Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - LocalMind. Your local AI assistant.

Answers to the questions we hear most from prospects before they buy. If yours isn’t here, ask us directly — we’d rather explain it up front than have you find out after signing.

Buying & What’s Included
What to Expect Day to Day
How It Works
Security, Privacy & Compliance
Pricing & Process
Still Have Questions?

1. Buying & What’s Included

1.1 What am I actually buying?

Four things, bundled together:

The hardware — a physical appliance (or a private server you already own, if you prefer that route) sized to your business, with the GPU and storage needed to run inference on-site.
Tailor-made software — the LocalMind core, plus the vertical pack that matches your profession (Accountant, Legal, or Healthcare pack), configured for how your business actually works, not a generic default.
Your company’s data, cleaned and ingested — we take your existing documents, records, and correspondence and get them indexed and usable inside the system before you ever touch it. You don’t start from an empty box.
Training and 30 days of Hypercare — hands-on onboarding for you and your team, plus one month of direct, prioritized post-sale support while you settle into daily use.

This is a complete, working system on day one — not a box of parts and a manual.

1.2 What is LocalMind not?

This is just as important as what it is:

It does not replace your accountant, bookkeeper, or accounting software. LocalMind drafts, extracts, and organizes — a licensed professional still reviews and signs off. It sits alongside your existing accounting software and workflow; it doesn’t try to become it.
It is not a professional financial advisor. It won’t tell you what to invest in, how to structure a transaction, or make judgment calls that require a license and legal accountability. Those calls stay with your accountant, auditor, or financial advisor.
It is not a healthcare advisor. It doesn’t diagnose, recommend treatment, or make clinical decisions. For the Healthcare pack specifically, it handles documentation, scheduling, and administrative workflow — clinical judgment stays entirely with licensed medical staff.
It is not a substitute for legal advice, for the Legal pack — same logic. It organizes and drafts; a lawyer reviews and decides.

In short: LocalMind handles the repetitive, structured work around your profession. The professional judgment that requires your license, your training, and your accountability stays exactly where it already is — with you.

1.3 Why is data cleaning and ingestion included rather than something I do myself?

Because a system that isn’t fed your real data on day one just sits there being generic. We’ve found that “self-serve setup” is where most business software actually fails to get adopted — people run out of time, do it halfway, and the tool never earns its keep. Including ingestion in the package means the system is already useful in week one, not week twelve.

1.4 What happens after the 30 days of Hypercare end?

You move to standard support (response times and terms depend on your plan — see pricing). Hypercare is intentionally front-loaded because that’s when questions are most frequent and adoption habits get set. Most clients need far less hand-holding by day 30 than by day 3.

2. What to Expect Day to Day

The sections above describe what you’re buying. This section describes what actually happens once it’s running — the concrete, practical things LocalMind does for you every day. If you’re trying to picture how this changes your Tuesday afternoon rather than how it’s licensed, this is the chapter to read.

2.1 Communications: WhatsApp, email, and messages

Everything gets ingested automatically. WhatsApp conversations, emails, and other connected messaging channels are pulled in continuously, not batch-uploaded by hand.
Everything gets sorted. Messages are automatically linked to the right client or contact record, so a conversation with a client three weeks ago is filed against that client, not lost in a generic inbox.
Everything is recoverable by asking. If you ask “what did we agree with [client] about the deadline?”, the system searches the ingested history and answers from what was actually said — not a guess.
AI-assisted drafting on incoming messages. When a new message arrives, LocalMind can prepare a draft reply for you to review and send — it doesn’t send anything on its own. You stay the one hitting “send.”

2.2 Customers: history, summaries, and lookups

“Give me the summary on [client]” pulls together their contact details, recent interactions across channels, open items, and relevant documents into one readable brief — instead of you digging through email, WhatsApp, and a folder separately.
Full interaction history on demand. Ask when you last spoke to a client, what was discussed, or what was promised, and get an answer grounded in the actual ingested conversation, not a vague recollection.
Cross-channel view. A client who emails on Monday and WhatsApps on Wednesday shows up as one continuous history, not two disconnected threads.

2.3 Talking to the system directly

You can just ask it things, in normal language, the way you’d ask a colleague — “how many new clients this month,” “what’s outstanding on invoice X,” “summarize my week.” No dashboard-hunting required for a quick answer.
Voice or text, depending on your setup — some deployments support speaking to the system directly rather than typing.
It tells you when it doesn’t know, rather than guessing. If something isn’t in your data, it says so instead of inventing an answer.

2.4 Expenses: the drop-folder workflow

You drop a receipt or invoice photo/PDF into a watched folder — that’s the entire manual step.
LocalMind renames it to a consistent, searchable naming convention.
It sorts it into the right category and client/project if applicable.
It ingests the data — amounts, dates, vendor, VAT — into your records.
It feeds the statistics engine automatically, so that expense shows up in your reporting and dashboard without any further action from you.
You still review and approve before anything is finalized in your books — see what LocalMind is not.

2.5 Revenue and invoices

Same drop-and-forget pattern as expenses: sales invoices dropped into a folder (or pulled from your invoicing tool, where integrated) get read, categorized, and reconciled automatically.
Revenue figures update your live reporting in the background — you don’t re-enter anything by hand to see it reflected.
Outstanding/overdue invoices can be surfaced proactively, not just when you think to check.

2.6 Contacts and client documents

Drop a new contact’s documents in, and LocalMind builds out the client record — contact details, associated documents, and a starting history — automatically linked for future lookups.
Documents associated with a client (contracts, ID copies, correspondence, prior work) are indexed and searchable by content, not just by filename.
Ask “what documents do we have on file for [client]?” and get an actual list, not a folder to browse manually.

2.7 VAT and annual income tax preparation

VAT filings, prepared automatically. LocalMind tracks your invoices and deductible expenses as they’re ingested and keeps a running, always-current VAT position — output VAT owed, input VAT recoverable, and the net figure due for the period — instead of that only being visible once a quarter when someone compiles it.
Annual income tax preparation, built the same way. Using the year’s ingested revenue and expenses, LocalMind prepares a draft picture of your taxable result, taking into account the specifics that actually move the number: deductible professional expenses, applicable allowances, and the categorization rules for your business type.
Deductibility handled at the point of ingestion, not at filing time. When an expense is dropped into the folder (see 2.4), it’s categorized with its deductibility treatment already applied — so by the time you ask for a VAT or tax overview, that judgment isn’t being made retroactively under deadline pressure.
24/7 independent overview. You can ask for your current VAT position or a projected annual tax picture at any time — not just when your accountant has bandwidth to pull one together. This gives you a live read on where the business stands, so you’re never waiting until a quarterly or annual close to find out.
Built to reduce accountant back-and-forth, not accountant involvement. A clean, pre-organized VAT and tax picture means less time your accountant spends chasing receipts and reconciling categories — but the filing itself, and the judgment calls specific to your situation, still go through them.

You still review and approve before anything is finalized in your books — see what LocalMind is not.

2.8 Forecasting and the live dashboard

Ask for a forecast — revenue trend, expected cash position, seasonal patterns — and get a projection built from your actual historical data, not a generic template.
A live dashboard gives you an always-current view of the business: revenue, expenses, client activity, outstanding items — without waiting for a monthly report to be compiled by hand.
Both the dashboard and forecasting are built on the same underlying data as the chat answers, so the numbers you see and the numbers you’re told in conversation always agree.

2.9 Reminders and recurring tasks

Ask to be reminded about a one-off thing (“remind me to follow up with [client] next week”) or set up something recurring (“remind me every month before the VAT deadline”).
Reminders can be tied to real business events already in your data — an invoice going overdue, a recurring filing deadline — not just a manual calendar entry you have to remember to make.

2.10 What it polls automatically vs. what stays manual

To make the automation concrete, here’s the practical split:

Polled and ingested automatically, once connected:

Email (new messages, relevant threads)
Instant messaging (e.g. WhatsApp)
Calendar events
A designated expenses drop-folder
A designated invoices/revenue drop-folder (or a connected invoicing tool)

Requires you to drop something in or ask a question:

New contact documents (you drop them in; the system organizes and links them)
Ad-hoc questions and lookups (“summarize this client,” “what’s my forecast”)
Reminders you want set (recurring or one-off)

Always requires your review before it’s final:

Any drafted reply, before it sends
Any categorization or bookkeeping entry, before it’s filed
Any report or figure used for an official filing

This last point isn’t a limitation bolted on — it’s the design. LocalMind compresses the hours of manual sorting, drafting, and data entry. The judgment calls stay yours, on purpose — see what LocalMind is not for why.

3. How It Works

3.1 Where does my data actually live?

On the hardware appliance in your building, or on a private server under a contract you control. Not on a shared cloud AI vendor’s infrastructure. This is the core architectural choice behind LocalMind — see our post on why we built it on-premises for the full reasoning.

3.2 Does anything ever get sent to the cloud?

No, not for the sensitive processing. Document understanding, extraction, and drafting all run locally on your hardware. If a future feature genuinely required an external call, it would be opt-in and clearly disclosed — never silent, never default-on for anything containing client or patient data.

3.3 What happens if the internet goes down?

Local inference doesn’t depend on an internet connection to function — it’s running on your own hardware. Internet is only needed for things like software updates or optional integrations, not for day-to-day document processing.

3.4 Can it work with my existing accounting/practice software?

That depends on the specific software and is scoped during the discovery phase before purchase. LocalMind is built to sit alongside your existing tools and feed structured output into them, not to force you onto a new platform.

3.5 Will it work on my existing computers, or do I need the appliance?

Both paths exist. The dedicated appliance is the simplest option if you don’t already have suitable hardware. If you have a capable private server, we can deploy there instead — the hardware requirement is about having a GPU with enough capacity, not about buying from us specifically. We’ll tell you honestly if what you have is enough.

4. Security, Privacy & Compliance

4.1 Is this GDPR compliant?

The architecture is built specifically to make GDPR compliance simpler: because sensitive data doesn’t leave your premises, the cross-border transfer questions that complicate cloud AI compliance largely don’t arise. That said, compliance is a shared responsibility — LocalMind removes a major structural risk, but your overall GDPR posture (consent, retention policy, access controls, etc.) is still something your business owns.

4.2 Does this satisfy professional secrecy rules for accountants/lawyers/healthcare?

It’s built with those rules specifically in mind — that’s the entire premise of the vertical packs. But we’re not your regulator or your professional body, so we won’t tell you it’s automatically compliant with every rule in every jurisdiction. We’ll walk through your specific obligations during discovery and tell you plainly if something needs a workaround or isn’t a fit.

4.3 Who can see my data once it’s ingested?

Your staff, according to whatever access controls you set. Not us, as a matter of routine operation — we don’t have standing access to your live data after deployment. Support access, if ever needed, is something you’d explicitly grant for a specific session.

4.4 What happens to my data if I stop being a client?

That’s addressed in the contract terms at signing — the short version is your data stays yours, on your hardware, and we don’t retain a copy on our side beyond what’s needed for billing/support records.

5. Pricing & Process

5.1 How is this priced?

There’s a hardware cost (typically appliance cost, with a markup rule that covers sourcing and configuration), a services/setup fee for the tailor-made configuration and data ingestion, and depending on tier, an ongoing support component. Exact numbers depend on your size and which vertical pack you need — that’s scoped in a paid discovery session, which is credited toward the project if you proceed.

5.2 What’s the discovery session and why does it cost anything?

It’s a short, focused engagement where we assess your actual setup — data volume, existing software, compliance needs, hardware situation — before quoting a real number instead of a generic one. It’s a small fixed fee, credited back if you move forward, so we’re not doing unpaid consulting for prospects who were never going to buy, while still being fair to the ones who do.

5.3 What’s the deposit and payment structure?

Typically full payment for hardware upfront plus a partial deposit on services, with the remainder due around delivery/go-live. Exact terms are confirmed in your proposal — we don’t like surprises any more than you do.

5.4 How long does setup take, from signing to go-live?

It depends on data volume and complexity, but the pattern is: hardware provisioning and data ingestion happen in parallel, training happens once the system is populated with your real data, and Hypercare starts from go-live. We’ll give you a specific timeline once discovery is done — we don’t quote a generic number that doesn’t reflect your actual situation.

5.5 Can I try it before committing?

The discovery session is effectively that — you see a scoped assessment of your specific case, not a generic demo, before deciding. We’d rather you go in with clear eyes than sell you on a demo that doesn’t reflect your real documents.

6. Still Have Questions?

If your question isn’t answered here, ask us directly. We’d rather spend ten minutes explaining something clearly now than have you find out the hard way after signing.

Table of Contents