The Copilot and the night agent

The Copilot is a panel on the right of the screen, on every page of To Bill. It answers your questions about your invoices, quotes, clients, expenses, collections, hours and accounting, citing its sources. It also prepares draft quotes and invoices, which you read through before sending them. Every night, the night agent checks your books and prepares the corrections, which you confirm. Your fiduciary has their own copilot in the cockpit: see The fiduciary copilot.

Before you start

• Your company’s AI must be switched on, with the Copilot (questions about your data) help. See The AI assistant. If it is switched off, the panel says so: an administrator finds the Open Settings › AI button there, other users read who can switch it on.
• The Copilot only reads what you are allowed to see in To Bill (see What it never sees).

Open the Copilot

Click Copilot, at the top right of any page. With the keyboard: ⌘ J on a Mac, Ctrl J on Windows; the same shortcut closes it. In the invoice and quote editor, the Copilot button in the top bar opens the same panel.

On a large screen, the panel sits on the right and the page narrows beside it: you keep working while it answers. On a narrower screen, it goes over the page; on a phone, it takes up the whole screen.

Ask a question

1. Choose a question under Try, or type your own in the field at the bottom, for example “Who still owes me money?”.
2. Press Enter (Shift Enter starts a new line). The Copilot says what it is looking at (“Looking at: your invoices…”), then the answer is written as it comes.

The answer cites its Sources: each figure carries a small number, and the list under the answer opens the invoice, quote, client, expense, payment received, entry, account or VAT return it comes from. The panel stays open while you follow a source (on a phone, it closes). An amount the Copilot cannot find in your data or in your question is flagged under the answer: do not rely on it without checking. For the current financial year, the figures of the books stop today: an entry dated later (for example the following months’ salaries, already posted) is not counted, and the answer says which period it covers. What your clients still owe you is the same figure as the Outstanding tab of the invoices and the Unpaid page: in francs, reminder fees included.

The page you are on

Above the question field, a label names what you are looking at: the open invoice or quote, the client, the expense, or the part of the app (Invoices, Accounting…). The Copilot takes it into account: on an invoice, “Where is the payment of this invoice?” is enough. For a question unrelated to the page, remove the label with the cross.

Prepare a quote or an invoice

Describe the work in one sentence: “Prepare a quote for Boulangerie du Lac: 3 days of consulting at CHF 1’200 per day”. The Copilot writes the title, the lines and the payment terms. It keeps the services, quantities and prices you give exactly as they are, with no extra line or discount; whatever you do not price gets a realistic Swiss price. Then:

• if it finds the client, it saves a draft with its number. The card under the answer shows the client, the first lines and the total excluding VAT; Open in the editor opens it in the quote or invoice editor;
• without a client, the card offers Open in a new editor: the editor opens with the lines, and you choose the client;
• if you are in the editor of a quote (or an invoice), Put into this document places the title, the lines, the discounts, the notes and the client in the open document.

Nothing is sent: you read it through, correct it if needed, then send it from the editor. The draft’s VAT rate is your company’s; check it for a supply at another rate.

It reads and prepares, it does not act

The Copilot does not send, post, pay or delete anything. If you ask it to, it tells you where to do it in To Bill: to “Make me a reminder for …” it answers with the client’s overdue invoices and the path Invoices › the invoice › Send a reminder. It does not give tax or legal advice.

Your conversations

The Copilot keeps your conversations. The history button, at the top of the panel, lists them: click one to pick it up again, the pencil to Rename it, the bin to Delete it. The button next to it opens a New conversation.

• Your conversations are visible only to you: neither an administrator nor a colleague can see them.
• Deleting a conversation erases the questions and answers; a draft that was prepared stays in your quotes or invoices.
• A conversation with no new question for 6 months is erased.

A question has 2,000 characters at most; you can ask 30 in 10 minutes.

What it never sees

• What your permissions do not show. The Copilot reads with your permissions, screen by screen. Without the permission to see invoices, it reads no invoice; without accounting switched on and the permission to see it, it does not read the books; a member who only records their own hours only reads theirs. It simply tells you that your access does not include this data.
• The payroll, unless an administrator switches on AI for payroll in Settings › AI. Even then, it only reads the totals of each payroll run (gross, net, employer cost, number of employees), never a payslip, church tax or absences, which are sensitive data. See The AI assistant.

What the Copilot sends to the AI

Your question, then what its tools found in your data. The names of your clients, suppliers, employees and colleagues are sent as codes, then put back in the answer you read; IBANs, OASI (AHV) numbers, email addresses and phone numbers are removed. See What AI receives.

The night agent

Every night, the agent checks the books of the companies whose AI is switched on. Its results are in Accounting › Health of the books, Night agent panel.

• The checks are made by To Bill; the AI explains what they find (Explained by AI).
• Under To confirm, it suggests a ready-made correction: Reverse a duplicate or orphan entry, or Post a forgotten document. Click the button, read the confirmation, then confirm: the entry is recorded in your name.
• Under To handle on screen, Open takes you to the screen where you correct it: a bank reconciliation, a voucher to attach, VAT to classify.
• Dismiss sets a suggestion aside: it does not come back.

Check now runs the agent straight away. When it finds something, the people who manage accounting receive a notification: “Books health: … points to check”. Nothing is posted without your confirmation.

In the list of checks in Health of the books, Explain asks the AI for the likely causes of a failed check and ways to correct it. The procedure shown on screen remains the reference. See The health of your books.