Invoices, receipts, contracts and forms captured, read, coded and routed for approval, with every step logged. Accounts payable automation that prepares the booking; a person approves it.
The problem
Supplier invoices arrive in three inboxes, a shared folder and occasionally on paper. Someone downloads them, types supplier, amount, date and cost centre into the accounting system, guesses the account, forwards the PDF to a manager for approval and chases when it goes quiet. At month end the accountant asks for the ones that fell through.
The same pattern applies to contracts, delivery notes, expense receipts and onboarding forms. It is high-volume, rule-heavy work, and it touches money and personal data, which is exactly why it needs approvals and a trail, not a black box.
What good looks like
- Every document captured from every channel, with a receipt timestamp
- Fields extracted and validated; suspicious ones flagged, not guessed
- Approvals routed by amount and cost centre, with reminders
- A booking-ready record in the accounting system and an audit trail for the auditor
Scope
What we automate
Invoice capture and extraction
Coding suggestions and approval routing
Contract and form classification
Expenses, reminders and reconciliation prep
Supplier invoice, from inbox to approved booking
A demonstration using sample data. An agency with 25 staff receives around 120 supplier invoices a month, mostly by email, and books them in lexoffice through an external accountant.
- An email with a PDF attachment arrives in the invoices mailbox and triggers the workflow. Non-invoice attachments are filed separately.
- An extraction step reads supplier, invoice number, date, net, VAT and gross. The totals are checked arithmetically; the supplier is matched against the master list.
- A duplicate check runs on supplier plus invoice number. Duplicates are parked with a note, not booked twice.
- The account and cost centre are suggested from previous bookings for that supplier. New suppliers get no suggestion and go straight to review.
- The approver for that cost centre and amount band sees the invoice, the extracted fields and the suggestion in one approval view. Approve, correct, or reject with a reason. A reminder follows after two business days.
- Approved records are pushed to lexoffice with the PDF attached. Every step, edit and approval is written to a log the accountant can read.
Credit classification: standard to advanced (two to four credits) depending on document variability. Fits Solo or Team. More on the example workflows page.
Approvals and audit trail
- Nothing is booked or paid without a person. The workflow prepares; approval thresholds by amount and role are yours to set.
- Confidence per field. A blurred total or an unusual VAT rate is flagged rather than accepted.
- Four-eyes where you need it. Two approvers above an amount, or for new suppliers and changed bank details.
- Every action logged with who, when and what changed, exportable for your auditor or tax adviser.
Systems and data protection
We work with the interfaces of DATEV (including DATEV Unternehmen online and export formats used by your tax adviser), lexoffice, sevDesk, Xero, QuickBooks and common ERPs, plus Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and document stores such as SharePoint and Google Drive. Names indicate technical compatibility, not partnership.
Financial documents contain personal and commercially sensitive data. We minimise what passes through AI steps, prefer EU-hosted processing where you require it, set retention rules for intermediate copies and document the processing for your records. Where a DPA or a specialist review is needed, we say so before the build. See security and governance.
What we measure
- Minutes of handling time per document
- Days from receipt to approval
- Extraction accuracy per field on a monthly sample
- Duplicate and late-payment incidents
- Share of documents booked without manual correction
Which package fits
Because money and personal data are involved, we rarely start finance work with a bare pilot. Solo (€2,750) covers invoice capture with approval for one entity and one accounting system. Team (€6,900) adds coding suggestions, multi-step approvals, contract classification and a monitoring view. Multi-entity or high-variability document sets are Business scope and usually start with the audit. Prices excl. VAT and usage; see pricing.
Questions about document and finance automation
How accurate is invoice extraction?
It depends on your documents. Clean digital PDFs from regular suppliers extract very reliably; photographed or unusual layouts less so. We measure it on your own sample before launch, report it per field and set the thresholds so that anything uncertain is reviewed. We do not quote a blanket accuracy figure.
Will this replace our accountant or tax adviser?
No. It removes the typing and chasing before the booking. Your accountant receives cleaner, earlier, better-documented records and keeps the professional judgement. Many clients involve their tax adviser in the design so the export matches what they need.
Can the workflow pay invoices automatically?
We do not build unattended payment execution. The workflow can prepare a payment proposal or batch file for a person to release in your bank or accounting system. Payment release stays with an authorised person.
Is this suitable for German accounting requirements?
We design for the practical requirements we see in DACH work: unchanged originals retained, a traceable process log and exports your tax adviser can use. Whether a specific setup meets your legal retention and documentation obligations is for your tax adviser to confirm; we prepare the documentation to make that review straightforward.