Invoice verification, posting, and reports with AI

Fundamentals & core processes in accounting automation

1. Introduction & Architecture

• Why is automation useful in accounting? What are the advantages, risks, and regulatory requirements?
• Overview of the Make tool: How do triggers, nodes (processing steps), error handling, and retry logic work?
• Integration of systems such as e-mail e.g., IMAP/SMTP), cloud storage (e.g., Google Drive, SharePoint), ERP systems (e.g., DATEV, SAP, Lexware), payment providers (e.g., Stripe, Adyen), webhooks, and APIs (application programming interfaces).

2. Data acquisition & preprocessing

• Use of suitable sources: emails, upload folders, scanners, or portals for your workflows.
• Automatic reading of invoice data such as supplier, IBAN, VAT ID, and items using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
• Integration of validations, e.g., to check mandatory fields, reconcile totals, check IBANs, and avoid duplicates.

Workshop 1 "Automated recording of incoming invoices" with Make
Objective: Convert PDF files into structured data and log them.

3. Classification & account assignment proposal

• Define rules to automatically assign suppliers to the correct accounts (e.g., account 3120) and apply logic based on keywords.
• Use of AI assistance (optional): Claude/GPT for heuristics.

Workshop 2 "Creating automatic posting suggestions"
Objective: Transferring data to an ERP-compatible format (e.g., DATEV or SAP).

4. Data quality, audit, and error handling

• Audit-proof logging by documenting each transformation with a timestamp and hash.
• Correcting errors via quarantine processes and automatic queries to suppliers.
• Overview through daily reports and alerts in case of deviations.

Automation of payments, reports, and regulatory updates

5. Automated payment matching

• Entering bank statements, payment service provider exports.
• Application of various matching strategies: exact match (amount and intended use), fuzzy search (e.g., similar names, ±3 days), and AI-supported heuristics.
• Creation of reconciliation proposals, lists of differences, and automatic dunning process triggers.

Workshop 3 "Automated Payment Matching"

Objective: Automate the reconciliation of incoming payments with open items.

6. Monthly reports & daily e-mail summary

• Automation of key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue, costs, margin, and cash flow.
• Creation of automatic HTML and PDF reports.
• Schedule shipping on a timed basis or on demand, with versioning and target group control.

7. Automated regulatory and stock market updates

• Distribute daily reports on legal and market-relevant developments as a report.
• Sources: Regulatory authorities, legal portals, stock exchange and market news.

Workshop 4 "Morning Compliance Briefing"
Objective: Build an end-to-end workflow for daily compliance updates.

8. Security, compliance, and audit compliance

• How do you create GDPR-compliant workflows? Minimize data, store it securely, and implement deletion concepts.
• Use of secrets management for API keys, rights management, and logging.
• Audit-proof documentation of all changes with immutable logs and versioning.

In our seminars, we explicitly address the data protection requirements for the use of AI in accounting. We explain GDPR-compliant deployment options (EU hosting via Azure, AWS Bedrock, etc.), point out risks such as hallucinations, and provide specific recommendations for operational implementation.