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An AI assistant can use Layer’s financial report tools to explain how a business performed over the trailing three months. This gives SMB owners a lightweight way to understand recent revenue, expenses, gross profit, and net profit without reading a full accounting report line by line.

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Questions And Uncertainties

Business owners often want to understand:
  • Whether revenue is growing or shrinking.
  • Whether expenses are rising faster than income.
  • Which month had the strongest or weakest profit.
  • Whether the recent trend is healthy enough to support hiring, spending, or owner distributions.
  • Whether uncategorized transactions may be affecting the report.

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Prompts And Tools

Users can ask prompts like:
  • “How did my business perform over the last three months?” Start with get_financial_report (report_type: profit_and_loss) or get_profit_and_loss_summaries for month-range trends.
  • “Did expenses grow faster than revenue?” This typically triggers get_profit_and_loss_summaries.
  • “Which month had the strongest net profit?” This typically triggers get_profit_and_loss_summaries.
  • “Are uncategorized transactions affecting my P&L?” This may trigger get_financial_report or get_profit_and_loss_summaries and get_bank_transactions.

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Expected Interactions

The agent should retrieve the trailing three-month P&L (prefer get_financial_report for a full statement, get_profit_and_loss_summaries for month-by-month trends), compare the months, and explain the results in plain language. If the report shows unusual changes or uncategorized activity, the agent can ask whether the user wants to inspect the underlying transactions.

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Details And Variations

The same pattern can be used for cash or accrual reporting when the report tool supports the requested basis. The agent can also compare the trailing three months to the previous three months, focus only on expense categories, or call out specific line items that changed meaningfully. Because report values are returned in cents, agents should convert amounts before presenting them to users.