Meet BART: an AI agent that drafts, never sends

BART is the AI agent in the BarterMax app. It knows your account and the exchange’s listings, so you can ask about your business in plain words and get a useful answer back. It can also prepare a payment or a charge for you.

What it can’t do is send one. Nothing moves until you confirm. This guide explains what BART does, how it keeps you in control and where its limits are.

What BART does

Answers questions about your account

Ask the questions you’d otherwise answer with a spreadsheet: “What’s my balance and available credit?”, “Why did my balance drop this week?”, “What did I spend on printing this year?” BART works from your own transactions, so the answer is about your business, not businesses in general.

Explains a transaction or a chart

Next to charts and transactions in the app you’ll find ✦ Explain. Press it and BART tells you what you’re looking at: why the balance line dipped, who a charge came from, what a line on your statement means.

Finds members to spend with

Ask “Who can I spend 2,000 credits with on printing?” and BART looks through the exchange’s members and listings and tells you who fits, and why. It draws on the same matching as the Matches in your Marketplace, so the two tell the same story.

Drafts payments and charges

Say “Pay Kestrel Lane Print 450 for the table cards” or “Charge Wool & Willow 300 for the open house” and BART prepares a draft for you to check. You confirm it, or you don’t.

Sends you a weekly recap

Each week BART writes a short recap of your week on the exchange: what you earned, what you spent and what changed.

Why BART drafts and never sends

Money should move because you decided it should. So every payment and charge BART prepares is a draft, and the draft follows four rules:

• A draft is not a transfer. Nothing moves until you confirm.
• It shows you what will happen. A payment draft shows the member, the amount, the memo and what you’ll have available after it.
• It expires. If you don’t confirm a draft, it expires.
• You press Pay or Send charge. BART never does.

A payment, step by step

Here’s how it goes for a caterer with BC 7,480.36 in its trade account and an unused BC 5,000.00 credit line, so BC 12,480.36 available to spend. (The businesses here are fictional examples.)

1. You ask: “Who can I spend 2,000 credits with on printing?”
2. BART answers: Kestrel Lane Print prints menus, flyers and signage, and it needs catering, so it’s a two-way trade.
3. You say: “Pay Kestrel Lane Print 450 for the table cards.”
4. BART drafts the payment: BC 450.00 to Kestrel Lane Print, with your memo, and BC 12,030.36 available after it.
5. You check the amount and press Pay BC 450.00. Only now do the credits move, through the same double-entry ledger as every other payment, and the payment appears in your transactions and on your monthly statement.

If something looks wrong at step 4, you simply don’t confirm. Ask BART for a new draft, or let this one expire.

A charge has one more step

When you confirm a charge that BART drafted, the other member still approves it in their own app before any credits move. A charge they don’t approve expires. So a charge needs two people to say yes: you and the member paying it.

What BART knows, and who sees it

BART works from your own account and the exchange’s listings. Your threads with BART are private to you.

Where BART’s limits are

BART is useful, and it’s software. It can misread a question or get a figure wrong, which is why the app says it plainly under the box where you type to BART: “BART can make mistakes. Check amounts before confirming.”

It also has firm edges:

• BART doesn’t move credits on its own. It drafts; you confirm.
• BART doesn’t negotiate for you. Trades and prices are between you and the other member.
• BART doesn’t replace your Barter Coach. It’s a tool you use, not a person who knows you.

BART and your coach

Your Barter Coach is a real person who knows the exchange. Your coach gets you set up, helps with your first trades and your credit line, and points you to members to spend with. BART answers questions and drafts payments whenever you ask in the app.

Use BART for the quick things: a balance, an explanation, a draft. Talk to your coach about the bigger ones, like what to list, how to price it or how to plan your spending for the year. You have both.

How to ask well

BART does best with the same things a good bookkeeper would want from you.

• Name the member. “Pay Kestrel Lane Print” beats “pay the printer”, especially if you buy from more than one.
• Give the amount and what it’s for. “450 for the table cards” gives BART the amount and the memo in one go, and the memo is what you’ll see on the transaction later.
• Say the period. “This week”, “in September” or “this year” turns a vague question into one with a clear answer.
• Ask why. When a number surprises you, ask BART to explain it before you act on it.

Questions to try

When you first open BART, these are good places to start:

• “What’s my balance and available credit?”
• “Why did my balance drop this week?”
• “Who can I spend 2,000 credits with on printing?”
• “Charge Wool & Willow 300 for the open house”
• “Explain my September statement”

See BART in action on the BART page, or tour every feature of the app. For how the exchange itself works, read how a barter exchange works.