Ask stub is the assistant built into stub. Ask it something the way you would ask your bookkeeper, like "who owes me money?", and it answers from your live books. Or ask it to do the work: draft an invoice, categorise a batch of transactions, or put together a summary of the month.
Note: Ask stub is on every plan, the free Sneaky Side Hustle included. The work it does uses actions from your plan's monthly allowance. See Actions and your plan, below.
Open Ask stub
- The bar at the bottom of the screen. Type in the Ask anything... box and press Enter. The chat opens as soon as you send.
- The command palette. Press ⌘K (Mac) or Ctrl K (Windows) and choose Ask stub. You can also type your question straight into the palette and pick Ask stub "…" to send it as a new chat.
- The round button next to the navigation pill. It appears on full-screen pages, such as an invoice you are editing, where the bar is hidden.
Press Esc to close the chat. You can pick it up again from where you left off.
Tip: Ask stub knows which page you are on. With an invoice, bill, customer, supplier or product open, you can say "this invoice" or "this customer" and it knows which one you mean.
What to ask
- "Who owes me money right now?"
- "What did I spend on fuel last quarter?"
- "Show me this month's expenses by category."
- "Draft an invoice for Acme for twelve hours of consulting."
- "Why is my bank balance different from stub?"
What a reply looks like
Replies appear as they are written. The answer builds up word by word, so you don't wait for the whole thing. While Ask stub works, a line under your message shows what it is doing, such as "Looking up your invoices…", with a timer and a count of the steps taken so far. If the timer is moving, it is still working, not stuck. Bigger jobs, like going through a few hundred transactions, can take a few minutes.
Some answers come as a chart or a table. When a picture answers the question better than a sentence, Ask stub draws one: a bar or line chart of income over the last six months, or a table of expenses by category. You can ask for one too: "chart my sales by month this year" or "put that in a table".
Records it mentions are linked. When a reply names an invoice, customer, transaction or employee, the name is a link. Rest your mouse on it to see the key details, or click it to open the record.
When the reply is done, the steps fold into a single line, such as "6 tools used". Click it to see exactly what Ask stub looked at.
When Ask stub needs you
- It asks before it changes things. Ask stub first shows you a list of what it is about to do, such as the transactions it wants to categorise. Untick anything you don't want, then click Confirm.
- It asks when something is unclear. If your request could mean more than one thing, it asks a quick question with buttons to choose from. You can also type your own answer.
- It checks in on long jobs. After ten minutes on one request, Ask stub tells you how far it got and asks whether to carry on. Click Carry on or Stop.
If you move on to something else while it works, a notification tells you when a chat has finished, has a question for you, or needs a look.
Stop, add to or retry a request
- Stop: while Ask stub is working, the send button becomes Stop. It stops at the next step, and anything it has already written stays in the chat.
- Add more: you can keep typing while it works. Your messages wait under Queued and go as soon as it finishes. Remove one before then if you change your mind.
- Try again: if a reply fails or you stopped it, click Try again to run your last message again.
A very long chat eventually fills up. When it does, click Start a new chat and your message comes with you.
Add a file
Click the paperclip to attach a file, such as a receipt, a statement or a spreadsheet, or drag it onto the open chat. Each message can carry up to 6 MB in total.
Your chats
Click the chats button next to the bar to see your recent chats, or New to start a fresh one. A blue dot marks a chat with something new in it. To delete a chat, open its menu and click Delete. This can't be undone.
How far back your chats are kept depends on your plan: one month on Sneaky Side Hustle, three on Steady Startup, six on Growing Business and twelve on Established Entrepreneur. Chats belong to the business they were started in.
Under each reply you can rate it with a thumbs up or down, which helps us improve Ask stub, or use Copy message to paste the answer somewhere else.
Talk to a person
Ask stub can't help with everything, and sometimes you just want a person. Ask it, with something like "can I talk to someone?", and it opens a chat with the stub support team with your question already filled in. Nothing needs retyping.
You can also open the support chat yourself any time from Support at the bottom of the navigation. A dot there means the team has replied.
Actions and your plan
The work Ask stub does uses actions from your plan's monthly allowance.
| Plan | Actions a month |
|---|---|
| Sneaky Side Hustle | 100 |
| Steady Startup | 5 000 |
| Growing Business | 8 000 |
| Established Entrepreneur | 15 000 |
Your usage shows in the navigation once you've used most of the month's actions, and Ask stub warns you at 80%. Settings → Usage has the full breakdown.
If you run out, automation is paused: Ask stub can't do work for you until your allowance resets or you top up. Anything you do yourself in stub keeps working as normal. People who manage billing can click Top up to buy a bundle of actions. A top-up is only used once your plan's actions run out, and it doesn't expire.
Note: Ask stub and MCP are not the same thing. MCP connects an assistant you already use, like Claude or ChatGPT, to your books, and it doesn't use actions. See Connect an AI assistant with MCP.