In short
- The “Accounting Documents” agent, currently in preparation, will collect your supplier invoices and supporting documents, read their data, propose account coding and bank reconciliation, then prepare a monthly batch for your accountant.
- It writes nothing in your accounts without your approval, and it never pays. If in any doubt, it stops and asks you.
- In France, since 1 September 2026, every business subject to VAT must be able to receive electronic invoices through an accredited platform. The agent reads these structured invoices. It does not replace the platform.
Time lost at month end
Every month end looks like the last. The accountant chases missing documents. Someone searches the inbox, logs in to supplier portals, finds a receipt at the back of a drawer. On the bank statement, some transactions still have no supporting document.
In France, the electronic invoicing reform will bring part of these flows together. Not all of them, and not straight away:
- SMEs, small businesses and micro-businesses only have to issue electronic invoices from 1 September 2027. Until then, some of your suppliers may keep sending you PDFs or paper;
- the scheme covers transactions between VAT-registered businesses established in France. Invoices from a supplier established outside France are not covered;
- documents that are not invoices (a delivery note, for example) keep circulating however the business chooses.
Take a typical scenario: an SME with 40 employees, a part-time bookkeeper and an accountancy firm. Its invoices arrive through the accredited platform, by email, on several portals and sometimes on paper.
What the agent does: collect, extract, propose
Short answer: yes, an AI agent can prepare the entry of your supplier invoices and the bank reconciliation. It does not approve them in your place.
An AI agent is a program that carries out a specific task, following written rules. The one we are preparing can connect, through their official interfaces (APIs), to the tools you already use: your email, your bank (for example Qonto), your accounting software (for example Pennylane or Odoo), depending on the plan you hold with each. An API is a door provided so that another piece of software can read or deposit data. The agent only receives the rights it needs. On your bank, it only has read access where the tool allows it.
It does four things:
- Collect. For each new document (email, supplier portal, photo taken on a phone, invoice received through the platform), it retrieves and files it.
- Extract. It picks out the supplier, the date, the amount excluding tax, the VAT, the amount including tax and the due date.
- Propose the coding. It suggests the ledger account where the expense should be recorded and the VAT rate, following rules set with your accountant.
- Propose the reconciliation. It matches each bank transaction to its document. A transaction with no supporting document goes onto a list you can consult.
It also spots duplicates. During the transition, the same invoice may arrive through the platform and by email. The French tax administration's practical guide then asks you to compare number, supplier, customer, date, amounts excluding tax, VAT and amounts including tax, to designate a reference invoice, to mark the other copies as copies and to keep a record of the reconciliation. The agent prepares this work. You approve it.
What it never does: write without approval, pay
Two rules with no exception appear in the agent's rulebook.
- No accounting entry without human approval. We set each agent on a four-level autonomy scale: level 0 (it proposes, you do), 1 (it prepares, you approve every action), 2 (it acts alone on safe cases), 3 (it acts alone, under monitoring). For accounting entries, it never goes beyond level 1.
- No payment. The agent never pays an invoice, however small, however regular.
It stops and hands over to you in cases written in advance:
- an illegible or incomplete document;
- an amount or VAT figure it cannot read with certainty;
- an electronic invoice whose structured data does not match the readable version;
- a suspected duplicate;
- an unknown supplier;
- an amount above the threshold you have set.
Every action will be recorded in a log: the document read, the proposal, your decision, who and when, and the agent's version.
Electronic invoices received: reading the structured format without breaking the legal chain
In France, since 1 September 2026, all the businesses concerned must be able to receive electronic invoices through a platform accredited by the tax administration. You choose yours freely (one or several), directly or through your software, your accountant or your bank. The administration points out that a simple PDF sent electronically is not an electronic invoice within the meaning of the reform.
An electronic invoice follows a standard format: UBL, CII (two machine-readable data formats) or a hybrid format that combines a readable image and a data file. Factur-X is a Franco-German hybrid format: a PDF for people and XML data (arranged in standard fields) for automatic processing.
In Belgium, since 1 January 2026 and with limited exceptions, Belgian businesses subject to VAT must exchange structured electronic invoices with one another. They go through the Peppol exchange network, in the Peppol BIS format (that network's invoice template), with this proviso from the FPS Finance: “sauf accord mutuel et respect de la norme EN16931” (unless mutually agreed and in compliance with standard EN16931). Its scope should be checked with your adviser. A PDF by email is no longer enough. Even a business that only sells to private individuals must be able to receive these invoices from its suppliers.
In practice, “not breaking the legal chain” means:
- the agent replaces neither your accredited platform nor the software that links you to the Peppol network. It reads what they have received, through your software;
- it reads the structured data instead of guessing amounts from the image;
- it never modifies a received invoice and never recreates one;
- it sets no status on the platform without a human decision. Rejecting an invoice is a reasoned and final act, provided for example when the invoice is not meant for you. For an incorrect invoice or one that does not match the order, provisional dispute statuses exist. The agent can prepare the reason. The decision stays yours.
An invoice received by email, as a PDF or on paper should not be set aside for that reason alone, the administration's practical guide states, if it matches a real transaction and carries the necessary information. The agent therefore handles both channels side by side, without counting the same invoice twice.
Working with your accountant: the monthly batch
The agent is your tool: we do not keep your books, and it does not replace your accountant. It spares them the hunt for documents.
At the specification stage (the document that describes precisely what the agent will do for you), we will invite your firm to set the rules: accounts to use for each supplier, VAT rates, thresholds, the form of the batch. The batch can be placed in a shared folder or, if your accounting software allows it, directly in that software, awaiting approval.
Each month end, the batch contains:
- the filed documents, with their data;
- the coding and reconciliations that your team has approved;
- the list of transactions still without a supporting document;
- the open questions, that is, the cases where the agent stopped.
The accountant keeps control of the entries and of the year-end closing. Before going live, a shadow trial of a few weeks, of a length set with you, compares what the agent proposes with what your team does. The agent only moves to autonomy level 1 with these measurements and your go-ahead.
On the data side, suppliers are mostly businesses. Expense reports, however, contain employee data: the specification states who can see them and how long they are kept. The agent will run, as you choose, in your cloud account (in a European Union region), on your servers or on a dedicated server with us. Where the AI model processes the content of the documents depends on that model's provider: the specification says where.
Indicators: what you will track each month
Three figures will appear in the supervision dashboard and in the monthly report, both in preparation:
- the rate of documents processed without correction: the share of proposals approved as they stand;
- transactions without a supporting document at month end: those still outstanding when the batch is sent;
- the time saved by the accountant: measured with them, before and after going live.
Other actions, such as filing documents, may move up an autonomy level if these measurements justify it and with your written agreement. Accounting entries stay under systematic approval. Payment stays out of the agent's reach.
Going further
- Typical agents and their pages
- The method: audit, specification, shadow trial, autonomy levels
- Supervision and support
- Data and security: where your agents run
- Request an audit: €490 excl. VAT, deducted from the quote if you sign it within 30 days.