The system reads the invoice, proposes the account and cost centre with its basis and holds doubtful costs. The accountant approves or corrects.
Automation, paid once
from €3,000 net
Test on your process: €0
You pay 50% after acceptance
How much does cost invoice automation cost, and when does it pay back?
Short answer
Cost invoice automation costs from €3,000 net. In our scenario it pays back in 2 months. Today, coding 1,000 cost invoices by hand costs €1,745 a month. With the system, the same work costs €266. The posting decision stays with the accountant. The system gives her a proposal with its basis and holds the invoice when something is missing. The test on your process is free.
Statistics
Invoices, e-invoicing and AI statistics 2026
18 bn
According to the European Commission (2023), around 18 billion invoices are issued in the EU every year.
According to the European Commission (2025), the move to e-invoicing will cut administrative and compliance costs for EU traders by over €4.1 billion a year.
The team gets back about 42 hours of work a month, or 5 working days, and the company €17,748 a year. We count after the time a person spends checking and after the model cost.
1,000 × 3 min = 50 h × €34.90 = €1,745 a month. With the system, the accountant checks the proposals in 15% of the old time (€262) and the model costs €4.13 (€0.004 per invoice). That leaves €266. The saving is €1,479 a month, so €3,000 pays back in 2 months.
Assumptions: 3 minutes per invoice 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.
The invoice arrives as an e-invoice, by email or as a scan
Team
The accountant checks the supplier and looks for a similar invoice
Team
Picks the account and cost centre from memory or notes
Team
Asks by email what the cost is for, and waits
Team
Types the posting into the software
Team
With the system
Collects the invoice from the e-invoice feed, email or scan
System
Proposes the account and cost centre, with similar invoices as the basis
AI
A confirmation is missing? Holds the invoice and says what is missing
AI
The accountant approves or corrects the proposal
Person
The approved posting goes into your software
System
What stays with people: The posting decision stays with the accountant. The system gives her a proposal with its basis and holds the invoice when something is missing.
foap.com customer service: 95% of replies are sent automatically.
Users from several countries write to foap.com, in several languages. The system reads the entire conversation and the terms of that person, and then sends a response in that person's language. Questions about money and exceptions go to the team with a ready draft, so they have to check and send them.
the system sends the answers itself, without human typing
95%
the system sends the answers itself, without human typing
time from the arrival of the e-mail to the ready response (median)
30 s
time from the arrival of the e-mail to the ready response (median)
e-mails that require a response receive a ready-made draft
100%
e-mails that require a response receive a ready-made draft
less work for every 1000 answers (estimate)
47 h
less work for every 1000 answers (estimate)
Data from foap.com production, October 20-21, 2026. Estimate: 3 minutes for handwritten response.
It proposes the account and cost centre from the invoice and the supplier's history, and separately checks the order and the delivery confirmation. An invoice without complete data is held, and the accountant gets the reason. The whole test run of 12 invoices cost €0.05 of model work. Demonstrator on synthetic data.
“We started with my own AI agent. During the training that followed, I learned to build new applications myself. Today I am bringing this way of working with AI into my business. Working with Syntalith gave me exactly the skills and tools I needed.”
A proposed account and cost centre with its basis to check
A queue of held invoices with a description of the gaps
An export or integration with your software
What happens to your data
You choose the test cases. We anonymise them on request.
They stay in the EU and we delete them after the test.
We sign the NDA and the data processing agreement before we receive anything.
After acceptance you keep the code, the test set and the documentation. You pay for licences and model usage directly to the provider. With several departments or branches, the engineer suggests a Process Audit from €600 net: a map of the flow and a fixed quote. We deduct the audit fee from a build signed within 3 months.
Questions
How much does cost invoice automation cost?
From €3,000 net, paid once. After the 5-day test the build takes 2 to 6 weeks. You get a fixed price before the contract: 50% on signing and 50% after acceptance on your own invoices.
Does the system post invoices on its own?
The system prepares a proposed account and cost centre with its basis. The accountant decides: she approves or corrects it, and only then does the posting go into the software.
Would ChatGPT or an AI module in our accounting software be enough?
If the module in your software covers your coding rules, it is often enough, and we will tell you so in the review. ChatGPT on a private account has no data processing agreement and no record of decisions, so it is not fit for supplier data. We build the system when there are hundreds of invoices and the rules are yours alone.
When does it not pay off?
Below 170 invoices a month the payback takes more than a year. Then it is better to start with ChatGPT or Claude for the team, from €1,150 net.
We already receive e-invoices. Why automate further?
An e-invoice arrives in one structured format. The posting, the cost centre and the question about what the cost is for are still done by a person. The system takes over that part and leaves the approval to the accountant.
What do we need to prepare?
Your chart of accounts and list of cost centres, 20 to 100 invoices from recent months with the posting the accountant accepted, and the person who approves doubtful costs.
What our OpenAI and Anthropic partnerships mean for you.
OpenAI makes ChatGPT and Anthropic makes Claude. We belong to the partnership programs of both companies, so we work with their tools every day and learn from the creators themselves.
Claude Partner Network
01We will select a tool for the task
We implement both ChatGPT and Claude. We check both on your documents, and you choose the one that makes fewer corrections and saves more time.
02Knowledge straight from the creators
We learn from official OpenAI and Anthropic courses and materials. Your team learns about the features and settings that work today.
03Licenses without our margin
You buy accounts directly from OpenAI or Anthropic and receive an invoice from them. We do not add anything to the license.
04Certified engineers
On the team, we have an AWS certification in machine learning and an Anthropic certification in systems architecture on Claude.
Participation in programs does not mean that OpenAI or Anthropic endorses our services.
customer service
