Clio CLI Skill

Audience note: for power users and CI/automation. Load this skill only when you're scripting from a terminal, building shell pipelines, or debugging from clio --json output. For day-to-day accounting inside Claude Desktop / Cowork, the MCP tools cover the common flows without dropping to the CLI.

You are working with Clio (jaz-clio), the CLI for the Jaz accounting platform. 74 command groups, 13 calculators, 12 job playbooks (jaz-jobs skill), 387 tools. Also fully compatible with Juan Accounting (same API, same endpoints).

When to Use This Skill

• Running or composing clio commands from the terminal
• Building shell scripts or CI pipelines that automate Jaz workflows
• Debugging authentication issues (wrong org, missing key, env var conflicts)
• Understanding --json output structure for piping into jq or downstream tools
• Paginating large result sets (--all, --limit, --offset, --max-rows)
• Chaining multi-step accounting workflows (create -> finalize -> pay -> verify)
• Answering "what commands are available?" or "how do I do X from the CLI?"

Skill Relationships

Use jaz-cli when running commands. Use jaz-api when debugging API errors or understanding field mappings.

OAuth sign-in (default)

Run clio auth login on the user's intended machine and guide browser sign-in. With --json, stdout returns organization choices and verification status; the sign-in URL goes to stderr. If there is one organization, it is selected automatically. Otherwise show the choices and run clio auth select <resourceId> --json. Use --org oauth:<resourceId> on each scoped CLI command. Local MCP shares the session and refreshes tokens automatically; hosted MCP uses its host's OAuth session. auth organizations --json refreshes accessible organizations. auth logout removes only local OAuth credentials.

Never put tokens in chat or workspace files. Keep the login process alive until the callback completes. Browser callbacks must reach the computer running Jaz; use the user's persistent environment or hosted OAuth when an isolated sandbox cannot receive them. The key-profile commands below remain optional. Use --org oauth:<resourceId> for OAuth or --org <label> for a saved key profile, even when JAZ_API_KEY is inherited.

Auth Precedence

Explicit --org wins over inherited credentials. Do not combine --api-key and --org. If both JAZ_API_KEY and JAZ_ORG are set, select explicitly with --org or remove one environment override.

Key access: Use --org <label> to select a saved API-key profile. Without --org, JAZ_API_KEY remains the default when set. An unknown explicit selection fails without falling back to the environment key.

Auth subcommands:

clio auth add <key>          # Validate key + save profile (auto-slugifies org name)
clio auth add <key> --as prod-sg   # Save with custom label
clio auth switch <label>     # Set active profile
clio auth list               # Show all saved profiles
clio auth whoami             # Show current org + auth source
clio auth remove <label>     # Delete a profile
clio auth clear              # Remove all profiles and the OAuth sign-in
clio auth shell-init         # Print shell exports (for eval)
clio auth unpin              # Unset JAZ_ORG from current shell

Output Formats

`--json` is the contract; `--format` is an extra. Every command that talks to the API accepts --json (all 398 of them), so a script never needs to special-case a command. --format exists only where a MULTI-ROW rendering is meaningful: 31/31 search and 33/39 list leaves have it, and get has it on 0 of 33, because CSV or YAML of a single record is not a table. clio bills get --format json is therefore an unknown option, by design; use --json.

This rule is enforced by surface-honesty.test.ts, which also guarantees the flags are HONEST: 58 leaves once declared --format and never read it, so --format csv printed a human table and exited 0. Those declarations were deleted rather than left lying.

JSON envelope for list commands:

{ "totalElements": 142, "totalPages": 2, "truncated": false, "data": [...] }

When truncated: true, a _meta object appears with fetchedRows and maxRows.

Single-record commands (get, create) output the raw object in --json mode.

Stderr vs stdout: Resolution feedback (e.g., "Contact: Acme Corp (abc1234-...)") goes to stderr. Only data goes to stdout. This means clio invoices list --json | jq . works cleanly.

Entity Resolution

Flags like --contact, --account, --bank-account, and --tax-profile accept either a UUID or a human-readable name. Resolution order:

1. UUID passthrough: if the value matches UUID format, use it directly (no API call)
2. Server-side search: contacts use name-contains search; accounts/tax-profiles fetch all (orgs have 50-200 accounts)
3. Exact match: case-insensitive match on billingName/name/code
4. Fuzzy match: score >= 0.7 auto-resolves; multiple close matches throw with candidates
5. Error with suggestions: shows available entities (up to 10) for the user to choose

Examples:

clio invoices create --contact "Acme"           # Fuzzy-resolves to "Acme Corp Pte Ltd"
clio invoices create --contact abc12345-...     # UUID passthrough, no API call
clio cash-in create --account "Bank - SGD"      # Resolves by account name
clio cash-in create --account "1000"            # Resolves by account code

IMPORTANT for agents: Fuzzy matching works for --contact and top-level --account flags. It does NOT work inside --lines JSON arrays. Line item accountResourceId must be a UUID or exact account name.

Resolve a name to a resourceId without writing anything:

clio resolve account "Operating Expense" --json   # → {"resourceId":"...","displayName":"..."}
clio resolve bank "DBS Current" --json
clio resolve contact "Acme" --json
clio resolve tax-profile "Standard GST" --json
clio resolve report-template "Board P&L" --json

clio resolve <account|contact|bank|tax-profile|report-template> <name> runs the same resolver the write flags use (UUID→exact→fuzzy) and exits non-zero with candidates on an ambiguous/no match. Prefer it over accounts search … | jq when you just need the id: search is fuzzy and paginated (an exact name can be buried on a polluted org), whereas resolve fetches the full set and prefers an exact hit.

Pagination

All list/search commands support pagination. Two modes:

Single-page mode (default):

clio invoices list                    # First 100 results
clio invoices list --limit 50         # First 50 results
clio invoices list --offset 2         # Page 3 (0-indexed)

Auto-paginate mode (--all):

clio invoices list --all              # Fetch all pages (concurrent, progress on stderr)
clio invoices list --all --max-rows 500   # Cap at 500 rows
clio invoices list --all --json       # Full dataset as JSON (progress suppressed)

Rules:

• --all and --offset cannot be combined (throws error)
• Default `--max-rows` is 1,000 (lowered from 10,000 in 2026-04; fan-out lookups like attachment counts in bills draft list could spiral on busy accounts). Pass --max-rows N explicitly when you need more.
• `--max-rows` now caps the FETCH, not just the slice (early-stop in paginatedFetch). Previously it pulled every page then sliced: multi-minute hangs on large datasets.
• Table display caps at 500 rows regardless (use --format json for full output)
• Progress display on stderr is TTY-aware (suppressed for --json and pipes)
• `bills draft list` / `invoices draft list` / `customer-credit-notes draft list` / `supplier-credit-notes draft list` fan out one attachment lookup per draft (5 in flight). On accounts with hundreds of drafts, this is slow even with --max-rows. Pass --max-rows 10 for spot checks; expect 30s+ wall time at higher counts.

Common Flags

Search Query Expressions (--query)

14 entity search commands accept --query <expression> for human-readable filtering using Jaz search operators. Supported: invoices, bills, customer-credit-notes, supplier-credit-notes, journals, cashflow, bank records, contacts, items, capsules, fixed-assets, subscriptions (scheduled), accounts, tax-profiles.

# Status
clio invoices search --query "status:unpaid"
clio invoices search --query "status:unpaid AND $500+"
clio invoices search --query "(status:paid OR status:partial) AND date:this month"

# Amounts: bare $, ranges, suffixes (k=1k, m=1M, b=1B)
clio invoices search --query '$100-500'
clio invoices search --query 'amount:>2m'
clio invoices search --query 'amount:4k-5k'

# Absolute value: for mixed-sign fields (cashflow, journals)
clio cashflow search --query 'abs:1000+'

# Dates
clio invoices search --query "date:-30d"            # last 30 days
clio invoices search --query "due:overdue"          # past due + unpaid/partial
clio invoices search --query "date:jan-mar 2025"
clio invoices search --query "date:this quarter"
clio invoices search --query "submitted:last week"
clio invoices search --query "lastpayment:-7d"

# String fields
clio invoices search --query "customer:acme AND ref:INV-*"
clio invoices search --query 'ref:/INV-\d{8}/'     # regex
clio invoices search --query '=ref:INV-20260314'   # exact match (= prefix)
clio contacts search --query "customer:yes"
clio contacts search --query 'name:"Sakura Trading"'

# Blank / empty
clio invoices search --query "ref:blank"
clio invoices search --query "tag:!blank"

# Negation (never use - for negation)
clio invoices search --query "!status:void"
clio invoices search --query "NOT (status:paid OR status:void)"

# Multi-value (comma = OR)
clio invoices search --query "status:unpaid,partial"
clio invoices search --query "currency:SGD,USD,EUR"

# Combine --query with named flags (named flags win on conflict)
clio invoices search --query "date:this year" --status UNPAID

# Inline sort
clio invoices search --query "status:unpaid sort:amount:desc" --limit 10

Gotchas:

• Bad enum values (e.g. --query "status:BADVALUE") return empty results silently, no error.
• Unknown field names return an error (query_not_understood).
• Unsupported entities have no --query flag (background-jobs, tags, contact-groups, etc.).
• Never use - for negation; it means negative amount (e.g. $-500 = amount is -500). Use ! or NOT.

See references/search-reference.md in the jaz-api skill for the full syntax spec.

Body Input

Create/update commands accept payloads three ways (priority order):

1. --input <file>: read JSON from a file
2. Stdin pipe: echo '{"contact":...}' | clio invoices create
3. CLI flags: --contact "Acme" --date 2026-01-15 --lines '[...]'

When --input or stdin provides a body, CLI flags are ignored.

Bulk-upsert: FLAT vs NESTED variants

For invoices and bills, there are TWO bulk-upsert commands per entity:

• FLAT (clio invoices bulk-upsert / clio bills bulk-upsert): ONE line per row. Each row carries itemDescription + totalAmount + invoiceAccountResourceId (or billAccountResourceId) at the top level. Use for CSV-like imports where each row = one transaction with a single line.
• NESTED (clio invoices bulk-upsert-line-items / clio bills bulk-upsert-line-items): multi-line per row. Each row carries nested lineItems[] with per-line itemDescription + quantity + unitPrice + accountResourceId. Use when each transaction needs multiple lines.

Sending lineItems[] to the FLAT endpoint silently ignores them and creates a $0 transaction. Sending the FLAT shape to the NESTED endpoint creates an empty lineItems array and 422s. Match the variant to your data shape.

Command Quick Reference

Transactions: invoices, bills, customer-credit-notes, supplier-credit-notes, journals, cash-in, cash-out, cash-transfer, payments, unapplied-payments, cashflow

Contacts & Configuration: contacts, contact-groups, accounts, items, tags, currencies, currency-rates, tax-profiles, custom-fields, bookmarks, nano-classifiers

Bank & Reconciliation: bank (accounts, get, records, add-records, import, auto-recon), bank-rules (a rule needs --search-filter or auto-reconciliation never suggests it; on update, omitting the flag keeps the stored condition and --clear-search-filter removes it)

Employee Claims & Settings: claims (lifecycle + create + from-attachment + convert + payout), employees, claim-types, claim-profiles, posting-rules

Fixed Assets & Inventory: fixed-assets (alias: fa), inventory (alias: inv)

Subscriptions & Schedulers: subscriptions (alias: subs), schedulers

Reports & Exports: reports (16 report types), exports

AI & Automation: magic (create, status), quick-fix, ledger-find-fix (preview, apply), capsules

Judgment journal: jots (create, recall, dispose). Every write command also takes --jot "<one line>" to log the judgment behind that specific write inline, no extra call (see --jot in Common Flags).

Calculators: calc (loan, lease, depreciation, prepaid-expense, deferred-revenue, fx-reval, ecl, provision, fixed-deposit, asset-disposal, accrued-expense, leave-accrual, dividend)

Jobs: jobs (bank-recon match, payment-run outstanding, document-collection ingest, statutory-filing sg-cs, statutory-filing sg-ca). The job playbooks themselves are in the jaz-jobs skill.

Organization: org (info), org-users, auth

Introspection: schema (list groups, inspect tools, show params), health (version, connectivity, environment checks)

Utilities: help-center (alias: hc), context, mcp, serve, init, versions, update

See references/command-catalog.md for the full catalog with subcommands and flags.

Offline vs Online

Offline commands (no auth needed): calc, jobs bank-recon match, jobs statutory-filing sg-cs / sg-ca, help-center, init, versions, update

Everything else requires authentication (API key).

Dashboard Deep Links

clio navigate (alias nav) builds dashboard URLs for the user ("open this invoice", "take me to the P&L"). Offline: no API key, no request.

clio navigate --query "profit"           # discover the key
clio navigate reports.profit-and-loss    # build the link
clio navigate sales.modal.view-sale --resource-id <id>

Only the URL goes to stdout, so clio nav <key> | pbcopy copies a link and nothing else. Never hand-construct a dashboard URL and never guess a key; routes are not guessable and a wrong link is worse than no link. An unknown key comes back with near-matches; follow them rather than improvising.

The same operation is navigate on the MCP surface. Full usage rules live in the jaz-api skill under "Dashboard Deep Links"; the flag reference is in references/command-catalog.md.

Error Handling

CLI commands exit with standard codes:

• Exit 0: success
• Exit 1: your input needs changing (missing flags, malformed id, over-limit or duplicate batch, blank required text, unknown enum value). Also a business refusal on some commands, e.g. approvals.
• Exit 2: the request was fine and the API refused or failed, OR an internal defect
• Exit 3: auth (invalid, missing or unresolvable key)

Branch on the `code` in the `--json` error envelope, not on the number alone. Exit 1 is VALIDATION_ERROR for bad input but is also used by commands that report a refusal (there the outcome is on stdout, not stderr). Exit 2 splits into API_ERROR (the server refused; a different request may work) and UNKNOWN_ERROR (our defect; an identical retry fails identically). The code is the signal for whether retrying with different input can help.

Error messages go to stderr. When --json is set, the error is still on stderr so stdout stays parseable. Common errors:

# Missing required flag
Error: missing required option(s): --contact, --lines

# Fuzzy resolution ambiguity
Multiple contacts match "Acme":
  Acme Corp Pte Ltd (92%)
  Acme Holdings (87%)
Be more specific, or use the full billingName.

# Auth not configured
No Jaz authentication configured. Run `clio auth login`, or use optional API-key access.

# API validation error (422)
API error 422: lineItems[0].accountResourceId is required when saveAsDraft is false

Draft Validation

Transaction create commands (invoices, bills, customer-credit-notes, supplier-credit-notes, journals) perform client-side draft validation before hitting the API. The validation:

1. Checks required fields are present (contact, date, at least one line item)
2. Sanitizes line items (strips unknown fields, normalizes dates)
3. Prints a draft report showing what will be created
4. When --finalize is set, validates that every line item has accountResourceId

This catches mistakes before the API call, saving round-trip time and providing clearer error messages.

Calculated Schedules (calculate, capsule, post)

There is no one-shot recipe command. A loan, lease, prepaid, deferred revenue, accrual, ECL, provision, fixed deposit, disposal or dividend is three steps:

1. Calculate (offline): clio calc <type> ... --json returns the schedule and, when --start-date is given, a blueprint: the capsule type and name plus dated steps with journal lines. It posts nothing.
2. Create the capsule: clio capsules types to find the type id (clio capsules create-type --name <name> if it is missing), then clio capsules create --type <typeId> --title <title>.
3. Post each step with clio journals create / clio bills create / clio invoices create / clio cash-in create / clio cash-out create, passing a JSON body via --input that includes capsuleResourceId. A fixed amount repeating every period can be one clio schedulers create-journal.

clio calc loan --principal 100000 --rate 5 --term 60 --start-date 2026-01-01 --json > loan.json
clio capsules types --json
clio capsules create --type <typeId> --title "Bank loan 2026" --json
clio journals create --input step-2.json --json   # body includes capsuleResourceId

clio calc fx-reval is verification only: Jaz revalues foreign-currency balances at period end, so do not post its result.

Tips

1. Pipe JSON to jq: clio invoices list --json | jq '.data[] | {ref: .reference, amount: .totalAmount}'
2. Export to CSV: clio contacts list --all --format csv > contacts.csv
3. Multi-org scripts: clio invoices list --org acme-sg --json && clio invoices list --org acme-ph --json
4. Draft-then-finalize: The CLI defaults to saving as draft (overrides the API default of saveAsDraft: false). Use --finalize to create a finalized transaction immediately. Note: cash-in, cash-out and cash-transfer have no draft state and so take no --finalize; they always post ACTIVE.
5. Idempotent creates: Use --input with the same JSON to get consistent results. The API dedup guards catch duplicate contacts, items, and accounts.
6. Check before bulk ops: Always preview with --json | jq length before piping IDs into quick-fix. To find & fix (recode, retag, re-date) records found by a condition, across record types, clio ledger-find-fix preview lists what would change and why anything is excluded, and clio ledger-find-fix apply -- <previewId> runs exactly that, once.
7. Offline calculators for exploration: clio calc commands need no auth -- use them to explore scenarios before posting anything.
8. Help center for guidance: clio hc "how to reconcile" searches the full Jaz help center locally (hybrid: embeddings + keyword).

See references/common-workflows.md for end-to-end multi-command patterns.

Agent Gotchas (Top 5)

1. Create returns only {resourceId}. Always get afterward for full data.
2. Line-item accounts don't fuzzy-resolve. Use UUID or exact name.
3. Cash entries finalize immediately. Unlike invoices which default to draft.
4. --offset is page number (0-indexed), not row count. Exceptions, where --offset is a ROW offset (next page = offset + limit): purchase-items list/search, currency-rates list, claims payouts and reports generate general-ledger. Each command's --offset help says which it is, and --all pages both kinds correctly.
5. Explicit organization selection wins. --org uses the selected OAuth organization or saved key profile even when JAZ_API_KEY is set.

See references/agent-gotchas.md for the full list of 19 critical gotchas. See references/output-shapes.md for --json output structures. See references/error-recovery.md for 30+ error patterns with fixes.

See Also

• See references/field-guide.md for field mapping and CLI-specific gotchas
• jaz-recipes: 16 IFRS-compliant transaction recipes with calculators and capsules
• jaz-jobs: 12 accounting job playbooks (month-end close, bank recon, GST/VAT filing, etc.)
• jaz-conversion: Data migration workflows from Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, MYOB, and Excel