Every Indian CA practice already runs on WhatsApp, whether or not anyone decided it should. Clients send documents there, ask "filed na?" there, and expect a reply there. We have written before about why running a practice on your personal WhatsApp quietly stops scaling: documents lost in the scroll, a status nobody can see, follow-ups typed by hand, and no record you can stand behind. The honest difficulty is that clients are not going to stop reaching for WhatsApp. So the useful question is not how to move them off it, but how to make the channel they already use safe.
Iris is our answer to that question. It is a WhatsApp assistant that confirms who is messaging before it shares anything, then answers the routine status questions from the portal, so the convenience of WhatsApp stops coming at the cost of a record.
What Iris is
Iris is the FirmsNest assistant for your firm’s clients. A client messages on WhatsApp, and Iris replies in plain language. It is the front desk: it greets the client, checks their file, and tells them where things stand, or passes them to you when a person is needed.
Iris answers on a WhatsApp Business number operated by FirmsNest (linked to FirmsNest Business), connected through the Meta WhatsApp Cloud API or Twilio. It is a managed channel, not a number your firm owns or sets up. The safety is in how it is managed, not whose number it is: Iris verifies each sender and binds them to a single firm before it shares anything, so a client only ever sees their own firm’s information, and one firm’s conversations can never reach another’s. Iris is opt-in.
Verify, answer, hand off
Iris does three things, in that order.
- It verifies the client first. Before Iris shares anything, it confirms that the sender is a real client of your firm and matches them to their file. Someone who is not a client of your practice cannot coax a status out of it, because there is nothing to bind them to.
- It answers from the portal. Once the client is verified, Iris answers the questions that otherwise land in your inbox: where the engagement stands, which documents are still pending, whether a payment has come in, and whether a return has been filed. Every answer is pulled live from the portal, so it reflects what your workspace actually shows. Iris surfaces the record; it does not compute anything, file anything, or offer advice.
- It hands off to you. When the client wants a person, or asks something outside what Iris should answer, it hands off. The conversation appears in your firm’s Messages inbox, you reply from the console, and Iris steps back while you are on the thread. It resumes once you have resolved the matter, or after about an hour of quiet, so it never talks over you.
Managed, isolated, opt-in, redacted
Because Iris touches client conversations, the guardrails matter as much as the feature. Four of them are worth stating plainly.
- It runs in India. The model behind Iris is India-resident, on Sarvam, the same sovereign AI that powers the rest of FirmsNest. Your clients’ conversations are not shipped abroad to be read.
- The logs are redacted. Conversation records are stored with sensitive identifiers stripped out. A raw PAN, Aadhaar or bank number is not kept in the message stores.
- It is opt-in. Iris is switched on deliberately, per firm, on a number your firm controls. Nothing turns on by surprise.
- One firm can never see another. Each firm’s WhatsApp channel is sealed to that firm alone. One firm’s Iris can never read another firm’s clients or conversations, and that isolation is enforced in the database, not left to application code to remember.
Lipik and Iris, back office and front desk
FirmsNest now has two assistants, and it is worth being clear about which does what. Lipik is the back office: it lives inside your admin workspace, reads the documents your firm already holds, extracts the figures and drafts working papers for your review. It is for your team, and your clients never see it. Iris is the front desk: it lives on WhatsApp, faces your clients, and answers the status questions that would otherwise interrupt your day. One prepares the work; the other handles the "any update?".
They share a spine. Both run on Sarvam, India-sovereign AI; neither is trained on your firm’s data; and neither gives professional advice or acts on its own. Lipik drafts for you to check and sign; Iris reports what the portal already says and hands the rest to you.
Where it fits, and how to get it
Iris does not change how you do the work. You still compute and file wherever you do today, in Winman, Computax, KDK, or the income-tax and GST portals. What Iris changes is the front of the practice: the steady stream of "filed na?" and "any update?" that arrives on WhatsApp and, until now, could only be answered by you, one message at a time. It is not a tax, audit or legal adviser, and it never files or computes. It verifies, answers from the record, and hands off.
We are rolling Iris out firm by firm, rather than flipping it on for everyone at once. If you would like your practice in an early group, tell us, and we will set it up for you.