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Optima: KSeF, OCR or a custom automation?
Short answer
Before you buy automation around an accounting program, separate three tasks: receiving the invoice from KSeF, reading the image of a document and preparing the information the accountant needs. They use different features and licences, and an invoice available in KSeF needs no second reading from an image. At Syntalith an automation costs from €3,000 net, and with 1,000 invoices a month at 3 minutes each it pays back in 2.0 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net for the automation of one process, paid once
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 2–6 weeks
- free prototype on your cases
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
KSeF in Poland: statistics 2026
2.0 mo.
payback of a €3,000 automation at 1,000 invoices a month: €1,745 of work today, €269 with checking and the model. Scenario.
1 February 2026
According to Poland's Ministry of Finance (2026), all companies in Poland receive invoices through KSeF from 1 February 2026.
87 million
According to Poland's Ministry of Finance (2026), KSeF took in over 87 million invoices in its first two months.
3 million
According to Poland's Ministry of Finance (2026), the busiest day so far was 3 March 2026, when over 3 million invoices reached KSeF.
70,000
According to Poland's Ministry of Finance (2026), the National Tax Information service answered over 70,000 emails about KSeF from January to the end of March 2026.
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
KSeF and OCR meet different needs
KSeF is Poland's national e-invoicing system. The program vendor's OCR reads data from scans and photos and loads invoices into the VAT register or the sales module with the status of a document to verify (vendor help: OCR). If the invoice is already available in the KSeF flow, first check how its data is used in the program: reading the image again should not be the default step just because a supplier offers OCR. For KSeF licensing the vendor requires the right program version and updates (vendor help: KSeF licensing), so you base the budget on a specific installation.
An example: an accounting firm receives one message with attachments for two of the companies it serves. Amounts and supplier names were read correctly, and before passing them on the documents have to be assigned to the right company. The automation prepares the split for approval, showing the buyer's identifier and a passage of the comment.
| Part of the budget | What to settle |
|---|---|
| The program and the vendor's packages | the modules you hold, the period and the billing method |
| Preparing the installation | the version, updates and the administrator's support |
| The new flow | the sources of documents, questions and employees' answers |
| The connection to the program | reading, where results are written and confirmation of the result |
| Acceptance and maintenance | test cases, fixes and changes |
- 01Receiptan invoice from KSeF in the program, with no second reading
- 02ReadingOCR only for documents outside KSeF
- 03Assignmentthe document to the right company and flow
- 04Explanationthe cost description for the accountant's decision
- 05Accepting the scopeone company's documents never reach another
What KSeF and OCR automation costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 1,000 invoices × 3 min = 50 h × €34.90 = €1,745
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €262
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €7
- Cost of one case
- €1.75 today, €0.27 with the system
- Saving
- €1,476 a month
Payback of €3,000
2.0 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 2,500 input tokens and 300 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and passing it on. What stays is the time to check the output, 15% of today's work in the scenario. Before we quote, we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases your team has already handled, in a €0 test that takes 5 working days.
Before you order a build, you can also compare classifying documents by type and company with ready services, for example a custom classifier in Document Intelligence.
A custom automation or the program's features
Do not add up packages based on similar names. Ask your account manager for a list of the features covered by the contract and a separate quote for the missing elements, because the vendor's terms depend on the configuration. A custom automation makes sense for work the program does not cover: assigning documents for an accounting firm's many clients, gathering the cost description from correspondence or questions to employees. With unambiguous data a rule is enough, and a model is assessed on free-text correspondence. The cost of the module, configuration and an extra flow is compared in what KSeF automation costs.
Invoices from KSeF, few scans
the program's KSeF features
the vendor's licence
Scans from outside KSeF
the vendor's OCR or your own reading
a licence or from €3,000
Many companies, cost descriptions from correspondence
a custom automation before the import
from €3,000
Where to start
Agree the scope of access with the person responsible for accounting. The acceptance trial shows that one company's material never appears in another client's set. The scope is described in AI around an accounting program. We build this kind of rollout as part of AI automations. For the free process review, a description of one case from recent weeks and the tools it went through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: invoices from KSeF
We run the same count for your invoices in the free process review.
€1,396
a month for checking 600 invoices from KSeF by hand
Payback: 2.5 mo.
4 minutes per invoice (a check against the order and the cost description) and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. We measured the model cost of €0.004 per invoice in our invoice coding system, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
