CAT PAW

All workflows

Finance

Organize Small-Business Transaction Records

A reconciled, review-ready register that links each business transaction to supporting evidence without preparing or filing a tax return.

The process

Work it in this order.

  1. Define the reporting period, accounts, business entities, and transaction categories in scope.
  2. Collect bank and card exports, invoices, receipts, deposit records, and prior-period opening balances.
  3. Normalize dates, payees, amounts, currencies, account identifiers, and document filenames while preserving the original files.
  4. Match each transaction to available support and flag duplicates, missing documents, personal-looking items, and unclear business purpose.
  5. Reconcile register totals to each account statement and document every unresolved variance.
  6. Produce a categorized ledger, exception list, and source-document index for the user or accountant to review.
  7. Archive the approved register and evidence using the user's retention policy and access controls.

Bring this

Inputs the cat will ask for.

  • Reporting period and accounts in scope
  • Statements or transaction exports
  • Receipts, invoices, and deposit records
  • Business categories or chart of accounts

Router + one playbook

Route first. Choose one.

Cat Paw loads one playbook per task rather than merging several. Start with this router; the remaining paths are workflow-specific candidates it can inspect.

  • Router: finance-pack
  • skills/finance/financial-analyst/SKILL.md

Guardrails

The boundaries travel with the prompt.

  • Do not decide deductibility, tax treatment, or entity classification; flag uncertain items for a qualified tax professional.
  • Never alter source records, silently invent missing receipts, or force a reconciliation.
  • Minimize exposure of account numbers and personal data, and store outputs only in approved locations.

Done means

A checkable finish.

Every in-scope transaction is linked to evidence or explicitly listed as an exception, account totals reconcile or have documented variances, and the review package is ready for accountant approval.

Sources

Where this process came from.

  1. www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/recordkeeping
  2. www.irs.gov/publications/p583

Sources establish the workflow pattern. Reddit and community posts, where present, are treated as practitioner anecdotes rather than universal facts.

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Behind the number

Two harnesses. One line.

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