Bank statements, receipts, contracts:
read automatically.

What software reads from bank statements, invoices and contracts, where you should still check the results and how long receipts have to be kept.

By Dr. Jürgen Lange, Managing Director of JSLM Products & Services GmbH

Bank statements, receipts and contracts can now be read automatically with software: an AI recognises what kind of document it is and captures amounts, dates, contracting parties and deadlines in structured form. Manual typing is no longer needed, but checking still is: before the values flow into your bookkeeping, asset overview or tax return, a person should confirm them.

For families and entrepreneurs with several companies, properties and accounts, this is more than a convenience. Every receipt belongs to a specific person or company and often to a specific property, and companies such as a GmbH have to keep their records for years. This guide gives a general overview (as of October 2026) and is not a substitute for tax advice.

How automatic reading works

Plain text recognition (OCR) turns the image of a document into text. It does not know which number in it is the invoice amount and which is the date; that takes additional rules or templates. AI models, by contrast, can recognise what kind of document it is and which detail belongs in which field, even when the layout is unfamiliar. Mistakes are still possible, which is why a review is part of the process. In software, it works roughly like this:

Capture: upload as a PDF or photo, or forward by email.
Recognise: determine the document type, split combined files into individual receipts.
Extract: capture the details that matter for this document type.
Assign: suggest the person, company and property the document belongs to.
Review: a person checks the results and confirms them.

What is read from which document

Document	Typical details	What you need them for
Bank statement	Account, period, balance, transactions with date, amount, counterparty and payment reference	Balances and payments for accounts without a bank connection
Securities statement	Securities with quantity, price and value on the reporting date	Securities account value in the asset overview
Invoice, receipt	Issuer, date, invoice number, net amount, VAT	Bookkeeping and handover to your adviser
Tenancy agreement	Tenant, property, rent, service charges, start date, deposit	Expected rental income and deadlines
Loan agreement	Bank, loan amount, interest rate, end of the fixed-rate period, instalment	Debt and refinancing in good time
Contract with recurring payments	Provider, amount, payment frequency, term, notice period	Running costs and cancelling in good time
Capital call	Fund, amount called, due date	Liquidity and open capital commitments
Annual financial statements	Figures from the balance sheet and the profit and loss account	Development of companies and investments

Bank statements: bank connection first

For current accounts, a bank connection is usually the better route: balances and transactions come directly from the bank, with no document in between. Reading the bank statement is worthwhile for accounts that cannot be connected, for example at some banks abroad. To see whether your bank can be connected, use the bank search.

Receipts: assign them correctly, keep them for a long time

A receipt that has been read is only useful once it is in the right place: with the right company and the right property. Your adviser then finds all of a company’s receipts in one place. Under German tax law, since 2025 a GmbH has had to keep its accounting receipts (Buchungsbelege) for eight years, and its books and annual financial statements for ten years (§ 147 of the German Fiscal Code, the Abgabenordnung). The period starts at the end of the calendar year in which the receipt was created.

In Germany, a retention obligation can also apply privately: if the total of positive surplus income (Überschusseinkünfte), for example from letting property or from a salary, exceeds €500,000 in a year, then from the following year onwards the records for this income and the related expenses (Werbungskosten) must be kept for six years (§ 147a of the German Fiscal Code). From 1 January 2027, the threshold is €750,000. More on this in the guide Family offices and taxes in Germany.

E-invoices: data that no longer needs to be read

Since 1 January 2025, businesses in Germany have had to be able to receive e-invoices, and an email inbox is enough for this. Landlords who let residential flats also count as businesses here, even though their rents are exempt from VAT. The formats XRechnung and ZUGFeRD are common in Germany. Such an e-invoice contains its details as structured data (XML), which can be processed electronically without having to be read first. At least this structured part must be kept, unchanged and for eight years (§ 14b of the German VAT Act, the Umsatzsteuergesetz). For paper receipts, PDF invoices, bank statements and contracts, reading remains necessary.

What to look for in software

Review step: Do you see every result before it is saved?
Document types: Does the software only read invoices, or also bank statements, contracts and fund documents?
Assignment: Does it know your companies and properties, or is everything lumped together?
Volume: Can you upload many files at once and split combined PDFs?
Data protection: Which AI provider sees the documents, does it store content, and is your data used for training?
Handover: Is there an export for your adviser, for example in DATEV format?

How Finaure reads documents

Finaure reads bank statements, receipts and contracts and builds your asset overview from them. There is a separate reading routine for each document type, including invoices, tenancy agreements, loan agreements, bank and securities statements, capital calls and annual financial statements. With SmartUpload you can upload up to 30 files at once, as PDFs or images, and up to 50 during setup with SmartOnboard, including Excel and CSV files.

When uploading, you choose the document type and the company. If a document does not match the selected type, Finaure points this out. If the document names one of your other people or companies as the recipient, or if an address or name matches one of your properties, the AI suggests them. You review the results and accept them.

What happens next depends on the document type. Finaure assigns a bank statement in PDF format to the matching account via the IBAN and imports the transactions, and for a more recent statement the balance as well. You import statements in Excel or CSV format into an account that you select beforehand. For a saved invoice, Finaure looks for the matching payment in the account, based on amount, date, name and IBAN, and links the two if they match closely. If a contract with recurring payments, such as an insurance or maintenance contract, states its term and notice period, Finaure creates a task for the last day on which notice can be given. Finaure reminds you of the end of a fixed-rate period twelve months in advance, and of the end of a fixed-term tenancy agreement 90 days in advance.

If an e-invoice is available as an XML file, such as an XRechnung, Finaure reads the details directly from the structured data, without AI. Finaure also reads invoices and contracts in languages other than German, such as English, French, Italian or Spanish: descriptions appear in German, while names and addresses stay in the original.

You can forward invoices that arrive by email to an inbox. You can set up a separate email address for each company. The AI pre-sorts the attachments and splits combined PDFs containing several invoices into individual receipts if it reliably recognises where each one begins and ends. Nothing is accepted until you have reviewed it.

For reading with AI, the document is sent to Claude by Anthropic. Your data is stored in a data centre in the EU (Frankfurt region). How it is protected is explained under Security. You connect accounts at banks, mainly in Germany and Austria, via finAPI, an account information service supervised by BaFin, Germany’s financial supervisory authority. The handover to your adviser uses formats such as DATEV. You can find all features under Features.

Sources

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Last updated: 6 November 2026

Bank statements, receipts, contracts: read automatically.