There is a temptation when building software to automate every decision that can be described.
Accounting review taught me to be careful with that temptation.
BrokenBooks is being built to support and preserve professional judgment, not replace it.
A client’s explanation is a starting point for review.
A client says a transaction was a loan.
That statement matters. It is information the reviewer should preserve.
But the client saying “loan” does not automatically establish the accounting treatment.
The professional may need to evaluate supporting documentation, repayment terms, ownership, prior treatment, tax context, or other evidence before reaching a conclusion.
The client provides context. The reviewer makes the determination.
That separation matters in software.
If a system blends client statements, reviewer observations, evidence, and final conclusions into one undifferentiated answer, it becomes difficult to understand how the accounting decision was reached.
I want BrokenBooks to preserve those pieces separately enough that another professional can follow the reasoning.
What did the client say?
What did the reviewer observe?
What evidence supports the conclusion?
What is still unknown?
What did the professional ultimately determine?
Structure is useful precisely because judgment is human.
Professional judgment does not mean every reviewer should document the work differently.
A firm can still have a consistent review framework. It can require evidence, preserve unresolved items, connect client questions to issues, and make completed work easier to review.
Consistency in the process can make professional judgment easier to understand and supervise.
That is very different from software making the accounting decision.
Automation should reduce repetition while preserving responsibility.
There are plenty of things software can improve: carrying context forward, organizing evidence, surfacing dependencies, creating repeatable workflows, showing what is incomplete, and reducing the need to re-enter information.
Those are exactly the kinds of problems BrokenBooks is being designed to help solve.
The professional still owns the conclusion and the quality of the work.
The boundary should remain clear as the product grows.
As BrokenBooks becomes more capable, it should remain clear about what the software supports and what the professional determines.
Automation can help organize the work, surface missing information, and preserve the reasoning behind a review. The professional remains responsible for evaluating that information and reaching a supported conclusion.
The system provides the structure. The professional provides the judgment.
That boundary is part of how BrokenBooks is being designed.
