How to Automate Invoice Booking with AI: Step-by-Step Guide

If you want to automate invoice booking with AI, start where the invoices already land: in the inbox. Monday, 8:15. Sabine opens the shared invoice mailbox and finds PDFs from Möller, from Kern Stahlbau, from the phone provider and from the cleaning company. For each one she types invoice number, date, net amount and VAT into the accounting software, picks the account and cost centre, and checks whether the invoice was already booked last week. By ten o’clock she has done what a colleague could have prepared for her. This guide shows you how to hand exactly that part to an AI employee, step by step, without losing control over a single booking.

What does it mean to automate invoice booking with AI?

Automating invoice booking with AI means that an AI reads every incoming invoice, checks it against your rules and prepares the booking record (supplier, amounts, VAT, account, cost centre, tax code) in your accounting software, while a person approves it before it is posted. The AI does the typing, searching and comparing. The booking decision stays with your team or your tax advisor.

The difference to classic OCR software: an AI employee does not stop at reading. It knows that Möller always goes to the same account, that Kern invoices need Sabine’s approval and that a missing delivery means asking for a credit note.

How it works with Superkind

Superkind is the AI employee for your team: you write to Superkind by email (Outlook or Gmail), in Microsoft Teams, in Slack or in the Superkind web app, like you would write to a colleague, and Superkind does the task in your programs.

1. 1

   You forward the invoice

   Forward the supplier’s email to Superkind or write in Teams or Slack: “Book the invoice from Möller.”

2. 2

   Superkind prepares the booking in your system

   It reads the invoice, checks for duplicates, applies your rules (account, cost centre, approver) and prepares the booking in DATEV, Lexware Office, sevDesk or SAP Business One.

3. 3

   Superkind asks for approval

   Before anything is transferred or booked, the approver gets the proposal with Approve / Reject, in the channel where they work.

4. 4

   Done, and next time it is a routine

   Superkind remembers the rule. The next invoice from Möller follows the same path, and new invoices can be collected from the inbox every morning.

Everything Superkind learns along the way (suppliers, accounts, approvers, exceptions) goes into your company knowledge, the Company Brain. It stays when people change roles or leave.

What you need

Check these points before you start. Most of them are already in place in any company that books invoices today.

Step by step with Superkind

Six steps from the first forwarded invoice to a booking you trust. Each step is something you can do today.

Step 1: Connect your inbox and accounting software

Sign up at app.superkind.ai and connect the systems invoices pass through: Outlook or Gmail for the inbox, then your accounting software. An admin connects DATEV, Lexware Office, sevDesk or SAP Business One in one click and confirms which areas Superkind may work in. No API keys to copy, no webhooks. Also connect Teams or Slack if that is where your approvers work, because that is where approval requests will appear.

• Check - Superkind only sees the mailboxes and accounting areas you allowed.
• Tip - start with one company and one mailbox, add more later.

Step 2: Send the first invoice

Take an invoice from a supplier you book every month. Forward the email with the attachment to Superkind and write one sentence. You can also write in Teams or Slack and attach the PDF or the e-invoice file.

What Superkind does: it reads invoice number, invoice date, supplier, net amount, VAT and total. For an XRechnung or ZUGFeRD invoice it reads the structured XML data⁶⁷. It checks whether the same number, supplier, date and amount already exist in DATEV, so nothing is booked twice. Then it builds a booking proposal with account, cost centre and tax code.

Step 3: Check the proposal and teach your rules

Superkind answers in the same channel with the proposal. Read it the way you would read a trainee’s work: supplier, amount, account, cost centre, tax code. If something is off, say so in plain words. Superkind applies the correction now and remembers it for next time. Then add a rule for similar invoices.

Superkind confirms with “Noted.” From now on every invoice from Kern is checked the same way and goes to Sabine for approval.

Step 4: Match goods invoices with order and goods receipt

For invoices about goods, the amount alone is not enough. If you work with SAP Business One, Superkind matches the incoming invoice against the purchase order and the goods receipt and flags price or quantity deviations before anyone books.

If 12 pieces are missing, Superkind reports it in the thread. With a rule like “Missing items at goods receipt: request a credit note”, it also drafts the request to the supplier and sends it once you approve.

Step 5: Approve the booking

Now the approver gets a short card: “Invoice 2026-118, Möller GmbH” with Approve and Reject. The approver can be the person who forwarded the invoice or someone else, and it works in Teams, Slack, email or the web app. Only after approval does Superkind continue in your accounting software:

• DATEV - Superkind uploads the invoice image and transfers the structured invoice data via the Rechnungsdatenservice 1.0. DATEV turns them into booking suggestions for DATEV accounting⁸.
• Lexware Office - Superkind uploads the document, suggests the booking category and attaches the file to the right booking.
• sevDesk - Superkind uploads the receipt, suggests the account and completes the receipt with the chosen category.
• SAP Business One - Superkind reports the match result with order and goods receipt, so the invoice is posted against the right documents.

Step 6: Close the booking in your accounting

The last step stays where it belongs: in your accounting. In DATEV, you or your tax advisor process the booking suggestions and lock (festschreiben) the booking batch. Under the GoBD this should happen by the end of the following month⁵. Anyone on the team can ask Superkind for the status later:

Answer: “Yes, this morning. Account 4930, cost centre 4100.” Nobody has to search the mailbox or call accounting.

Set it up as a routine

Once five or ten invoices have gone through cleanly, stop forwarding them one by one. Tell Superkind once what should happen every day. Superkind collects new invoices from the inbox, prepares them for your accounting and asks only where approval is needed.

• Daily - new invoices collected, read, checked for duplicates and prepared, with an overview of what is new, done and still open.
• Weekly - unclear bank payments without a matching invoice, so they do not pile up until month end.
• Monthly - a list of missing receipts per supplier before the month-end close, plus a reminder to the supplier for each missing invoice (after your approval).

When the process grows, for example several companies, your own approval overview or a special check for one supplier group, you do not start over. You can build a custom solution or an app with its own interface on the Superkind platform, on top of everything Superkind already knows. Built by your team or together with the Superkind team, and it belongs to you.

Other ways to automate invoice booking

Superkind is not the only way. Here is an honest comparison of the common options.

For a full overview of dedicated invoice tools, see our comparison of AI tools for accounts payable.

Common mistakes

These five mistakes cost the most time when teams start to automate invoice booking.

• Keeping only the PDF of an e-invoice - incoming documents must be kept in the format in which they were received. For an e-invoice, the structured XML part is what counts⁴. Booking documents must be kept for eight years³.
• No approval rules - if nobody has defined who approves what, every invoice ends up with the managing director. Write two or three rules on day one.
• Correcting in DATEV instead of telling Superkind - if you only fix the account in DATEV, Superkind does not learn it. Say it in the chat once and it is remembered.
• Not talking to the tax advisor - if your tax advisor books in DATEV, agree who processes the booking suggestions and when the batch is locked.
• Starting with the hardest supplier - begin with recurring invoices from known suppliers. Special cases come once the routine runs.

6 tips for booking invoices with AI

1. Use one address for all invoices

Ask suppliers to send invoices only to one address, such as invoices@. Then the routine has one place to look, and no invoice gets lost in a personal inbox.

2. Write rules like you would brief a new colleague

“Möller always on account 4930, cost centre 4100.” “Invoices over EUR 5,000 go to Daniel for approval.” Short, concrete sentences work better than long process descriptions.

3. Put approvals where the approver is

If your managing director lives in Outlook, approvals go there. If purchasing works in Slack, approve in Slack. Superkind uses the same rules and approvals in every channel.

4. Read the first proposals closely

In the first two weeks, look at every proposal before you approve it. Every correction improves the next proposal, and after that you only look at exceptions.

5. Ask for missing invoices right away

When a bank payment has no invoice, let Superkind draft the request to the supplier. You approve the email, Superkind sends it, and the month-end close has one gap less.

6. Prepare for e-invoices now

Domestic B2B invoices must be e-invoices from 2028 at the latest, and for many senders already from 2027². Ask your suppliers to send XRechnung or ZUGFeRD today: structured data is read faster and with fewer errors than a scanned PDF.

Conclusion

Automating invoice booking with AI does not mean letting software book blindly. It means the reading, typing and comparing is done for you, your rules are applied every time, and a person approves before anything reaches DATEV, Lexware Office, sevDesk or SAP Business One. The fastest way to see whether it fits: take the next invoice from a supplier you know, forward it to Superkind with “Book the invoice from Möller” (with your supplier’s name), and check the proposal. If you want to go deeper first, read our guide on AI in bookkeeping with DATEV.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Articles

• The AI Employee in Accounts Payable: Coding and Routing Invoices Before They Reach the CFO
• The Best AI Tools for Accounts Payable Automation in 2026
• AI in Bookkeeping: How the Mittelstand Automates Receipts and DATEV Booking
• The Best AI Tools for Accounting and Bookkeeping in the German Mittelstand

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.