Invoice flow
Supplier invoices are fetched from the portals on a schedule, every invoice line is read and checked, and the entries wait as drafts in your accounting system for your bookkeeper to approve. Nothing is booked or paid without a person. It is a setup: a fixed scope at a fixed price, agreed after the AI access review.
This is for you if
- Some suppliers never send the invoice, so someone signs in to each portal every month to fetch it.
- Someone reads every invoice and types the lines into the accounting system.
- Your bookkeeper enters one line at a time instead of approving a batch and looking at the exceptions.
What you leave with
- The result
- Invoices that arrive as drafts for your bookkeeper. The bookkeeper reviews the flagged invoices and the drafts, and books them in the accounting system they already use. The code and the invoices stay in your own cloud.
- Fetching runs on its own
- Fetching from the portals repeats and is well defined, so it runs on its own on your schedule and is monitored. When a run fails, it stops and you get an alert.
- Checking runs on its own
- Every invoice line is read and checked against your rules: totals, VAT, known supplier. An invoice that fails a check goes to a person, with the reason.
- The agent prepares, you approve
- The entries are prepared as drafts in your accounting system, each linked to its invoice. The bookkeeper approves them there. The setup can never book.
What we do, what you do
| We | You |
|---|---|
| Go through your supplier portals with you. Many suppliers email the invoice if you ask; for the rest, we set up a scheduled run per portal. | List the suppliers whose invoices sit behind a login, and check their terms of use, as some do not allow automated sign-in. |
| Set the checks each invoice must pass from your rules. | Tell us your rules: which suppliers you know, which VAT rates apply, what counts as right. |
| Prepare the entries as drafts in your accounting system, each with its invoice as the source. | Your bookkeeper reviews the drafts and books them, as today. |
| Build and maintain it in your own cloud. Gathena's agents do most of the building, and every change waits for approval. | Someone with admin rights approves changes and receives the alert when a run fails. |
Worth knowing
The site shows each part on its own. The portal guide shows how fetching on a schedule could be built in Azure. The invoice reader case shows the reading and checking: our own tool, run on real invoices in production. The DuffBeauty case shows the drafts: an accounting agent prepares entries in e-conomic, and the external bookkeeper approves them. In the setup, we connect the three for your suppliers and your accounting system.
Your questions
- Which accounting systems does it work with?
- The drafts go in through the accounting system's API or its import format. On this site, the drafts go into e-conomic. In the AI access review we check how your accounting system takes drafts, before the scope and the price are fixed.
- What if an invoice is unclear?
- Nothing guesses. An invoice that fails a check, such as lines that do not add up to the total, is flagged with the reason and goes to your bookkeeper. When a portal page looks different from what the run expects, the run stops, saves a screenshot and alerts you.
- Does anything get paid or booked automatically?
- No. The setup writes drafts only; it can never book and it never pays. Your bookkeeper books the drafts, and whoever pays the bills pays them in the bank, as today.
- What do we need to provide?
- The list of suppliers, your bookkeeping rules, and a login for each portal. Where the portal allows it, the run gets its own user. The person who holds the login types it straight into your cloud's secret store (Key Vault in Azure, Secret Manager in Google Cloud), so it never passes through chat, email or code. Someone with admin rights approves changes.
- What does it cost?
- The price is set in the written plan from the AI access review, for your suppliers and your accounting system. You pay a fixed price for the result, never for the hours our agents work; ongoing work is a fixed monthly fee.