AI for accounting firms, grounded in your own client files, engagement letters, and prior work papers.
AI for Australian accounting & bookkeeping firms and registered tax agents is grounded, auditable software that RMAI builds on your own client files, engagement letters, and prior work papers — so return prep, BAS and bookkeeping, STP Phase 2 checks, award and payroll reconciliation, SMSF work papers, scope-versus-billing review, and the conflict-checked intake flood are drafted, cited, and source-linked in minutes, with a registered agent or principal reviewing and signing off every result.
Two things accountants ask first: will it invent things, and is client data safe?
Accountants have already seen general-purpose AI used badly — confident answers, invented references, no defensible trail — and several have been burnt. That is not good enough for tax, BAS, payroll, advisory, or client records. RMAI does not build ask-anything chatbots that guess at tax positions. We build constrained tools that work from your own documents, cite their sources, flag uncertainty, and route every consequential output to a registered agent, principal, payroll officer, or engagement owner. The goal is not to automate professional judgment — it is to remove the low-value document handling that happens before judgment can begin.
What a build must prove before it goes live
- Where is the data stored?
- Inside an approved tenancy, database, or document environment that the firm controls.
- Who can access it?
- Role-based, least-privilege access under the Australian Privacy Principles, with firm-controlled permissions.
- What leaves the system?
- Controlled model calls, with logging, redaction, and retention the firm can audit.
- Can we defend the output?
- Source links, version history, review status, and a registered-agent sign-off on every consequential result.
What we won't automate
- Deciding a final tax position without registered-agent review.
- Lodging returns, BAS, STP, or payroll corrections automatically.
- Giving client-specific advice without a professional reviewing the facts.
- Pushing TFNs or payroll files through public AI tools.
- Relying on an answer whose source evidence cannot be checked.
What actually squeezes an Australian accounting firm now.
The constraint isn’t winning work — it’s clearing it. Accountants are on the national shortage list and only about half of accounting vacancies get filled, so compliance lands back on the partners while clients ask for advisory the team has no hours left to give; nearly two in three individual returns ride on registered agents inside one lodgement program; and STP Phase 2 pay-category mapping, the 12% super guarantee, and the new criminal wage-theft law turn a small reconciliation slip into a real exposure. None of these is a tax-thinking problem — each is a documents-and-reconciliation problem, the hour lost before the thinking starts, which is exactly where grounded AI — constrained to your documents, cited, and reviewed — earns its place. And the caution accountants feel about AI is well-founded: a general chatbot will confidently hallucinate, and confidentiality is non-negotiable — both are addressed head-on below, before anything else.
You can't bill the work because you can't hire the people
Accountants and auditors are on the Jobs and Skills Australia shortage list. In CA ANZ's 2025 vacancy survey only 55% of taxation-accountant roles and 49% of general-accountant roles were filled — well under the 67% mark that signals a genuine shortage. The binding constraint isn't demand; it's capacity. Every seat you can't fill is compliance work that lands back on the partner's desk, and advisory revenue you never get to.
A reconciliation slip is now a wage-theft exposure
The super guarantee rose to 12% of ordinary time earnings on 1 July 2025, and from 1 January 2025 intentional underpayment is a criminal offence under the Fair Work Act — up to 10 years' prison and $1.65M for an individual. The law turns on intent, not honest mistakes, and there's a small-business safe harbour, but the burden has shifted: the same team meant to pivot to advisory is the team whose payroll reconciliation now carries criminal weight if it's wrong.
Two in three individual returns ride on your desk — at the same deadline
Tax agents lodged 62.8% of individual returns in 2022–23 (myTax 36.7%), and the ATO had received over 12.8 million individual lodgments for 2025 by late January 2026. That volume hits inside one compressed lodgement program, and the slow part isn't the tax thinking — it's the hour per client spent keying a shoebox into categories before any thinking can start.
STP Phase 2 mappings and four BAS quarters land on the same desk
STP Phase 2 has been mandatory since 2022, and it pushed the detail down to the pay-category line — every allowance, every leave type, every salary-sacrifice code now has to map to a specific ATO income type, or it's a correction event at lodgement. On top of that sit four quarterly BAS cycles (28 Oct, 28 Feb, 28 Apr, 28 Jul — agents get a lodgment-program extension on three of the four). The slow part isn't the GST thinking; it's the line-by-line mapping and reconciliation that has to be right before the thinking starts.
What changes once the work runs on your own client files and engagement terms.
Firms working with RMAI get accountant hours back and tighten their compliance trail at the same time. The outcomes below are illustrative of patterns RMAI has shipped; each keeps a person on the final call — no return is lodged, no back-pay posted, and no invoice sent on its own. The registered agent, payroll officer, or engagement owner reviews and signs.
The questions leaders ask first.
The questions below are the ones RMAI hears in the first call — on safety, staffing, compliance, cost, and feasibility.
What the time recovered is worth.
Move the sliders for your own volumes; the benchmark shows where shipped builds have landed.
| Task | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Return prep from source documents | ~1 hr/client keying | 30–50% reclaimed (agent reviews) |
| STP Phase 2 category check | hand-checked at lodgement | audited before lodgement |
| Award / payslip reconciliation | spot-checked, caught at audit | every line, before the run |
| Scope vs billing review | skimmed, leaked | flagged pre-bill, owner signs |
What RMAI has built for this sector.
The applications below are grounded, human-in-the-loop tools for this sector — some already built and shipped, some scoped from real briefs. Ask us which is which.
SMSF Workpaper & Compliance Pre-Check
Checks each SMSF file for complete workpapers and the common contravention indicators — caps, in-house assets, related-party dealings, year-end market valuations — so the administrator fixes gaps before the file reaches the independent auditor.
Management Report Drafting Assistant
Drafts plain-English commentary from the client's management accounts — variances, trends, ratios, cashflow movements — with every statement tied to the figure behind it, so the advisor edits insight rather than building the report.
FBT Return Prep Assistant
Scans the year's expense, vehicle and entertainment records to surface and classify potential fringe benefits, draft taxable values, and flag missing declarations and logbooks — so the agent reviews a structured draft instead of hunting benefits across the ledger.
BAS Evidence & GST Review
Cross-checks each transaction's GST code against the supporting tax invoice and your coding rules, so the BAS agent reviews flagged exceptions instead of eyeballing the whole ledger before lodgement.
Bank-Feed Coding Assistant
Drafts the account and GST code for each bank-feed line from your chart of accounts, coding rules and payee history — so the bookkeeper confirms and handles the genuine exceptions, not the 80% that repeat.
Tax Return Prep from Source Documents
Turn a shoebox of client receipts, bank statements and income statements into a categorised, source-linked deduction schedule the agent can review in minutes — not an evening of data entry.
STP Phase 2 Category Auditor
Audits pay-category mappings against ATO STP Phase 2 income types and flags generic or high-risk codes before lodgement — heading off correction events and audits.
Scope & Billing Guardian
Reviews each draft invoice against the engagement letter scope and agreed rate card before it goes out — flagging out-of-scope work, rate variances and non-billable time, and drafting the adjustment note for the engagement owner to clear.
Precedent & Knowledge Finder
A fee-earner asks a question in plain language and gets the answer from your own precedents, advice, policies and matter files — with the exact document, version and clause quoted, and an honest "not on file" when it isn't there.
Inbox Triage
Turns a chaotic shared inbox into a sorted, urgency-ranked queue with drafted replies — so the morning starts with the work, not the sorting.
Engagement Intake & Routing Desk
Reads each inbound enquiry, extracts the client and matter details, classifies the request, runs a conflict check, drafts a holding reply, and routes it to the right team — for a person to review before anything is sent.
Award Rate Checker
Reconciles every payslip line against the modern award before the pay run leaves, so an underpaid weekend penalty or missed allowance gets caught — and corrected — before it becomes a wage-theft exposure.
Prompts you can use today, for free.
Sector-specific prompts RMAI uses as starting points. Copy one and run it against de-identified samples — or inside an approved private environment — to see the shape of the answer before you talk to us.
Run these against de-identified samples, synthetic data, or inside an approved private environment — never paste client records, TFNs, bank statements, or work papers into a public AI tool. In a real firm the safe version runs inside your tenancy with access controls, logging, retention settings, and a review step.
How RMAI would work with you.
Every engagement starts with the diagnostic and scales from there. These link through to how RMAI works.
What a defensible result looks like.
These are published government and third-party figures — illustrative of the load RMAI builds toward relieving, with a registered agent or payroll officer on the decision throughout. They are not RMAI client outcome claims, and any per-firm time saving re-baselines down to your own client volumes and document quality.
Facing compliance season with the staff you couldn't hire?
The two-week diagnostic is the right place to start. Fixed scope, fixed price. We’ll tell you whether the pattern fits and what the build would look like.