Format your accounting manuscript
to journal style. In minutes.

How it works

A focused pipeline. Each step is auditable.

1. Upload your manuscript A standard Word .docx. Author names, firm names, and acknowledgement lines are detected and shown to you for review before anything is sent to the AI service.
2. Pick the target journal Nineteen accounting journals supported in v1. The base citation style (APA 7, Vancouver, Chicago author-date, or Elsevier-Harvard) is auto-selected per journal but you can override.
3. The Formatter does the work Headings, references, citations, page numbers, and journal-specific structural sections are applied. UK/US spelling is normalized to the journal's preferred variant. DOIs are verified against CrossRef. A deterministic style audit runs on the output.
4. Download up to four artifacts A reformatted .docx matched to the journal's style guide; a separate anonymized .docx with the title page stripped, ready for double-blind review; and a copy-editing report in HTML and Word showing every change applied and every item still needing your input. Items are marked DONE or TO DO; TO DOs that would block submission (missing required sections, citations without references, etc.) are tagged BLOCKER. Address them in your source and re-run — your second and third runs are for verifying you've cleared everything before submitting.

How this compares to a copy-editing service

Traditional academic copy-editing is thorough but expensive, slow, and typically charges per revision. Pre-submission checker tools (like Paperpal Preflight, free for AAA journals) flag issues but don't reformat your manuscript. Paper Formatter delivers a journal-formatted .docx — not a checklist of things to fix — plus the structured report.

Paper Formatter is not a substitute for content review. It does layout, citations, references, and copy-editing — it does not rewrite prose, generate analysis, or judge argumentation. Your authorial voice stays yours.

Pricing

One simple price. Three full formatting runs per PIN, no subscription, no hidden charges.

Buying for a department or research group? Email kjds@pm.me to discuss bulk arrangements.

Frequently asked questions

Will it rewrite my prose?

No. Paper Formatter handles layout, citations, references, headings, and copy-editing notes. It does not rewrite arguments, generate analysis, or change your authorial voice. If a sentence is unclear, it flags it as a TO DO for you to revise — it doesn't replace your wording.

What does "three full runs" mean?

One PIN gets you three full formatting runs. You'd typically use the second and third runs on the same paper after revising in response to the report — so your final manuscript reflects the report being addressed, not just the original draft. Runs do not expire on a clock, but unused runs are tied to the PIN and not refundable.

What happens to my manuscript after a run?

Both the reformatted .docx and the report are deleted when your browser session ends. Download them before closing the tab. The AI service (Anthropic's Claude API) retains submitted content for approximately 30 days for trust-and-safety review and does not use it for model training.

Is my work safe to run through this if I'm under embargo or NDA?

If your manuscript is under publisher embargo or covered by an NDA that prohibits sharing with third parties, do not use this service. Author-identifier scrubbing reduces some risks but does not change the fact that the manuscript content is sent to a US-based AI provider. In those situations, a trusted human copy-editor — in-house, or contracted under an NDA you can verify — is the appropriate choice.

When is a human copy-editor the better choice?

Three honest reasons. First, for prose-judgment work — questioning argumentation, critiquing methodology, or rephrasing clichéd or ambiguous wording. Paper Formatter deliberately stays out of your authorial voice; that's a scope choice, not a capability gap. Second, for citation-content validation — we can verify a DOI exists and that a reference is well-formed, but we can't reliably check whether a cited source actually says what your paper claims it says (paywalls, accuracy concerns). Third, for embargoed or NDA-covered work that can't be sent to any third-party AI service. Plus the obvious one: a journal whose style we don't yet support. Paper Formatter handles the mechanical layer — layout, references, citations, structural compliance, and deterministic audits — and leaves judgment to you and any human reviewer you bring in. The two are complementary, not competing.

Isn't Paperpal Preflight free for AAA journals?

Yes — Paperpal Preflight is free for authors submitting to American Accounting Association journals (TAR, JAR, AJPT, etc.), and it's a useful pre-submission checker. The two tools solve different problems: Paperpal checks your manuscript (integrity, language, plagiarism, AI detection) and gives you a list of issues to fix. Paper Formatter reformats your manuscript to the journal's style guide and produces a submission-ready .docx, plus the structured report. Paperpal hands you a checklist; Paper Formatter hands you a finished paper. Many authors will find both useful — they're complementary, not competing.

Why these specific journals?

v1 focuses on accounting. Each supported journal has its style guide loaded into the system, so the formatting is journal-specific, not generic. The journal list will grow based on user demand.

What if my target journal isn't on the list?

Email kjds@pm.me with the journal name and a link to its style guide. New journal additions are typically a one-day turnaround.

Refunds?

No refunds. Instead, this site shows you a complete anonymized sample report and screenshots so you can judge fit before paying.

Who built this?

Paper Formatter was built from experience. After a paper I co-authored was accepted for publication, the manual effort to make it "publication-ready" was overwhelming — that's when I built and tested this app. By day, I'm a data analytics instructor at Conestoga College (Ontario, Canada) with a research background and co-author credit on five published journal papers, most in accounting. Paper Formatter is built in R, powered by Anthropic's Claude API.