Short answer
V12 Labs builds an AI agent that picks up supplier invoices from your inbox, reads and checks them, proposes the expense coding, and queues each one for a person to approve before it's posted to your books. Every step is logged. It's built around your inbox, approval rules, and accounting system, for teams of 5 to 100 people, and you own the code.
What invoice work looks like today
- Invoices arrive as PDFs, phone photos, and forwarded emails across several inboxes.
- Someone retypes supplier, number, dates, line items, tax, and total.
- Duplicate and bank-detail checks depend on memory.
- Coding varies by person; approvals happen in email threads.
- At month-end nobody can quickly say which invoices are held and why.
How the agent works
- Collect from a shared inbox (for example invoices@) or folder, including attachments and invoices in the email body.
- Extract supplier, invoice number, invoice date, due date, line items, tax, total.
- Check for a known supplier, a repeat invoice number, a mismatch with the purchase order, changed bank details, and line-item math.
- Propose coding (expense account, cost centre, project) from your history and written rules.
- Route clean items to the review queue; flagged items go to the top with the reason.
- Approve, edit, or reject in one screen showing the original document beside the extracted fields.
- Post the approved entry to your accounting system.
- Learn from edits: reviewer corrections update the coding rules.
What needs approval
| Action | Default | Who approves |
|---|---|---|
| Posting an entry to the books | Always approval | Named reviewer |
| Releasing a payment | Always approval | Named approver (can differ by amount band) |
| Invoice with changed bank details | Always approval, flagged | Finance lead |
| Exact-match repeat supplier invoice | Approval until you choose to relax it | Your rule, set with your accountant |
| Creating a new supplier | Approval | Reviewer |
What's logged
- Original file and where it came from
- Extracted fields and the agent's confidence where low
- Checks run and warnings raised
- Proposed coding vs final coding
- Reviewer, decision, edits, notes, timestamps
- Posting result from the accounting system
Systems it connects to
Invoices can be collected from a shared inbox (for example a Gmail or Outlook mailbox) or a file folder. Posting works with accounting systems that have a usable API; we check yours during scoping and tell you before building if it can't be reached.
Packaged tool vs custom agent
| Packaged AP / bookkeeping tool | Custom agent from V12 Labs | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Sign up, connect supported tools | Scoped build, weekly demos on your invoices |
| Approval rules | Tool's options (e.g. Ramp and Booke advertise review/approval controls and audit trails) | Your rules: by project, amount band, supplier type |
| Systems | Tool's supported list | Built for your systems, if reachable |
| Code | Vendor's | Yours |
| Best when | Your workflow fits the tool | Inputs, rules, or systems don't fit |
Limits
- It will sometimes extract or code wrongly; approvals exist for that.
- Blurry scans, handwriting, and new suppliers need a person more often.
- It doesn't replace your accountant's judgment on tax or year-end.
- If a packaged tool fits your flow, it's usually the simpler choice, and we'll say so.
Proof
- Accounting rebuild: we rebuilt a business-critical accounting app from Electron to the web for a leading U.S. cemetery and funeral services company (case study). It shows we deliver finance software; it is not an AI agent result.
- VocalDesk: open-source AI phone-agent engineering you can inspect (case study, code).
FAQ
Can an AI agent post invoices to my books automatically? It can, but by default it waits for a person to approve. You can relax that for low-risk cases later.
How does it spot duplicate or fraudulent invoices? It compares supplier and invoice number with past records and flags changed bank details for review, with the reason shown.
What if my invoices come in many formats? That's the main reason to use an agent rather than a template tool. We test with your real invoices, including messy ones, in weekly demos.
Who owns the agent? You own the code. Ongoing maintenance is agreed in the written plan.
How do you test it before go-live? Weekly demos on your real invoices include failure cases: bad input, duplicates, and a broken connection, so you see how it stops and hands over.
Start with a written plan
Book a free 30-minute call. We'll map your invoice path from inbox to books and you'll leave with a written agent plan, scope, timeline, and price range.
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