters: recurring revenue from a billing platform's invoices states what was invoiced, while the same figure from the company's own revenue sheet states what the bookkeeper already recognized.
What it will not do
Some decisions belong to you or to the company, and Haruno leaves them there. Several are also enforced by the close itself: a locked month does not move without your reason, and an export in the wrong currency is refused.
| Haruno will not | What it does instead |
|---|---|
| Invent a policy | The capitalization threshold and useful lives are recorded only from your answers, and nothing is checked against a threshold you have not given. With no capitalization threshold on record, no capitalization is proposed at all, not even against a sensible default. Two values start filled in, and both are listed in the REVIEW list for you to confirm or change: materiality, at a stated default of $1,000, and the depreciation method, straight-line, which is the only method Haruno computes. Another method is refused rather than recorded. Haruno checks a schedule against your policy. It never decides the policy for you. |
| Conclude on going concern | The solvency panel reports ASC 205-40 indicators and never concludes. A drafted paragraph states the indicators and asks for what would support it, such as management's plans. It does not reach a conclusion. |
| Convert currencies | Each company is reported in its own currency, and amounts are never converted. Portfolio totals refuse to add companies that report in different currencies. An export in a currency other than the company's reporting currency is refused by name; the remedy is a re-export. |
| Edit your spreadsheets | Workbooks stay as they were received. A mapping change is written to the company's spec, and you see the exact change first. It is never typed into your file. When an import is refused because a workbook is ambiguous, Haruno asks you and records the answer. When the workbook itself is wrong, it asks you to correct it and import it again. |
| Send a file you did not ask it to send | A close writes its files into your workspace and stops there. Nothing in the close sends a file anywhere. Dashboard buttons only place a question in the chat composer, and nothing goes until you press send. |
| Reopen a locked month without your reason | It relays the refusal and stops. The reason is your sentence, kept beside every figure it lets change, and a placeholder reason is refused. |
| Change the company's books | A missed accrual or a schedule that needs re-cutting is corrected by a journal entry in the company's own accounting system, and the fix arrives with the next export. On a capitalization question, Haruno never says the books are wrong or offers to move a figure. |
| Allocate costs | Shared costs are not split across revenue lines or departments. Spending nobody classified to a department stays in its own row rather than being spread in proportion. |
If you connect a mail connector and ask Haruno to send a report, it can, subject to your permission settings, and the file goes to that service. See Connectors and Permissions.
The full list of decisions that stay with you is in What is never decided for you.
Follow-up questions
Three follow-ups cover most of what you will want next: show the figure, trace it, or redo it with a changed assumption. A fourth saves you repeating yourself: answer a question once.
Show me the figure
Ask for the number behind a sentence and the command that produced it. The dashboard's period-over-period card shows the six detail lines that moved most; ask for every line and Haruno runs the comparison in full.
Trace it
Ask where a figure came from and Haruno follows it back to the statement package or the binder, to the source workbook the close kept a copy of, and to the company's spec for the mapping. Asked “show me the file this came from”, it lists each retained source file, what was read out of it, the dates it covers, and whether the kept copy is still that file. Asked “what changed in March”, it reads the adjustments log rather than comparing two exports.
You can also ask what is behind a month. Where the company sent a Transaction List by Vendor, the answer lists the documents behind the figure, largest first, with vendor, date, document number, amount and memo. Without one, the answer stops at the monthly total, because a monthly figure cannot say what it was made of.
Redo it with a changed assumption
Ask what a different answer would do before you give it. Haruno can show the change a new answer would write, such as a different materiality, without writing it. A materiality decides which findings exist, so this is worth doing. Comparisons can be redone the same way: against the same period a year earlier instead of the one before, or by quarter or year instead of by month.
If the changed assumption moves a figure in a locked month, as a new mapping does, the close refuses until you give a reason. Haruno tells you that before it runs, not after.
Answer a question once
If Haruno asks whether a month's spike is a prepayment and the account is lumpy by nature, say so. It records the answer and stops asking about that account, while still listing that account on every close, below the open questions, marked as already answered. If you do not know, say that too: the question stays open until the invoice settles it.
Additional tips
Type @ in the chat composer to reference a file or folder in the workspace, for example a workbook in workbooks/acme/. A picker lists matching files as you type, and the one you choose goes into your message as its path.
A file Haruno reads during a conversation is part of what that conversation sends, in the same way as anything a tool prints back.
- Press ⌘/ or choose Help ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts to see every shortcut in the app.
- Return sends a message. Shift-Return starts a new line.
- ⌘. cancels the turn in progress.
- ⌘N starts a new chat.