Portal downloads are useful. The harder question is whether every bank transaction has a matching receipt before your tax advisor asks for it.
Direct answer
Automated invoice collection usually starts with portals and email inboxes. That helps with recurring vendors, but it can still miss one-off purchases, delayed invoices or receipts from providers you never connected. belege.ai uses the bank transaction as the control list: if money left the account and no document exists, the agent searches email and portals, asks in Telegram when context is missing, and creates a self receipt when no original can be found.
Decision guide
Best for recurring vendor portals where the invoice is always in the same account. This is the classic GetMyInvoices, Invoice Radar and invoicefetcher pattern.
Good when suppliers reliably email PDF invoices. It breaks down with download links, forwarded mails, old invoices and mixed personal/business inboxes.
belege.ai treats the bank statement as the checklist. A transaction is not done until a matching receipt, self receipt or expense report exists.
If the agent needs the business reason, attendees or a missing paper receipt, the user answers in Telegram instead of logging into another web UI.
Vendor map
| Tool or category | Best fit | DATEV / Germany angle |
|---|---|---|
| Portal invoice download | Automatically fetch recurring invoices from known online portals. | Useful for recurring SaaS, telecom, mobility and platform invoices; still needs control against bank transactions. |
| Email invoice capture | Extract invoices from PDF attachments, forwarded emails and invoice links. | Good baseline for German bookkeeping, but not enough when the invoice was never emailed. |
| Bank transaction matching | Use the bank account as the source of truth for missing documents. | The strongest control for year-end completeness and tax-advisor request lists. |
| Self receipts, meal receipts, travel expenses | Create compliant fallback or supplemental documents when the original invoice alone is not enough. | Important in German tax workflows where the business reason, attendees or travel allowances must be documented. |
| DATEV export | Package receipts and booking data for the tax advisor. | The end result should be ready for DATEV Unternehmen Online or the tax-advisor handoff. |
FAQ
It is the automatic capture of invoices and receipts from portals, email inboxes, upload folders or bank-transaction workflows so the documents are ready for bookkeeping and tax-advisor handoff.
Because portals and email only show documents from sources you connected. The bank statement shows what actually happened, so it reveals missing receipts before year-end.
GetMyInvoices, Invoice Radar and invoicefetcher are classic portal and mailbox fetchers. belege.ai adds bank-transaction-driven search, Telegram follow-ups, self receipts, meal receipts and DATEV-ready export.
A tool cannot recreate a supplier invoice, but belege.ai can create documented self receipts and German tax documents such as meal receipts or travel expense reports when appropriate.
Connect a bank account, forward invoices, or try the Telegram workflow. No credit card required.
Start free