Common issues
- I imported 200 invoices and Tally still asks me to confirm new ones. That's by design — imports gave Tally context, not authority. After 5–10 live reviews per common vendor, she'll start suggesting more proactively. After more, autonomy unlocks.
- Tally flagged a vendor as new even though I've imported its history. Check the document — most often this means the vendor name is spelled differently in the import vs. the new document. Edit the new document to use the canonical name; Tally will merge them and stop flagging.
- I'm on the Business plan but firm memory isn't suggesting things across clients. Firm memory needs enough reviews per pattern to fire. Early in your firm's adoption, expect manual reviews per client. As your team builds review history, firm memory kicks in for the patterns that recur.
Firm-level patterns (Business plans)
If you're a bookkeeper running a firm with multiple clients on the Business plan, some patterns can be shared across your firm only:
- Vendor-to-category mappings your firm consistently uses. "Adobe Creative Cloud → Software Subscriptions" — once your firm has reviewed enough Adobe invoices across clients with the same mapping, new Adobe invoices in new clients can pre-fill that category.
- Common policy decisions. When your firm reliably handles a class of vendor in a particular way, that becomes firm memory.
This is not cross-client data sharing. Firm memory is patterns extracted from your firm's review behavior — not raw documents, amounts, or financial data. The actual numbers, attachments, and notes for one client are never visible inside another client.
How Tally earns more autonomy
Tally has four levels of autonomy per vendor:
- Manual. Tally watches; you decide. The default for every vendor on day one.
- Suggest. Tally proposes the right answer for you to confirm with one click. Unlocks after several consistent reviews.
- Auto with Review. Tally handles routine documents; you can override within a window. Unlocks after more reviews and consistent approval.
- Fully Auto. Tally handles routine documents; you only see exceptions.
Two things must be true for Tally to graduate a vendor to a higher level:
- Her track record on that vendor passes a threshold (consistent approvals, low correction rate, not many anomalies).
- You've reviewed enough live documents in the product itself. Imports don't count toward this. This is what stops a bulk import from inflating Tally's confidence without your consent.
The autonomy explainer on each document tells you exactly where Tally stands: "Tally would suggest this — needs a few more live reviews before auto-approve" or "Auto-approved — you've reviewed 12 and corrected 1; she's earned this."
You can also slow Tally down or pause autonomy entirely from your settings. The bar is "Tally never acts without permission you've granted by reviewing."
Imports give Tally context. Live reviews give Tally authority.
When you import history — a CSV from QuickBooks, a Xero export, a year of bank transactions — Tally absorbs that data fast. She learns who your vendors are, what amounts are typical, what categories you usually pick. That's context. It's why a freshly-imported workspace doesn't show every vendor as "new" — Tally already recognizes them.
But context isn't the same as authority. Tally won't auto-approve a vendor just because that vendor appeared 200 times in your import. Imports tell her who exists; they don't tell her how you actually want each one handled going forward. To earn that, she needs to watch you make real decisions inside the product.
The distinction has a practical consequence: a fresh import doesn't give you instant autonomy. You'll still review the next few documents from each vendor. After enough live reviews, autonomy unlocks per vendor.
This is the same model the leading platforms in this space use. It's the right balance between giving Tally a head start and protecting you from a system that confidently does the wrong thing because of bad imported data.
The boundaries
Three lines Tally never crosses:
- No cross-client document data. Two clients in the same firm don't see each other's documents, vendors, or numbers — ever. The bookkeeper sees both because they're assigned to both; Tally never blurs the boundary.
- No cross-firm anything. Patterns Tally learns inside one firm stay inside that firm. They never seed a different firm's defaults.
- No autonomy without consent. Imports don't unlock autonomy. Auto-approve happens only after live human reviews build the track record.
You stay in control of these boundaries through plan tier and access settings — but the boundaries themselves are baked into how Tally works, not just config you have to remember to set.
What's next
- Documents — review and approve
- Vendor Autonomy Journey — the visible four-stage indicator that shows where each vendor sits today
- Bookkeeper workspace — close readiness, ROI reports, firm memory
- Intelligence Digests — the recurring email summary of what Tally handled
- Resolution Playbooks — how Tally surfaces patterns from your past decisions
- Missing Document Detection — when expected recurring documents haven't arrived
- Plans and billing — which features are at which tier
- Security and privacy — the boundaries explained more fully
What Tally remembers per vendor
For every vendor she's seen, Tally tracks:
- Provenance. How many documents Tally has seen from this vendor — broken into "from imports" (historical context) and live reviews (your decisions).
- Typical amount. What's normal for this vendor — average, range, frequency.
- Typical category and account. Which category you usually pick, which GL account you usually map to.
- Approval pattern. When you approve vs. correct vs. reject.
- Anomaly history. When a document fell outside the normal range and what you did with it.
- Open questions. Anything still unresolved (missing W-9, pending follow-up).
You can see this on the Memory page for any vendor. Tally surfaces "47 documents from imports + 12 from live reviews" as separate signals so you know what's grounding her judgment.
What you'll learn
- The difference between imported context and live review authority.
- What Tally remembers about each of your vendors.
- How Tally earns more autonomy over time.
- What's per-business and what (for firms) can be firm-level.
- The boundaries that prevent cross-client leakage.