AI for Accounting: Tools, Examples and Tips

AI for accounting is the fastest way to get the receipt stack off your desk. It is the Monday-morning scene every bookkeeper knows: a full inbox of supplier invoices, a bank statement that needs matching to open items, three missing receipts nobody can find, and a payment reminder that should have gone out last week. Most of that work is not hard. It is just repetitive, and it never stops.

This guide shows what AI for accounting actually does, which tools are worth knowing, where each one fits, and how to start without ripping out the software you already use. No hype, no promises of a desk that runs itself - just what changes on Monday.

What AI for Accounting Is

AI for accounting is software that reads financial documents, understands what they mean, and prepares the bookkeeping work so a person only has to check and approve it. Instead of typing invoice data into your system by hand, the AI captures the fields, suggests the account and cost centre, matches payments to open items, and flags anything that does not add up.

It is not a single product. It ranges from AI features built into accounting software, through tools that automate accounts payable, to an AI employee that works across your inbox and chat and does the task directly in the programs you already run.

How It Works with Superkind

Superkind is the AI employee for your team. You write to Superkind in Outlook, Gmail, Microsoft Teams, Slack or the Superkind web app, the same way you would message a colleague. Superkind is hosted in Europe, GDPR compliant and connects to 1,500+ integrations, so it does the task in your tools - DATEV, lexoffice, Excel, SharePoint - and asks you before anything goes out.

1. 1

   You write the task

   Forward an invoice from Outlook, or write in Teams: “Book the invoice from Moller.” No form, no new screen to learn. You ask in plain language.

2. 2

   Superkind does it in your system

   It captures the invoice, proposes the account assignment from your own rules and the Company Brain (your customers, suppliers, prices and processes), and prepares the posting in DATEV or lexoffice - exactly where your accounting already lives.

3. 3

   It asks for approval

   Before anything is booked or paid, Superkind shows you the result and waits for Approve or Reject. A rule like “Invoices over EUR 10,000 need sign-off from management” routes the approval to the right person.

4. 4

   It becomes a routine

   What you explain once keeps running. “Every Friday, send me the list of missing receipts by supplier.” Every task makes Superkind smarter, and that knowledge is never lost, even when someone leaves.

From the First Task to Your Own App

Superkind grows with your accounting in four stages. You do not have to plan all of them on day one - each one builds on the last. See how this looks for a whole finance team on the AI accountant page.

1. 1

   Ready in minutes

   Sign up for free, forward your first supplier invoice by email or in Teams, and watch Superkind book it.

2. 2

   Tasks become routines

   Explain it once and booking incoming invoices runs as a routine, with Superkind asking for approval before anything is posted.

3. 3

   Learns from day one

   Every booking teaches Superkind your accounts, cost centres and suppliers, and this Company Brain is never lost, even when people leave.

4. 4

   When it gets more complex, you do not start over

   Build your own month-end close app on top of what Superkind already knows - your own Super App, built yourself or together with us. It all belongs to you.

10 AI Tools for Accounting at a Glance

The ten tools below cover different parts of the job. Some are full accounting suites with AI built in, some automate accounts payable, some pull in and read invoices, and some manage company spend. Superkind sits across all of it as the AI employee that does the task in whichever system you use.

The 10 Tools in Detail

1. Superkind

Superkind is one AI employee that works wherever your team already works: Outlook and Gmail, Microsoft Teams, Slack and the web app. For accounting, it books invoices, matches bank payments, writes payment reminders, finds missing receipts and builds the weekly report - doing the task inside DATEV, lexoffice or Excel rather than asking you to switch to yet another tool.

• Works in your programs - it does the task in DATEV, lexoffice, Excel, your banking export and SharePoint, not in a separate window you have to keep in sync.
• Asks before anything goes out - Approve or Reject before a booking is posted or a reminder is sent, with rules that route big items to the right person.
• Company Brain and rules - it remembers your suppliers, prices and processes and applies your account-assignment rules, so the knowledge stays even when people leave.
• Routines and custom apps - explain a task once and it runs on schedule; when it grows, build custom solutions and apps on the platform, with 1,500+ integrations.

Good fit for:

• Teams that want one assistant for the whole accounting routine, not a separate tool per task
• Companies that want to keep DATEV, lexoffice or Excel and add AI on top
• Bookkeepers who want to ask in plain language from Outlook or Teams
• Anyone who needs an approval step and an audit trail before postings go live

2. DATEV

DATEV is the standard accounting platform for German companies and tax advisory firms, and it has steadily added AI to its services. Its Automatisierungsservice Bank uses AI to turn bank transactions into posting proposals based on a client’s own booking history, and its receipt services read electronic documents and recognise the business partner and the transaction.¹

• AI booking proposals - the bank service marks items as certain, uncertain or incomplete and can auto-book the certain ones.¹
• Receipt recognition - reads e-documents directly and runs OCR on paper, matching supplier master data.
• Learns from history - proposals are built from the client’s past bookings in the DATEV data centre.¹
• Deep ecosystem - connects to the tax advisor and the wider DATEV world most German firms already use.

Good fit for:

• Companies and firms already running DATEV
• Setups with a tax advisor in the DATEV ecosystem
• High-volume bank reconciliation
• Teams that want AI without leaving their core platform

3. Lexware Office (lexoffice)

Lexware Office, formerly lexoffice, is cloud accounting aimed at small companies and the self-employed. It captures receipts with OCR, categorises them, assigns them to the matching bank transaction and learns from the categories you choose to make future suggestions.²

• Receipt capture - OCR reads uploaded or photographed receipts and files them centrally.²
• Category learning - suggestions get more personal as you confirm categories over time.
• Bank matching - receipts are assigned to the matching bank transaction.
• Mobile app - capture receipts with a smartphone on the go.

Good fit for:

• Small companies and freelancers
• Teams that want simple cloud bookkeeping
• Users who capture receipts on the move
• Businesses with straightforward posting patterns

4. sevDesk

sevDesk is another German cloud accounting tool for small companies. It recognises receipts, suggests the booking category and matches payments to invoices during bank reconciliation. The AI features sit in the paid bookkeeping tiers rather than the free plan.³

• Receipt recognition - OCR assigns prices, accounts and receipt numbers.³
• Booking proposals - AI-based suggestions with receipt matching.
• Bank reconciliation - suggests which payment fits which invoice for you to confirm.
• Mobile capture - photograph a receipt or forward it by email and the category is proposed.

Good fit for:

• Small companies that want a quick start
• Teams that forward receipts by email or app
• Businesses that want booking and invoicing in one place
• Users who confirm suggestions rather than build postings by hand

5. Candis

Candis is a Berlin-based accounts payable platform. Its AI extracts invoice data, checks invoices against the German VAT rules, and suggests accounts, cost centres and approvers - but it makes suggestions only and does not post on its own. Every assignment is reviewed before it is transferred to the accounting system, and data is stored on servers in Germany.⁴

• AI data extraction - reads invoice fields and improves with use.⁴
• Account assignment - proposes G/L accounts, cost centres, approvers and posting text.
• Approval workflows - a central invoice inbox with custom approval chains.
• DATEV export - transfers reviewed postings and supports e-invoices.

Good fit for:

• Teams with high incoming-invoice volume
• Companies that need a clear approval chain
• Finance teams exporting to DATEV
• Businesses that want data hosted in Germany

6. BuchhaltungsButler

BuchhaltungsButler uses OCR and AI to automate bookkeeping. It recognises receipts, books known cases automatically, and matches receipts to bank transactions, with self-learning suggestions that improve over time. Reviewers note that suggestions can still be wrong and need checking.⁵

• Auto-booking - known cases are booked automatically while you keep oversight.⁵
• OCR capture - receipts arrive via email, upload or direct import.
• Bank matching - assigns receipts to transactions and creates posting records.
• Self-learning - suggestions adapt to your recurring documents.

Good fit for:

• Companies booking high volumes of recurring documents
• Teams that import several bank and card accounts
• Businesses that want automatic matching of receipts to payments
• Users comfortable reviewing auto-booking suggestions

7. Finmatics

Finmatics is an AI bookkeeping tool built mainly for tax advisory firms and larger finance teams. It captures documents, proposes postings from the firm’s own booking history, splits mixed and batch invoices, and connects deeply with DATEV and SAP. Data is hosted in Europe.⁶

• Document capture - reads incoming and outgoing invoices plus cash and bank records.⁶
• Booking proposals - a high share of invoices can run largely straight through.
• Batch splitting - divides mixed-tax-rate and batch documents by content.
• DATEV and SAP - integrates without custom interface work.

Good fit for:

• Tax advisory firms processing many clients
• Larger finance teams with high document volume
• Setups that need deep DATEV or SAP integration
• Firms that want European hosting

8. GetMyInvoices

GetMyInvoices focuses on getting invoices in. It logs into online supplier portals, retrieves documents automatically, reads them with OCR, and supports structured e-invoices such as ZUGFeRD and XRechnung. It then exports to DATEV, sevDesk, Lexware and other systems.⁷

• Portal retrieval - pulls invoices from thousands of online portals on a schedule.⁷
• OCR with learning - extracts invoice fields and improves from corrections.
• Email monitoring - scans inboxes for attachments and reads them.
• Export - hands documents to DATEV, sevDesk, Lexware and others.

Good fit for:

• Companies chasing invoices across many portals
• Teams that want a central document archive
• Businesses preparing documents for a tax advisor
• Setups that feed another accounting tool

9. Klippa

Klippa SpendControl is a spend management platform with strong AI-based OCR. It extracts invoice fields such as supplier, amounts, VAT and IBAN, runs approval workflows, checks for duplicate invoices and validates IBANs, and acts as a certified Peppol access point for e-invoicing.⁸

• AI OCR - reads invoice and receipt fields from email, upload or app.⁸
• Approval workflows - multi-level authorisation by amount or department.
• Fraud and duplicate checks - flags duplicate documents and validates IBANs.
• E-invoicing - certified Peppol access point with accounting integrations.

Good fit for:

• Teams that need robust capture and controls
• Companies with strict approval requirements
• Businesses worried about duplicate and fraudulent invoices
• International setups using Peppol

10. Pleo

Pleo is a spend management tool built around company cards. It captures receipts automatically, reminds employees to snap a photo at the point of purchase, fetches online receipts straight from Gmail and Outlook, categorises spend, and exports to accounting systems for reconciliation.⁹

• Company cards - physical and virtual cards tied to spend rules.
• Receipt fetch - pulls online purchase receipts from the inbox automatically.⁹
• Auto-categorisation - assigns categories or accounts from past entries.
• Accounting export - one-click export to common accounting systems.

Good fit for:

• Companies managing employee spend and cards
• Teams tired of chasing paper receipts
• Businesses that want spend visibility in real time
• Setups that export expense data to accounting

Typical Use Cases

The same handful of tasks eat most of an accounting team’s week. These are the ones where AI makes the biggest, most immediate difference.

Booking incoming invoices

The AI reads the supplier invoice, proposes the account, cost centre and tax key, and prepares the posting. With Superkind you forward the invoice from Outlook and it books it in DATEV or lexoffice after your approval. The repetitive typing disappears; the judgement call stays with you.

Matching bank payments to open items

Reconciling the bank statement against open invoices is slow by hand. AI suggests which payment matches which invoice and flags the mismatches. You confirm the clear ones in seconds and spend your time only on the exceptions that actually need a human.

Finding missing receipts

Before the monthly close, someone always hunts for the receipts that never arrived. An AI employee can check which documents are missing and list them by supplier, then chase them. In Superkind this becomes a routine: “Every Friday, send me the missing receipts for the month.”

Writing payment reminders

Overdue invoices slip because nobody has time to chase them. AI drafts the payment reminder from the open-item list and the customer history, and sends it after your approval - or escalates according to your dunning rules. The cash comes in sooner without the awkward manual follow-up.

Collecting invoices from portals and inboxes

Supplier invoices live in dozens of portals and inboxes. Tools like GetMyInvoices retrieve them automatically, and an AI employee can file the attachments from your mailbox into the right folder in SharePoint. Nothing gets lost, and the close starts with a complete set of documents.

Building the monthly reporting pack

Revenue reports and the reporting pack usually mean copying numbers between the accounting system and Excel. AI can pull the figures, build the report and have it ready before the CFO asks. Set it as a routine and the weekly or monthly report simply arrives.

Benefits of AI for Accounting

The point of AI in accounting is not to remove people. It is to take the mechanical work off their plate so the skilled part gets the attention.

Less manual typing

Capturing invoice data, keying postings and matching payments by hand is the single biggest time sink in bookkeeping. AI prepares the work so your team reviews and approves instead of typing from scratch.

Fewer errors

Manual entry produces typos, wrong accounts and missed items. AI reads the source document consistently and flags what does not fit, so mistakes are caught before they reach the close rather than after.

A faster month-end close

When invoices are booked as they arrive, payments are matched continuously and missing receipts are chased all month, the close stops being a scramble. The books are closer to ready before the deadline.

Knowledge that stays

When a bookkeeper leaves, their knowledge of which supplier books to which account usually leaves with them. Superkind keeps this in the Company Brain and applies it through rules, so the next person inherits a system that already knows the business.

Control and an audit trail

Good AI accounting keeps a human in the loop: it proposes, you approve, and every action is logged. You get the speed of automation with the oversight that bookkeeping and the tax advisor require.

Ready for e-invoicing

Since 1 January 2025, German B2B companies must be able to receive electronic invoices in the EN 16931 format.¹⁰ Structured e-invoices are machine-readable, so AI tools read the fields directly - turning a compliance obligation into faster, cleaner capture.

Data Protection and EU Hosting

Invoices, bank statements and payroll-related receipts carry personal data about suppliers, customers and employees, so where an AI tool processes them matters as much as what it does. These are the facts for Superkind:

Superkind uses AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and Google, processed in Europe. For the other tools in this guide, the table above shows what each vendor states; where it says “check with vendor”, ask for the hosting location and the DPA before you connect your books.

6 Tips for Getting Started with AI in Accounting

1. Start with one repetitive task

Do not try to automate the whole close at once. Pick the single most repetitive job - booking incoming invoices is the usual choice - and get it working end to end first. One solid win builds more trust than five half-finished experiments.

2. Keep the software you already use

You do not need to replace DATEV, lexoffice or Excel. Choose AI that works on top of your existing systems, so the team keeps its familiar tools and nothing has to be migrated. Superkind does the task inside the programs you already run.

3. Keep approval on the things that matter

Let AI prepare the work, but keep a human sign-off before money moves or a reminder goes out. Set a clear threshold - for example, approval required above a certain invoice amount - so routine items flow and exceptions get reviewed.

4. Write down your rules

AI is only as good as the rules it follows. Capture the ones your team already knows - which supplier books to which account, who signs off large invoices, when a reminder escalates - so the AI applies them consistently and the knowledge stops living only in one person’s head.

5. Sort out data protection before the first booking

Before you connect a tool to your books, sign the data processing agreement (for Superkind it is in the Trust Center), confirm the data is processed in Europe and decide who can see which documents. Under Article 4 of the EU AI Act¹¹, companies using AI must also make sure their staff have enough AI literacy, so give the team a short briefing on what the AI does and where they approve.

6. Turn the win into a routine

Once a task works, schedule it. “Every Friday, list the missing receipts.” “Every month, build the revenue report.” The value of AI in accounting compounds when tasks you explained once keep running without you asking again.

Conclusion

AI for accounting has moved from promise to practice. The receipt capture, the account proposals, the bank matching and the chasing of missing documents can all run with a person checking rather than typing. The right tool depends on who does the work: an accounting suite with AI, an AP platform, an invoice-capture tool, or one AI employee across all of it.

The simplest way to see what changes on Monday is to hand over one real task. Forward your next supplier invoice to Superkind in Outlook or Teams, let it book the invoice in DATEV, lexoffice or Excel through its 1,500+ integrations, approve the booking, and watch it become a routine. Start for free, or book a demo to see it run in your own systems.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Articles

• The Best AI Tools for Accounting and Bookkeeping in the German Mittelstand
• How to Automate Invoice Booking with AI: Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Reconcile Bank Payments with AI: Step-by-Step Guide
• The AI Employee for Month-End Close: Reconciliations and the Reporting Pack

Henri Jung

Co-founder of Superkind, the AI employee teams write to in Outlook, Teams and Slack. Henri helps companies, from small teams to the Mittelstand, hand their routine work to AI - without new tools, consultants or an in-house AI team.