MCP, Aura Flow, and Aura Agents: Which One for Which Job?

Rillet's AI layer, Aura, gives finance teams three ways to put AI to work: Aura Agents, Aura Flow, and MCP. They may look similar from a distance, but they are not the same tool. Matching the right one to the right work is how teams go from "AI is answering our questions” to "AI is closing our books."

Here's how to think about when to reach for each tool. 

The short version

Aura Agents are Rillet's embedded accounting specialists. Pre-trained, domain-specific, and already waiting in the workflows where the work happens.

Aura Flow is your team's automation builder. Describe a process in plain English, set a schedule, and it runs the same way every time, with full visual execution and an audit trail built in.

MCP connects your GL to Claude and the other tools your team already uses. It's how Rillet data travels outside the ERP and into the tools your team already uses to think, plan, and present.

Aura Agents and Aura Flow live inside Rillet, and MCP is what brings Rillet to wherever your team already works, like Claude, BI tools, or Sheets. Each serves a different job. Match the tool to the work, and the automation saves you real hours. Match them right, and the difference compounds every month.

Aura Agents: When the job already has a known shape

Flux analysis. Accruals. Cash reconciliation. Journal entry review. These are the monthly workflows every finance team runs, and they're the ones Rillet has already trained dedicated agents to handle. Each agent knows its domain deeply: the flux agent traces variances down to specific vendors and timing differences, the cash rec agent matches 95%+ of transactions automatically, and the AR and AP agents manage their respective ledgers end to end.

You don't need to build these. They're already embedded in the workflows where the work happens.

Reach for Aura Agents when you are:

• Running one of the core accounting workflows: flux, accruals, cash rec, journal entries, AR, AP, or reporting
• Working inside Rillet and want an agent to handle the domain-specific task in front of you
• Asking a question that routes cleanly to a specialized agent (revenue question → AR agent, variance question → flux agent)
• Scaling your team's capacity on workflows that already have a repeatable shape

Agents are the fastest path to value for work you'd otherwise do manually every month.

Aura Flow: When you want to build your own

Aura Flow is how anyone on your team stands up a custom automation in plain English. Describe what you want, Aura Flow builds it, saves your chart of accounts and dimensions as context, and runs it on your schedule. Same prompt, same output, no drift.

Visual execution is one of the things that makes Aura Flow different from a generic AI tool. You see every step before the flow runs. You see what decisions the agents will make, which data they'll pull, and what the output will look like because nothing executes in a black box. Auditors see exactly what happened and why because every field, dimension, and decision is logged.

Aura Flow ships with pre-built flows the community uses heavily: AR invoicing reminders, cash forecasts, close risk scans, board-ready financial summaries, bad debt analysis, JE batch reallocation, and continuous control scans. Every one of them is editable within your instance, and your team can build new flows from scratch in minutes.

Reach for Aura Flow when you are:

• Building a new automation that your team hasn't run before
• Running a repeatable process on a monthly or quarterly schedule (accruals, flux templates, close checklists)
• Combining insight from multiple parts of Rillet (AR, revenue, cash) into one output
• Building anything that an auditor will later ask about, where visual execution and a full audit trail matter
• Scheduling recurring work so it runs the same way every month

Aura Flow is the builder and the scheduler. A controller or FP&A lead can stand up a new flow on a Tuesday afternoon and have it running on a monthly cadence by Wednesday morning.

MCP: When you want Rillet data where you spend your time

Point Claude at your live Rillet data and ask 'What was revenue by region last quarter?' That's MCP (Model Context Protocol). Pipe data into your BI dashboards or build a lightweight email automation based on a close status. MCP is designed for this: reading live Rillet data and bringing it into the tools your team already uses.

Toggle Rillet on in the Claude Marketplace, and you're connected. There’s no setup or integration project needed, and you maintain the same role-based permissions as Rillet itself.

Reach for MCP when you are:

• An FP&A analyst, CFO, or business partner who needs live financial data without logging into the ERP every day
• Querying Rillet from Claude, BI tools, Excel, or email automations
• Connecting Rillet to the productivity stack where you already spend your day
• Running ad hoc analysis on live data from outside the ERP

Accountants live in Rillet. Analysts, CFOs, and business partners live in Claude, sheets, slides, and dashboards. MCP brings the numbers to where they already work.

A decision guide

TL;DR

If the work has a known accounting shape, and Rillet already ships an agent for it, use Aura Agents. If you want to build something custom, repeatable, and scheduled with visual execution, use Aura Flow. If you want live Rillet data in the tool you're already working in, use MCP.

The teams getting the most out of Rillet use all three, each for what it's best at. Aura Agents handle the known, high-frequency accounting work. Aura Flow builds the automations you dream up and runs them on your schedule. MCP gets the data to where you think.

Start with the work. Pick the tool that fits. If you're already on Rillet, you're a few clicks away. If you're not, start here.