Example questions by job (spend, funds, approvals, invoices, review and close), with what the assistant looks up for each.
Ask the way you would ask a colleague who has the app open. The assistant picks the records, the dates and the
grouping, and Ceviche does the arithmetic (the Tools reference has the detail). These examples use invented names: put your own funds, vendors and
projects in their place.
| Ask | What comes back |
|---|
| How much did we spend in Q3 2026? | Bill total and count for July to September, with anything left out (voided bills, bills with no date) |
| Give me our 2026 bills month by month, with a total. | One row per month, each with its count and sum, and the year total |
| Who are our top 5 vendors this year? | The five vendors by billed amount, biggest first |
| How much have we been billed by Harbor Legal LLP this year, and where do those bills stand? | The total and count, split by status (New, Draft, Pending Approval, Ready to Invoice, and so on) |
| Which projects did we spend the most on this year? | Spend by project from the bill lines, biggest first |
| Show 2026 spend by month and account. | A month-by-account table from the bill lines |
| Did we get any refunds or credits this year? | Credit bills and credit lines, with vendor, date and amount, and their total |
| Ask | What comes back |
|---|
| How much in expenses was charged to Fund II in the last two quarters? | Fund II's share of every split, per quarter and in total |
| How much of this year's spend landed on the management company? | The management company's share, and the base it is a share of |
| Each fund's share of Q3 costs, as a table. | One row per fund or entity, with a total that ties |
| Do our 2026 allocations tie out to the bills? | Whether every split adds up to what it splits, the allocated and billed totals, and what explains the gap (usually lines not yet split) |
| What's sitting on the Annual Meeting 2026 project's holding entity, waiting to be settled? | Held lines on that project, with their total |
| Ask | What comes back |
|---|
| What's waiting for approval, oldest first? | Open approval requests, with what each is about and its amount |
| Who approved the June bills? | Each approval's decisions, by person and date, or a plain "nothing has been through approval" |
| Show me approvals that were rejected this year, and why. | Rejected requests with the reason given |
| What are our approval policies? | Each policy, what it applies to, and its levels of approvers |
| Ask | What comes back |
|---|
| Which fund invoices are still open? | Open invoices by fund, with amounts and due dates |
| What did we invoice each fund this year, and what's been paid? | Invoiced amounts by fund and status |
| What's on Fund III's latest invoice? | The invoice and the splits it covers |
| Ask | What comes back |
|---|
| What needs my attention on the books right now? | Bills not yet split, splits waiting for approval, open invoices, bills with no date |
| Which bills over $10,000 have no attachment? | Those bills, with vendor, date and amount |
| Are there any bills with no date on them? | Each one, with vendor and amount. These fall outside every month and quarter. |
| What corrections did we book this quarter, and why? | Each correction, its effective date and reason |
| Find the Northwind Travel bill from the end of June and tell me everything about it. | The bill, its lines and their statuses, its split across funds, its approvals and attachments, and a link to it in Ceviche |
Assistants that can make charts, documents, spreadsheets or slides can do it from Ceviche's figures. The
MCP gives them Ceviche's colors, fonts and table rules, so the result looks like part of Ceviche.
- "Build me a one-page dashboard of Q3 spend by fund, with what needs attention at the top."
- "Make a spreadsheet of this year's bills by vendor and month, with totals that tie."
- "Draft a short email to the partners summarising what Fund II was charged in Q3."
Every figure in what the assistant builds still comes from Ceviche, and the result ends with an "As of" line
saying when the data was read. See How answers look.
- Anything that needs a change: "approve this", "split this 50/50", "send the invoice". Ceviche MCP is
read-only. Do it in the app; the answer's Open in Ceviche link takes you there.
- General ledger questions such as journal entries or trial balances. Teams the MCP reads today keep their
books in Ceviche with no general ledger connected, so there are no journal entries to read. Corrections are
recorded as adjustments, and those you can ask about.
- Another team's data. A connection only ever reads your own team.
- The contents of attached files. The MCP lists the file names, never the files.
More in Limits.