Bookkeeping on autopilot, with a hand on the brake.
An SME received invoices by email every day that had to be entered into the bookkeeping by hand. Now a system recognises, checks and books them itself, within limits set by the business owner.
Invoices arrived as attachments, as links or as plain emails. Every invoice had to be opened, retyped or forwarded to the bookkeeping, and then paid. That took time, and paying with the right IBAN and amount proved error-prone. It was also not always clear whether an invoice was paid by direct debit or had to be paid manually.
What was wrong
Invoices in different formats, spread across the mailbox
Manually retyping and forwarding to the bookkeeping
Risk of paying to a wrong IBAN or amount
No overview of what was already booked and paid
Solution
How it works
01
The mailbox is monitored continuously
Every new email is assessed: is this an invoice? Scanned PDFs without a text layer are read with OCR too.
02
Rules per sender
Known senders follow fixed rules. New senders become a proposal; the system never creates a rule on its own.
03
Guardrails for the automatic path
A spending cap, a daily maximum, an emergency brake for anomalies, a check for changed IBANs and an extra check on a supplier's first invoice.
04
Four modes, step by step
Off, shadow (watching only), supervised and full. A higher mode only after an error-free measurement period, and after repeated errors the system steps back by itself.
05
The bookkeeping as a second check
A bank check flags "possibly already paid", and every month a reconciliation compares what was sent with what Moneybird has booked.
06
Notifications with buttons
The business owner receives notifications with the choice Process, Always do this or Ignore, plus a daily overview and a log. The system never pays by itself.
Results
What was measured
2,608
emails read
first archive run, read only
345
senders recognised
from the same run
121
IBANs learned
as a knowledge base for payment checks
~1,028
real invoices as a test set
to test every change in advance
The first run only read and changed nothing. The archive produced about 60 rule proposals, which the business owner reviewed personally.
Guardrails
Secure by design.
The checks are part of the design. That way the system can work independently without you losing control.
Daily maximum and spending cap on the automatic path
Emergency brake on unusual patterns
Checks on changed IBANs and on the first invoice from a supplier
Never paying on its own, never creating rules on its own
In this case, yes, because the business owner works with Moneybird. The approach also works with other packages that offer an integration. In the quick scan we look at your situation.
Does the system pay invoices itself?
No. The system recognises, checks and books, but paying remains a deliberate action by a person. That is a design choice, not a limitation.
What happens with an unknown supplier?
That invoice does not go through automatically. The first invoice from a new supplier always gets an extra check, and the system proposes a rule that the business owner can approve.
In a 45-minute conversation we map out together which tasks you can automate, what it delivers and what you are better off not starting. No obligation, and you keep the outcome.
