How to keep financial controllers ready for an AI agent’s 90-day recertification

Schedule the agent's recertification around the close, never inside it, and treat the result as a change to your journal controls. Every 90 days the finance agent is re-scored on your own ledger. Financial controllers need to see which reconciliations and postings moved depth, reset their own limits if needed, and brief the people who approve held journals.

What does recertification mean for a financial controller?

A close agent typically prepares bank and balance sheet reconciliations at depth 2, drafts variance commentary at depth 2, and posts recurring accruals, prepayments and routine reclassifications at depth 3 within limits the controller sets. Journals above those limits, or of unusual types, are drafted and held. Nothing the agent does replaces the controller's sign-off on the close.

The agent's certificate lapses after 90 days. Recertification re-runs the agent's cases on recent periods, and the outcome is one depth for the agent. A typical change: the agent drops from depth 3 to depth 2 because it misread two cost centres in the replay. That adds drafts to the close, and the controller needs to know before day one of the next close, not on day three.

The controller is also the person who sets the business's own limits. The agent's depth says how far it may act; the controller's limits narrow it further, and the lower of the two always wins. After each cycle, the controller should ask whether the limits still match the new depths.

Who owns the cycle?

The financial controller owns the cycle for finance: timing, limits and approver readiness. The builder owns recertification. The IT administrator owns the connections to the general ledger and bank feeds, which matter if a source changed. The external auditor does not own anything, but will ask about it.

The steps

1. Person (financial controller): fix the date at least a week clear of close and of audit fieldwork.
2. Agent, depth 1: produce the cycle report. Reconciliations prepared, journals posted, journals held, variances flagged and refusals, with the deciding bound for each.
3. Person (financial controller): review held and refused journals. Patterns show where limits or sources need attention.
4. Person (builder): recertify on the last two closes.
5. Person (financial controller and builder): write the change note: postings that moved depth, new sources, any reconciliation now prepared differently.
6. Person (financial controller): reset limits where the new depths call for it, and record the change.
7. Agent, depth 2: draft a mock close checklist showing which tasks are now drafted, posted or held. The controller checks it.
8. Person (financial controller): brief approvers of held journals, then review every held journal in the first close under the new certificate.

What should controllers and approvers retrain on?

Held journals. The deciding bound tells the approver what to check: a value above the limit, an unusual account, or a source the agent could not verify. A supplier credit note forwarded by email is external provenance and should not alone support a journal.

Reconciliation exceptions. At depth 2 the agent matches and lists exceptions. Approvers must still read the exceptions list, not only the matched total.

Segregation of duties. If the same person adjusts the agent's limits and approves its held journals, segregation has gone. Each cycle is a good moment to check the approver list.

Reading the record. When the auditor asks who posted a journal, the controller should be able to show the agent's verdict, the bound that allowed it and the limit in force at the time.

Pryme Intelligence Academy's Operator track covers usage and billing and when something goes wrong, both useful to controllers who answer for the close.

Controls and the evidence they leave

• Date clear of close. Evidence: the cycle calendar.
• Limits reset after each cycle. Evidence: dated limit changes, approved by someone other than the approvers of held journals.
• Approver briefing. Evidence: named attendance.
• First-close review of held journals. Evidence: the controller's review notes.
• Practicum for new approvers. Evidence: the practicum log template for financial controllers.

What to measure

Close duration, the number of journals held and their waiting time, and post-close adjustments to entries the agent posted. If post-close adjustments rise after a cycle, the depth for that posting type may have been too high, and the controller can narrow it through limits while the builder investigates.

Where does it go wrong?

Recertification falls in close week. A run that clears no depth drops the agent to depth 1 the same day, and the team closes by hand with no notice. Keep a manual close checklist current for exactly this case.

Limits drift away from depths. The agent earns a higher depth, but the controller's limit still caps reclassifications; or the agent drops a depth and the limit was the only thing that mattered. Check both together each cycle.

Approvers clear held journals without a current certificate. Whether they need one is the business's call; do financial controllers need a certificate to approve AI agent actions covers the options, and are financial controllers accountable for an AI agent's mistakes covers who answers. Credit control runs a parallel cycle; see keeping credit controllers ready and the guide to AI literacy and certification for people who work with agents.