Design of an intelligent agent for interpreting financial statements in microenterprises: a Design Science Research approach

Abstract

Microenterprises often face difficulties interpreting financial information derived from accounting reports, despite having access to basic financial statements. This interpretative gap constrains managerial decision-making, particularly in contexts with limited financial expertise. Existing intelligent financial systems tend to emphasize predictive analytics and computational complexity, frequently neglecting interpretability and usability requirements relevant to microenterprise environments. To address this gap, this paper presents the design of an intelligent agent for financial statement interpretation in microenterprises, developed using a Design Science Research approach. The proposed artifact transforms simplified financial data into interpretable, decision-oriented insights through the integration of financial ratio analysis, rule-based reasoning, and contextual aggregation. The design emphasizes transparency, traceability, and human-centered outputs, enabling non-expert users to understand key financial conditions without relying on opaque analytical models. The intelligent agent is demonstrated through an illustrative scenario based on simplified financial statements representative of microenterprise contexts. The results show the internal coherence and feasibility of the proposed design, highlighting how explicit rules and narrative explanations can support financial understanding while maintaining methodological rigor. This study contributes an interpretable intelligent artifact tailored to microenterprise financial interpretation and illustrates the applicability of Design Science Research to a persistent practical problem.