Skip to content
Cogneros

The reasoning behind every position you have taken.

The reasoning behind every position your firm has taken, retrievable with the analysis attached — not just the number.

Request a Private Demo

Engagements typically start at $35,000, quoted in writing before anything begins.

Where accounting knowledge goes missing

The workpaper records what was concluded. The reasoning behind it — why this treatment and not the defensible alternative, what the client's facts were, what the partner was uncomfortable about — lives in a memo, a review note, an email thread, or a manager's memory.

A year later the same client, or a similar one, presents the same question. The senior handling it has no way to find last year's reasoning without knowing which engagement to open and what to search for. So the analysis is redone, sometimes reaching a different answer, and inconsistency between years is discovered in review if it is discovered at all.

Busy season concentrates the cost. The hours lost to reconstructing prior reasoning land precisely when there are no hours to spare, and the usual remedy is overtime rather than recall.

Partners

Confirm the firm's position on a technical question across every engagement that has touched it, with the analysis attached.

Managers

Review against what the firm actually concluded before, rather than against what you remember concluding.

Seniors and staff

Carry forward prior-year reasoning without opening six workpaper files to find it.

Quality and risk

See where positions diverge across engagements before an inspection does.

Three situations you will recognise

Not features. The specific moments in accounting work where the firm pays twice for thinking it has already done.

  1. 01

    A recurring client presents the same revenue recognition question as last year.

    Today

    Open last year's engagement, find the workpaper, read around it for the memo, and hope the reasoning was written down rather than agreed in a call.

    With Cogneros

    Ask how the firm treated it and why. The answer comes back with the memo, the workpaper reference and the engagement it came from — so the carry-forward is a check rather than a reconstruction.

  2. 02

    A manager is reviewing a technical position on an unfamiliar issue.

    Today

    Ask around the office for anyone who has seen it before. The answer depends on who is available and what they happen to recall.

    With Cogneros

    Ask the firm's own body of work. If a position has been taken, it surfaces with its supporting analysis; if one has not, that is a useful answer too.

  3. 03

    A client asks what the firm advised them in a comparable situation two years ago.

    Today

    Search correspondence, hope the right thread surfaces, caveat the answer heavily.

    With Cogneros

    Retrieve the actual advice with its date and document, and answer without hedging.

What goes in, and what comes back

Engagements carry more than documents: they carry the reasoning, the positions and the language your people have already stood behind.

Engagements contain

  • Workpapers and schedules
  • Technical position memoranda
  • Client correspondence
  • Engagement documentation

People actually ask

  • How did we treat this last year, and why?
  • Show me our position on this revenue question.
  • What did we tell a client in this situation before?

What changes

  • Consistent positions across engagements and years
  • Faster review with the rationale already surfaced
  • Busy-season capacity that does not come from overtime

What this means for accounting confidentiality

The general architecture is the same everywhere. These are the parts that matter specifically here.

Engagement-level access
Retrieval respects the permissions on the engagement. Staff see what they are already entitled to see, and nothing that independence or client agreements put out of reach.
Nothing pooled between clients
One client's material is never mixed with another's, and never used to answer for another. Each organization's corpus stands alone.
Working papers stay where they are
Originals remain in the repository you already govern, on your retention schedule. Cogneros builds the layer over them rather than becoming a second copy to manage.

Security posture, certifications and data-handling terms are put in writing during evaluation, so your counsel reviews specifics rather than a marketing summary. How privacy is architected.

Where it runs is your call

Some organizations want the fastest path to capability. Others cannot let certain material leave the building. Cogneros is delivered all three ways, and the choice can differ by the kind of work.

  • Cloud

    Private tenancy, managed by Cogneros

    The fastest way to start. Your corpus is indexed into an environment dedicated to your organization, with access controlled by your own directory.

    Firms that want capability quickly without adding hardware.

  • Hybrid

    Cloud reasoning, sensitive work kept local

    Routine questions run in the cloud while defined categories of work stay on hardware inside your network. You set which is which, by matter, client, or role.

    Organizations with a subset of genuinely sensitive material.

  • On-premise

    An appliance in your own rack

    A managed Cogneros appliance is installed in your office or data centre and runs approved models locally, with egress restricted to what your policy allows.

    Work that cannot leave the building, for policy or contract.

Sensitive work does not have to become someone else’s training data. Which models may be used, by whom, and for which work is a policy you set — not a default we set for you.

Questions accounting firms ask

The ones that come up in nearly every evaluation in this industry, answered plainly.

Does this affect independence?

Cogneros is a system you run over your own material; it does not touch client accounting records or perform work. Access is constrained by the permissions already in place. Anything bearing on independence is a matter for your own policies, and the data-handling terms go in writing during evaluation.

Can it prepare workpapers?

It drafts from your own material — memoranda, correspondence, prior analysis — with the sources attached. The conclusion, and responsibility for it, remain with the person signing.

How does it handle prior-year carryforward?

That is the case it is best at. Ask how something was treated and why, and the reasoning comes back with the engagement, the document and the date, rather than a number with no provenance.

What happens during busy season if it is wrong?

Every answer names its source, so a wrong retrieval is visible immediately rather than propagating. That is the point of citing everything: the failure mode is a bad pointer you can check, not a confident sentence you cannot.

More general questions are answered on the main FAQ.

Cogneros for other businesses

The platform is the same everywhere. What changes is the vocabulary, the documents, and the questions your people already ask each other.

Not on the list? The platform does not care what industry you are in — only that your people have built up knowledge worth reaching. Talk to us about your business

Your business has already built the knowledge.

Cogneros makes it available to the people who need it — under your permissions, traced to your own documents.

What an engagement costs

Engagements typically start at $35,000.

Scope follows the repositories you connect and where the system runs — cloud, hybrid, and on-premise are priced differently. Every engagement is quoted in writing before anything begins.

Based in
Denver, Colorado

We use this only to arrange your demonstration. No documents are shared at this stage.