Overview
The SoftLedger MCP Server lets AI assistants — Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and other apps that support the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — connect directly to your SoftLedger tenant (company) and answer questions about your books by querying your live data. Ask "which invoices are overdue?", "what bills are unpaid this month?", or "walk me through our chart of accounts" and the AI pulls the answer from SoftLedger itself, not from memory.
Before you connect: a 5-minute governance check
Because the AI sees whatever the connecting user sees, your existing SoftLedger permissions ARE your AI data policy. We recommend admins do this once, before rolling MCP out to the team:
Review user roles. Confirm each user who will connect an AI assistant has permissions that match what you're comfortable with an AI reading on their behalf.
Check location scopes. Results are automatically limited to the locations a user is assigned to — verify those assignments are current.
Align with your company's AI policy. Your financial data will pass through the AI assistant you connect (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) under that vendor's data terms. If your company restricts which AI tools may handle financial data, apply that policy here.
Offboarding is automatic. Deactivating a user in SoftLedger ends their MCP access with it, and removing a permission takes effect on the user's next request.
Getting connected
Step 1 — Ask us to enable MCP. Access is controlled by a per-tenant feature flag that is off by default. Contact support@softledger.com to enable it. Until it's on, every connection attempt is rejected — even with a valid login.
Step 2 — Add SoftLedger in your AI client using the MCP URL for your region:
Region | MCP URL |
United States |
|
EU |
|
Claude (web/desktop): Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste the MCP URL.
ChatGPT: Add SoftLedger as a custom connector / MCP server in connector settings (may require developer/connector features on your plan) → paste the MCP URL.
Claude Code (terminal):
claude mcp add --transport http softledger https://api.softledger.com/mcp(swap in the EU URL if applicable).Other MCP clients (Cursor, etc.): add a remote/HTTP MCP server pointing at the URL.
Step 3 — Sign in and authorize. The client opens a SoftLedger sign-in. Use your normal SoftLedger credentials, pick the tenant (company) you're connecting (if you belong to more than one), and approve the authorization screen. Done — the SoftLedger tools now appear in your AI client.
What the AI can see
A curated financial slice:
general ledger (journal entries and journal lines)
chart of accounts
cost centers, jobs, products
budgets
invoices and invoice lines
customers
bills and bill lines
vendors
payments
locations
contacts (name/email/phone only)
accounting periods and fiscal years
your settings
Not included today (planned as the surface grows): inventory, Crypto, sales/purchase orders, bank feeds, prepaids/fixed assets, and admin functions.
Not included ever: addresses and bank-account details.
Note: the MCP server is not a replacement for the SoftLedger REST API, and there are no dedicated financial-report tools yet — the AI answers by querying and aggregating records, not by running your saved Balance Sheet or Income Statement.
What to ask it (examples that work well)
"Which invoices are overdue, and how many days outstanding is each?"
"List unpaid bills due in the next 14 days, grouped by vendor."
"Which vendors are flagged 1099?"
"Show me open accounting periods — is AP closed for July?"
"Find journal entries posted to account 6200 last month and show me the lines."
"Which customers have no email on file?"
"What payment terms does customer X have, and what's their open balance?"
Tips for better answers:
Name the tenant (company) if you have multiple connections ("In SL-Acme, ...").
Determine consolidated or non-consolidated if pulling balances of accounts or reports.
Be specific about dates ("in July 2026" beats "recently").
Ask for the drill-down — invoice, bill, and journal lines are available, so "show the line detail" works.
Large lists page sequentially. If you ask for thousands of rows, the AI fetches page by page — asking it to filter first ("only unpaid, only location X") is faster and more reliable.
Working with multiple tenants
Each connection is bound to a single softledger tenant — there's no tenant switching inside one connection. If you manage several tenants, add one MCP connection per tenant and sign in to the right tenant on each. Name them with a consistent prefix (e.g., SL-Acme, SL-Globex) so you and the AI can tell them apart; the AI gets a separate set of tools per connection, so a question about SL-Acme can never return SL-Globex data. Every tenant needs the MCP flag enabled.
Best practices
Verify before you act. AI assistants summarize and interpret — well, but not infallibly. For anything you'll post, pay, or report on, confirm the figures in SoftLedger. Treat the AI as a fast analyst, not the system of record.
Prefer closed periods for reporting questions. Numbers in open periods can still move (FX remeasurement, eliminations, retained earnings, and other close entries post during period close), so point-in-time answers on open periods are provisional by nature.
Reconnect after permission changes. Newly granted permissions appear in the AI's tool list only after you reconnect the client. (Revoked permissions are enforced immediately.)
One user, one login. Don't share a "service" login for AI access — you'd lose the per-user scoping and audit trail that make this safe.
Coach the AI when needed. The server teaches the AI to explore your data correctly on its own (it discovers what's available, then queries). If it seems confused about what exists, tell it to "describe the available SoftLedger entities first."
Built to be safe
Read-only. The AI can read, filter, and explore your financial data — it cannot create, update, or delete anything. There is no write access today (write capabilities are planned for a future release).
Off by default. MCP access must be enabled for your company by SoftLedger before anyone can connect. Contact your Customer Success Manager or support@softledger.com to have it turned on.
Scoped to each user. Everyone connects with their own SoftLedger login. The AI sees exactly what that user can already see in the app — nothing more. Entities a user can't access aren't just blocked, they're invisible: the AI never learns they exist. Location (branch) restrictions apply automatically.
Privacy-preserving. The exposed data is a hand-picked financial slice. Street addresses and bank-account details (including vendor bank accounts) are never surfaced, period. Contacts expose only name, email, and phone.
No API keys. Sign-in uses your normal SoftLedger login through our identity provider. There are no keys to create, store, or accidentally leak.
Troubleshooting
Symptom | Likely cause / fix |
Connection rejected at sign-in | The MCP feature flag isn't enabled for your tenant — contact your CSM or support. Also confirm you're using your normal SoftLedger login. |
An entity the user works with is "missing" | The signed-in user lacks read permission for it in SoftLedger, or the permission was granted after connecting — grant it, then disconnect/reconnect the client. |
Results seem incomplete | Location scope: users only see records in locations they're assigned to. Check the user's location assignments. |
Query errors mentioning invalid fields | Harmless — the AI is told the valid fields and will self-correct and retry. |
Two companies' data seem mixed up | Check your connection names; add one clearly named connection per tenant ( |
FAQ
Can the AI change anything in my books? No. The surface is read-only — there is no create, update, delete, or posting capability. Write support, when it comes, will be a separate release with its own controls.
Does SoftLedger send my data to the AI vendors? SoftLedger only answers the queries your own authorized AI client makes on your user's behalf. How the AI vendor handles data in your chats is governed by your agreement with that vendor — check their data-handling terms, especially for free-tier plans.
Is this the same as the SoftLedger API? No — it's a narrower, curated, read-only surface designed for AI assistants. For integrations and automation, use the REST API.
Who can connect? Any user of a company with the MCP flag enabled, using their own SoftLedger login, seeing only what their role and locations allow.