Help centre | Article

Ask Sandy, your assistant

Ask Sandy plain-English questions about your own locum work. Available on Plus.

What it is

Ask Sandy is the assistant built into Sessional. She answers questions about your own locum work, grounded in the data already in your Sessional account and in our help content. She covers both your finances and the day-to-day running of your work, so you can ask in plain English instead of digging through the tax planner, your invoices, or your calendar.

What it can answer well

Money and tax:

Tax set-aside: the figure your own tax planner estimates you should hold back. Sandy quotes the planner's figure only: she does not offer a rule-of-thumb percentage of her own.
Income goals: how many more sessions or shifts you need to hit a target this year, based on your average value for one.
Most profitable work: which organisations have paid you most, by total or by average per session or shift.

The day-to-day:

What needs your attention: a quick summary of overdue and outstanding invoices, pending booking requests, shifts flagged paid short or unpaid, expiring documents, and unread notifications.
Invoices: how many are overdue, how much you are owed, and what is due next.
Sessions and shifts: when your next one is, and how many you have logged.
How Sessional works: invoicing, chasers, workplace links, revalidation, and the rest.

Where to find it

On a computer, Ask Sandy is a link in the bar across the top of every dashboard page. On a phone, tap More and choose Ask Sandy. It opens as its own page.

What it will not do

Note

She gives general information, not regulated advice. For a definitive tax-liability calculation, regulated financial or investment advice, a regulator's decision, or clinical judgement, Sandy will tell you she cannot advise and point you to the right professional or body. That includes whether a particular cost is allowable or deductible: she will not give a yes or a no on a tax rule, and instead points you to HMRC's own guidance on GOV.UK and to your accountant.

She also cannot take actions on your account. She does not create invoices, log shifts, send anything, or change your data. She only answers.

Your conversation is kept in the browser tab, so a reload does not lose it. It goes when you close the tab.

Your data and privacy

Ask Sandy answers using only your own data, never another user's. This dashboard assistant uses Anthropic; the Sandy writing assistant on Reflections is a separate feature that uses OVHcloud in the EU. To generate a reply, your question and a summary of your own figures are sent to our AI provider, Anthropic. Your data is never used to train AI models.

Frequently asked questions

Which plan includes the assistant?

Ask Sandy is a Plus feature. On Basic the link reads Ask Sandy, on Plus and opens Billing.

Is there a usage limit?

Yes. Up to 20 questions an hour, plus a daily fair-use cap for your account that resets at midnight. There is also a daily ceiling across all Sessional users; on the rare day it is reached, Sandy says she is resting for today and is back the next day. The hourly window runs for 60 minutes from your first question in it, not to the top of the clock.

Can I trust the numbers?

The figures come from your own logged sessions or shifts and invoices, annualised by the same engine as the tax planner and earnings page, so the assistant and your dashboard agree. Treat them as planning estimates, not a filed tax return.