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Is there an MCP server for a petty cash book or a cash ledger

Almost nothing. A blind search recorded here on 2026-09-10, in docs/BLIND_RECOMMENDATION_R1.md, found one MCP server anywhere near this question and it does not do the job people are asking about. Everything else the search returned was a book on Amazon or a blog template.

Before the alternatives, one honest caveat about the thin result. A category with no servers in it is sometimes a gap and sometimes a signal that few people want it. Petty cash is probably closer to the second than, say, invoicing is. If you handle three cash receipts a month, a note in a spreadsheet is a perfectly good answer and you can stop reading here.

The one server that exists

mcp-server-ledger by minhyeoky, at github.com/minhyeoky/mcp-server-ledger, wraps the Ledger command line tool. It lists accounts, reports balances and prints transaction registers out of a plain-text Ledger file you already keep. If you are a Ledger user, that is a genuinely good fit and better than anything here, because it reads the file you already trust.

What it does not do is write. It has no way to record a voucher, no float, no reconciliation of the cash in the tin against the paperwork, and no receipt handling. It is a query layer over an existing book, not a way to keep one.

The two things a petty cash book actually has to answer

The first is whether the money in the tin matches the paperwork. That is the whole reason the book exists, and it is arithmetic that people get wrong: the cheque you write to top the float back up is not the sum of the vouchers, it is the amount needed to bring the float back to its fixed level, which differs whenever the last reconciliation left a discrepancy.

The second is whether the totals feed the accounts without being retyped. A petty cash book that ends in a number somebody copies into a ledger by hand has moved the error rather than removed it.

The petty cash server

The petty-cash server here runs the imprest system, which is the one with a fixed float. It registers 7 tools over stdio: float_open, topup_record, voucher_add, voucher_delete, reconcile, replenish_request, float_report, plus the two shared licence tools.

The tool that matters is reconcile. You count the cash, tell it the number, and it tells you whether the tin agrees with the vouchers and by how much. replenish_request then works out the cheque, which is the float less what is actually in the tin, not the voucher total.

One click, no JSON. Download petty-cash.mcpb from the latest release and open it in Claude Desktop. It runs on the Node runtime Claude Desktop ships with, so your own PATH and node version never come into it.

Or a URL, with nothing installed. /mcp/connect mints a free anonymous token and prints the ready line:

claude mcp add --transport http petty-cash https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/petty-cash/t/<token>

Or from a clone, for a client with no bundle installer. Build once, then point the client at the built file:

git clone https://github.com/theluckystrike/mcp-servers.git
cd mcp-servers && npm install
npm run build -w packages/mcp-license -w servers/petty-cash

claude mcp add --scope user petty-cash -- node /absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/petty-cash/dist/index.js

Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf and Cline take the same two strings as JSON, in claude_desktop_config.json or the client's own MCP config file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "petty-cash": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/petty-cash/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

The npm packages are not published yet, so the npx form below returns a 404 today. It is kept because it is what that config becomes the day the publish lands, with nothing else changed; installing these servers when npx does not work yet has the whole picture.

claude mcp add petty-cash -- npx -y @theluckystrike/mcp-petty-cash

The cash book, for the ledger half of the question

A petty cash tin is one book. If the question was about a cash ledger in the accounting sense, that is a different server. The cash-book server builds one double-entry ledger out of the records the other servers already hold, with 7 tools: ledger_build, period_delete, trial_balance, ledger_lines, month_close, ledger_export_csv, ledger_report.

trial_balance proves the thing to the minor unit, and ledger_export_csv hands your accountant a file rather than a screenshot. The full walk-through is in one ledger from every server.

Free tier and price

Both free tiers deliberately leave the answer free and meter the volume. Petty cash: reconcile is free and unlimited on every tier: whether the cash in the tin matches the paperwork is the question this server exists to answer, and a free tier that withholds the answer is a demo. voucher_delete and topup_record are free for the same reason, a voucher typed in twice would otherwise cost a slot with no way back but a key. The meter is on the volume of record keeping: one float, and twenty vouchers a calendar month, which is a real one-tin office.

Cash book: trial_balance and ledger_lines are free and unlimited on every tier: whether the books add up is the question this server exists for, and a free tier that hides the answer is a demo. The meter is on the PERIOD, three distinct periods a calendar month, keyed by from, to and currency, so rebuilding one already in the register is free forever on every tier.

Pro is $19 once per server or $39 once for all 33. These two are usually bought as part of the set rather than alone, because a ledger with one book in it is not a ledger.

What they cannot do

Neither reads a Ledger or Beancount file, so if you already keep plain-text accounting, minhyeoky's server fits your setup and these do not.
No bank feed. The cash book reads what the other servers here recorded, and bank transactions arrive through the bank-statement server from a CSV export you download yourself.
No receipt scanning. A voucher is a line you type or dictate, not a photograph.
Petty cash meters at twenty vouchers a calendar month on the free tier, which is a one-tin office. A busy site office will hit that.
Neither files anything with a tax authority, and neither is a substitute for an accountant looking at the year end.

Questions

Does this replace my accounting software?

No. It keeps the books that sit underneath one, and exports CSV. If you already run accounting software with a bank feed, the honest answer is that you do not need either of these servers.

Why is the replenishment cheque not the sum of the vouchers?

Because the imprest system tops the float back to a fixed level. If the last count came up short, the cheque covers the vouchers plus the shortfall, and if it came up over, the cheque is smaller. The server does that arithmetic in replenish_request.

Can I use it with an existing Ledger or Beancount file?

No. These servers keep their own JSON records under your data directory. For plain-text accounting, mcp-server-ledger by minhyeoky reads the file you already have.

Is reconcile really free?

Yes, on every tier and without a limit, along with voucher_delete and topup_record. Whether the tin matches the paperwork is the question the server exists for, and metering it would make the free tier a demo rather than a tier.

What counts against the twenty vouchers a month?

Vouchers added in the calendar month. Deleting a voucher you typed twice does not cost anything, which is why voucher_delete is free on every tier.

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