Automated Bookkeeping
Luca ingests your bank feeds, invoices and receipts and categorises every transaction automatically. No manual data entry required.
From eTail Support
BETA
Open Source
Meet Luca BETA
Your AI Accounts
Department
Luca is a free, open-source AI accounts department built on Claude Co-Work. Luca works 24/7, keeping your books reconciled, your VAT return ready to file and your P&L live in real time — so you can focus on running your business. Download free from GitHub — or get hosted and managed for just £20/month. A Claude Co-Work Pro subscription (from $20/month) is required.
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Beta Software BETA
Luca is currently in active development and is not yet a fully production-ready release. Features are functional but the product is evolving rapidly. We encourage users to get in touch before deploying in a live business context.
Free & Open Source GitHub
Luca's full source code is freely available. Download Luca v0.5 from GitHub, self-host it, modify it, and use it however you like. No licence fees, no strings attached.
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Hosted for £20/month
Don't want the hassle of self-hosting? We run Luca for you on our servers — fully managed, always up to date — for just £20/month.
Sign Up for Hosted LucaYour Accounts Department Is Costing Too Much
For most small and medium businesses, maintaining a proper accounts function is expensive, slow and inefficient. Luca changes that.
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Too Expensive
A qualified in-house accountant costs £35,000–£60,000 per year. A financial controller more still. Most SMEs can't justify this cost.
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Too Slow
Monthly management accounts arrive 3–4 weeks after month-end. By the time you see the numbers, the decisions have already been made — on gut feel.
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Too Little Insight
Knowing your total revenue is useful. Knowing your profit by product, customer, channel and region — that's what you actually need to run your business well.
Everything an Accounts Department Does — Automated
Luca uses AI to handle the routine, time-consuming tasks that keep traditional accountants busy — freeing up the insight you actually need.
Bank Reconciliation
Every bank transaction matched against invoices and expenses automatically. Full reconciliation completed daily, not at month-end.
VAT Returns
VAT return data prepared automatically each quarter, ready for your review and submission. UK VAT and EU VAT OSS supported.
Real-Time P&L
Profit and loss updated in real time — not at month-end. Know your margins, costs and profitability at any moment.
Cashflow Forecasting
Luca projects your cashflow based on historical patterns, outstanding invoices and known commitments. Know when cash gets tight before it happens.
CFO-Level Insights
Luca doesn't just report numbers — it analyses them. Margin changes, cost anomalies, payment terms, supplier pricing — Luca flags what matters and explains why.
Luca Gets to Know Your Business — Then Keeps Learning
Luca isn't a one-size-fits-all bookkeeping tool. Like a good human accountant, Luca takes the time to understand your business first — then gets more useful the longer he works with you.
Step 1
Researches Your Business
Before Luca touches a single transaction, he reads your website, reviews your marketing, and talks with you about how your business actually works. Products, margins, suppliers, customers, seasonality — Luca wants to understand the shape of your business, not just the numbers.
Step 2
Learns As He Works
Every invoice Luca codes, every supplier Luca reconciles, every question you answer — all of it adds to Luca's knowledge of your business. Over weeks and months Luca builds up a working picture of what "normal" looks like for you, so he can spot what isn't.
Step 3
Gets More Useful Over Time
The Luca you hire in month one is not the Luca you'll be working with in month twelve. By then Luca knows your suppliers, your cycles, your edge cases, your preferred coding — and produces sharper insights, cleaner books, and better answers to the questions you haven't thought to ask yet.
The human-accountant parallel matters. A good accountant who knows your business for three years is worth far more than one who started last week. Luca works the same way — the longer he's with you, the more he's worth.
Up and Running in Hours, Not Months
1
Connect Your Accounts
Connect your bank accounts, your accounting software, and your e-commerce platforms. Luca imports your historical data and starts learning your business.
2
Review & Confirm
Luca handles the routine tasks automatically and presents exceptions for your review. You stay in control — Luca does the work.
3
Get Insights
Access real-time P&L, cashflow dashboards and Luca's AI-generated insights. Make better business decisions with accurate, timely financial data.
Designed for Growing Businesses
✅ Luca is perfect if you…
- Are a small or medium business (£100k–£10m revenue)
- Rely on a part-time bookkeeper or external accountant
- Only see your financial numbers monthly or quarterly
- Struggle to understand true profitability by product
- Spend hours chasing invoices and reconciling accounts
- Run an online retail business
❌ Luca is not designed for…
- Large enterprises with complex group structures
- Businesses requiring statutory audit services
- Specialist sectors (legal firms, charities) with unique reporting needs
- Businesses with no digital banking or invoicing
Not sure if Luca is right for you? Talk to our team — we'll be honest.
The General Ledger in Detail
Luca is built on a purpose-built, double-entry General Ledger — not a wrapper around Xero or QuickBooks. Here is what it actually does. All source code is on GitHub.
Chart of Accounts
Fully configurable account hierarchy covering assets, liabilities, equity, revenue and expenses. Importable via CSV. Ships with a UK SME default CoA.
Double-Entry Engine
Every transaction is validated for debit/credit balance at the API level before commit. Unbalanced entries are rejected — enforcement is at the database layer, not the AI layer.
Bank Reconciliation
OFX, CSV and MT940 import. Probabilistic matching on amount + date + description. High-confidence matches auto-confirmed; exceptions surfaced for review. Runs nightly in batch.
Document Inbox
Drop invoices, receipts, credit notes and payroll summaries into the inbox. Luca classifies the document type, extracts fields, determines accounting treatment, and posts the journal — using the gl-document-posting skill.
VAT Returns (UK MTD)
VAT tracked at transaction line level. All nine MTD return boxes calculated automatically per quarter. Supports standard rate, zero rate, exempt, and partially exempt scenarios.
Multi-Currency & FX Revaluation
Transactions posted in any currency at the prevailing rate. Period-end FX revaluation sweep restates outstanding multi-currency balances and posts the resulting gain/loss journal automatically.
Period Management
Soft close and hard close enforced at database-constraint level, not just application logic. Hard-closed periods are immutable — corrections go through reversing journals in a subsequent period.
Year-End Close
Automated year-end close procedure: sweeps P&L accounts to retained earnings, opens the new financial year, and hard-closes the completed year. Triggered via gl_year_end_close.
P&L, Balance Sheet & Cashflow
Full statutory reports generated live from the ledger via gl_get_profit_and_loss and gl_get_balance_sheet. Comparative period columns. No month-end wait.
Aged Debtors & Creditors
Live aged debtor and creditor reports in configurable day bands (30/60/90/90+). Luca proactively flags heavily overdue items in its nightly insights run.
Batch Processing
Scheduled nightly batch runner: bank feed import, reconciliation, FX sweep, VAT accruals, document inbox scan, exception report generation. Every batch run is logged with per-task outcomes.
Merkle Chain Audit Trail
Every journal entry is cryptographically linked to the previous one via a Merkle hash chain. Any modification to historical records breaks the chain — detectable via gl_verify_chain. Individual transactions are provable with gl_get_merkle_proof.
Start Free. Scale When You're Ready.
Luca BETA is open source — free for anyone to download and self-host. We also offer a fully managed hosted plan and customization packages. All plans require an active Claude Co-Work Pro subscription (from $20/month, billed separately by Anthropic).
Open Source
Self-Hosted
Free
Always free. No licence fees.
+ Claude Co-Work Pro required (from $20/month)
- Full Luca BETA source code
- All accounting features included
- You manage your own hosting
- Community support via GitHub
- Requires Claude Co-Work Pro (from $20/mo)
BETA
Hosted Plan
£20/month
We host & manage everything.
+ Claude Co-Work Pro required (from $20/month)
- Fully managed hosting on our servers
- Always on the latest version
- Automated backups included
- Email support from our team
- Cancel any time
- Requires Claude Co-Work Pro (from $20/mo)
Custom
Customization Package
£500+
Tailored to your business needs.
- Custom features built for your workflow
- Integrations with your existing systems
- Bespoke reporting and dashboards
- Dedicated onboarding support
- Ongoing development retainer available
- Requires Claude Co-Work Pro (from $20/mo)
Luca BETA — Available Now
Get Luca Running Today
Download Luca free from GitHub, or sign up for our hosted plan and be up and running in minutes for just £20/month. Need something tailored? Customization packages start at £500. All plans require a Claude Co-Work Pro subscription (from $20/month, billed separately).
Questions? Call +44 1227 39 0441 or email luca@etailsupport.com