W/P ref AI‑REG · Prepared for the firm’s own file
Your AI tools are third‑party service providers. Almost nobody put them through the door.
Every other outside party that touches client data goes through a process —
you check they are competent, you get terms in writing, you decide what the client needs to be told.
AI arrived on individual subscriptions instead, so most firms have never run that process on it once.
And there is now a date on it. A firm performing engagements under the SASs, SSAEs or SSARSs had to have a quality management system designed and implemented by 15 December 2025, and the first annual evaluation of that system falls due by 15 December 2026. An evaluation asks the firm to describe how it monitors what its people actually do — and if staff are putting client information into AI tools, that sits inside the system being evaluated.
Name your tools below and the register builds itself. Tool names and answers never leave this browser tab.
Inventory
Which AI tools does the firm use on client work?
The chat subscriptions, and the AI features inside software you already pay for. Trade names are fine. If you find yourself guessing, that is the first finding.
The register
No tools named yet
Name a tool above and the register starts assembling here.
The next step
The gaps above are facts. Filling them is a judgment, and that is the conversation.
Nothing on this page tells you what your firm should permit. It tells you what you would have to be able to show if a carrier, a peer reviewer or your own quality management evaluation asked. Which tools are allowed, what may never be pasted anywhere, what happens when client information would leave your tenant — those are judgment calls, and they are yours to make.
A Close Teardown is forty-five minutes on how the work actually runs, and you leave with one written page: where the hours go, which entities do not tie, and which of these you still could not evidence. Free, five a month, and it needs no access and no credentials — you share a screen and we talk.
Print the register first. It is the inventory an evaluation asks for, it is yours whether or not we ever speak, and it is a better starting point for the conversation than a blank page.
§7216, the FTC Safeguards Rule and AICPA ET §1.700.040 apply to AI tools the same way they apply to any other outside provider. The quality management standards govern the firm’s own system — CAS engagements are non-attest and are not themselves covered by them.
Written by Owen Byram, who ran the close in private equity finance before building AI‑native platforms that draft to client ledgers in production.
Your tool names and answers stay in this browser tab, and this page asks for no email.
We record page visits, completion and destination clicks without those names or answers.
A prompt for a conversation — not accounting, tax or legal advice, and not an assurance engagement.
Byram Advisory Group · McKinney, TX · info@byram-advisory.com