Scan and capture pulls the data off your invoice. Coding, matching, resolving and approval come after that, and that is where the hours are. What your options are, what it costs you today, and what an intelligent layer changes.
Your three options
1. Stay with what Exact Online does itself. If you process up to roughly a hundred purchase invoices a month, without purchase orders and with a stable supplier base, the built-in scan and capture is exactly enough. Anything you buy on top you will not earn back.
2. Put scan-and-capture software next to it. Basecone, Zenvoices or Elvy. Better capture, more automation rules, approval flows and apps. This is the right choice if capture is your biggest frustration, or if you want approval across several people and administrations organised more tightly.
3. An intelligent layer that carries out the work after capture. Matching against order and receipt at line level, coding that learns from your own corrections, differences investigated and resolved. This is where Claridy sits, and it is the right choice when the work after capture structurally costs hours.
The difference between two and three is one question: what happens to the invoice that does not add up? With option two it lands in a list for a person. With option three the reason is investigated first, and only if that fails does it reach your team, with the groundwork done.
What scan and capture in Exact Online actually does
You send the invoice to a mailbox or you upload it. Exact reads the document and pulls out the fields it recognises: supplier, invoice number, date, amount, VAT. Then you get a posting proposal that you approve or adjust. Correct something for a supplier and the system remembers it for next time.
That is reading in the sense of recognising fields. There is more on an invoice than fields. There are payment terms, and they differ per supplier: is it being offset against an open credit note, has the amount already been debited by direct debit, does the payment term deviate from what you agreed with this supplier. Reading those lines is not the point. Understanding what they mean for the posting is the point, and that is exactly where field capture stops.
For part of your flow that is enough. Fixed supplier, fixed amount, fixed ledger account: nobody needs to touch that invoice. That was a breakthrough fifteen years ago and it still works.
What changed in the meantime is that capture is no longer a distinguishing skill. An e-invoice does not need reading, because it arrives as structured data. And AI reads a PDF without you having to set up a template per supplier. Reading has become a checkbox.
What scan and capture in Exact Online costs
If you work through an accounting firm it sits in the Samenwerken subscriptions for client administrations. Exact publishes two rates there: EUR 12 per month with ten posting proposals per month, and EUR 21.50 per month with unlimited posting proposals.1
Those ten are the tier to watch. If you process more than ten purchase invoices a month, which nearly every company does, the unlimited rate is the only realistic option and the entry price is not your price.
If you work directly with Exact Online without a firm in between, scan and capture is included in certain business packages and varies per subscription and per number of administrations. Two things to ask then: the amount per administration per month, and whether there is a limit on the number of documents. The second is where the bill climbs with multiple entities.
What you get for it, Exact says itself: up to 73 percent time saved, and posting 300 invoices in roughly an hour. On the reading step that is credible. It is also exactly why the rest of this page is about the step after it, because that pace does not hold there.
Where it stops
Lay out the steps of an invoice and it becomes visible where the time goes. Capture is step one of six.
| Type of invoice | Runs by itself in Exact Online | What comes by hand |
|---|---|---|
| Standard invoice, fixed supplier | Yes | Nothing |
| Invoice with purchase order, all correct | Partly | 2-way and 3-way matching: lines against order and receipt |
| Invoice with a difference on one line | No | Investigating, emailing the supplier, waiting |
| Consolidated invoice across several orders | No | Splitting and assigning per order |
| Credit note against an earlier invoice | Partly | Linking it to the original |
| Invoice without an order number | No | Finding which order it is |
| Invoice across two administrations | No | Splitting, posting twice, reconciling |
| Cost invoice, a different cost centre per line | Partly | Coding line by line |
| Invoice being offset, or already debited | No | Reading the terms and adjusting the payment |
Those last rows are structural in Exact Online, not incidental. Exact Online is organised per administration and a supplier is not. Anyone working with several entities knows the drill: the same supplier in three administrations, set up three times, and an invoice spanning two entities split by hand.
We see that pattern back in the analysis Claridy made of Dutch finance job postings. Not in task counts, because those say nothing, but in how often a task is written down and how much of it is fully automatable.
| Step | Mentioned in | Fully automatable |
|---|---|---|
| Reading and entering the invoice | 61% of postings | 86% |
| Matching against the purchase order | 9% | 56% |
| Coding | 9% | 15% |
| Routing approval | 7% | 5% |
The first column is almost as interesting as the second. Reading appears in six out of ten postings, because that is the work you can write down. Matching, coding and approval rarely appear, while everyone who does it knows that is where the time goes. It is the work you only see when you sit next to it.
Why rules do not finish the job
The answer of the past ten years to that problem is: set up rules. If supplier X, then ledger Y. Above this amount to that approver. Within this tolerance, let it through.
That works, and it works well, exactly as long as reality does what you anticipated. It breaks on three things, and it is always the same three.
The new supplier. There is no rule, because there is no history. Someone does the first invoice by hand and invents the rule afterwards. With a long tail of suppliers you see twice a year, setting that up costs more than it returns.
The case that deviates slightly. The invoice is correct, but it carries a surcharge that was not on the order. Or the supplier put two partial deliveries on one invoice. A rule cannot tell those apart, so it either lets it through or blocks it, and both are wrong.
The rule that is out of date. Someone set a tolerance two years ago and nobody remembers why. Every month invoices pass or fail on a decision nobody can explain any more.
With a stable supplier base none of that is much of a problem. With variation you become the administrator of your own configuration, and that work is in nobody's job description.
What it costs you today that this is left undone
This is the calculation that is rarely made, and it is the only one that counts when deciding whether buying something extra makes sense.
Take a team with five hundred purchase invoices a month.
Assume seventy percent runs through untouched. That is what scan and capture achieves with a well-configured set of rules and a reasonably stable supplier base, and it is a generous assumption.
That leaves a hundred and fifty invoices. Not because capture fails, but because something has to be worked out: an order number that is not on it, a line that belongs to a different cost centre, a difference of two units, a credit note belonging to an earlier invoice.
Eight minutes each is on the low side for that work. As soon as an email to a supplier is involved and you have to wait for an answer, it is a multiple. But take eight.
| Invoices per month | 500 |
| Runs through by itself | 70% |
| Left over | 150 |
| Time per exception | 8 minutes |
| Per month | 20 hours |
Twenty hours a month is half a day a week, every week, on work nobody has in their job description and that appears in no demo.
The assumptions above are ours. Replace them with your own numbers using the calculator, because your figures beat ours.
What an intelligent system does with it
Three things are possible now that were not before.
Reading without a template. Classic invoice capture works with a template per supplier: the amount is here, the invoice number there. New supplier or a different layout, and someone has to set that up. An intelligent system reads the document the way you read it, so without configuration up front. That makes the long tail of suppliers suddenly feasible.
Reasoning about a difference. A line on the invoice says 12 units, the order says 10. A rules-based system can do two things here: let it through because it falls within tolerance, or block it. An intelligent system can look at what is going on. Was there a back order? Is there a partial delivery against it? Is the difference in freight charges listed separately on the invoice? Is there an email from the supplier explaining it? And then put one proposal forward with the reasoning attached, instead of an empty task in a queue.
Instructions in plain language. You no longer build rules in a screen full of dropdowns. You write down what has to happen, the way you onboard a new colleague: invoices from this supplier always go to cost centre 4200, unless there is a project number on it, in which case the coding follows the project.
And when your team corrects a posting, that correction becomes the instruction for next time. That is why the number of invoices passing a person shrinks every month instead of staying flat.
That is also where the discomfort sits. A colleague you explain something to can misunderstand you. Software with dropdowns cannot. So that question has to be answered before anyone hands over their accounts payable.
How you keep it reliable
You do not make an intelligent system reliable by making it smarter. You make it reliable by having it write down what it does, and by setting the line above which it may act yourself.
Every action carries a confidence. Not "the invoice has been processed", but "78 percent match with order 4471: supplier correct, quantity correct, the order number was not on it". That figure is the dial with which you decide what runs through untouched. Set it high in the first weeks and lower it once you see it holds.
You set the line, per type of invoice. Invoices under five hundred euro from known suppliers straight through. Anything with a difference above two percent past a person. New suppliers, the first three invoices always past a person.
Everything can be read back. Every posting records why it was made that way: which order, which line, which instruction and which confidence. Your accountant does not have to take your word for it, and neither do you.
Corrections are the training. Change a coding and it is not a one-off correction but an instruction.
No euro leaves without approval. Claridy queues invoices for payment and writes the posting back to Exact Online. The payment itself stays your action in your own banking environment.
Which option fits your situation
Four routes, each with the question that decides whether it fits you.
Staying with Exact Online itself. Up to roughly a hundred purchase invoices a month, without purchase orders, with a stable supplier base. The question: does the work after capture cost you time structurally today? If not, you will not earn back what you buy on top.
Basecone (Wolters Kluwer). Connects to Twinfield, Exact and AccountView, pulls UBL automatically and has a strong approval app. Posting proposals come from recorded positions per supplier. No order matching. Price through the accounting firm.
Zenvoices. The most Exact Online focused, with line-level capture and a large set of automation rules you set centrally across several administrations. 3-way matching against order and receipt exists, as an extension. From EUR 29 per month plus variable costs per invoice, user and administration.
Elvy. The broadest list of ERPs, including Exact Globe and Business Central, and on-premise is possible. The limit sits at templates per supplier and matching on order total rather than per line. From EUR 119 per month.
Claridy. Not a scanning layer in front of Exact but a layer that carries out the work after it. Matching against purchase order and receipt per line, coding that learns from your corrections, differences investigated and resolved, and approval across several administrations. Also runs on NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365. EUR 499 per month fixed, modules EUR 250, no price per invoice or per user.
All three of the others do what they were built for. They were simply built in a time when capture was the problem, and it is not any more.
Features and prices checked on the vendors' own sites, 2026-08-12.
How Claridy works on Exact Online
Claridy does not replace Exact Online. It is the layer around it that carries out the work and writes the posting back.
- Invoices arrive through your existing accounts payable mailbox, as PDF or UBL.
- 2-way and 3-way matching: lines against purchase order and receipt, per line and not on order total.
- Coding happens per line, including cost centre and project.
- When there is a difference, what is going on gets investigated, and where needed the supplier is emailed directly.
- Approval follows your own route, across several administrations.
- The posting goes back to Exact Online and the invoice is queued for payment.
Because Claridy keeps no administration of its own, Exact Online stays the only place where the truth lives. Switch it off and your books look exactly as they did before.
Claridy in short
| What for | Purchase invoices from arrival to payment: reading, matching, coding, posting and handling exceptions |
| ERPs | Exact Online, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, reading and writing back |
| Migration | None. Your books stay where they are |
| Price | From € 499 per month: up to 500 invoices, one entity, one ERP connection. Each extra entity € 250, modules such as three-way matching and reconciliation € 250 each |
| What is not added | no price per invoice, per document or per user, cancellable monthly |
| Peppol | UBL now, Peppol connection in Q4 2026 |
| Live in | First workflow in two weeks, on your own data |
| Approach | The system proposes first and your team approves. Then you set the line above which it acts by itself |
| Lower bound | From roughly 100 invoices a month |
| Languages | Invoices in any language, no template per language or per supplier. The interface is English |
| Security | CASA Tier 2 audit (TAC Security, February 2026), SOC 2 in preparation |
| Where it differs | It acts after capture: splitting across order lines, coding on all your dimensions, investigating differences and emailing the supplier |
What it costs
EUR 499 per month fixed, modules EUR 250 per month.2 No price per invoice, no price per user, cancellable monthly.
Put that next to the twenty hours from the calculation above and you land around EUR 25 an hour for work that happens internally today. Whether it adds up depends on your own numbers, and you work those out with the calculator.
Below roughly a hundred invoices a month there is too little repetition to learn from. Then scan and capture in Exact Online, or a light add-on, is the cheaper choice and we say so.
Frequently asked questions
Reading an invoice and automatically recognising the fields on it, such as supplier, invoice number, amount, date and VAT, with a posting proposal alongside. Correct something and Exact remembers it for that supplier.
Through an accounting firm it sits in the Samenwerken subscriptions: EUR 12 per month with ten posting proposals per month, or EUR 21.50 per month with unlimited posting proposals.[^bron1] Above ten invoices a month the unlimited rate is the only realistic option. If you work directly with Exact Online it is included in certain business packages and varies per subscription and per number of administrations. Ask for the amount per administration per month and for any document limit.
On the step it automates, yes. Exact itself works with posting 300 invoices in roughly an hour, and for reading and the posting proposal that is realistic. That saving says nothing about the invoices that are not standard. At five hundred invoices a month with seventy percent running through untouched, a hundred and fifty are left that need working out, and together those cost more time than reading all five hundred.
It depends on where you get stuck. Better capture and approval flows: Basecone, Zenvoices or Elvy. The work after capture, so matching, coding and resolving differences: Claridy. If you process fewer than roughly a hundred invoices a month, the built-in function is enough.
Because capture is step one of six. Coding to the right cost centre, matching against the purchase order and the receipt, investigating differences, handling the mailbox and approval come after it, and that is where most of the time goes.
The scan-and-capture step disappears. A Peppol invoice is not a document that needs reading but structured data that enters your ERP directly: supplier, invoice number, amounts, VAT and often the invoice lines are already in it. There is nothing to recognise. Exact already bundles Peppol in the same line as scan and capture. What does not change is everything after it. The invoice still has to be coded to the right ledger account, cost centre and project, matched against the purchase order and the receipt, and routed to the right approver. An invoice charging two units too many is exactly as wrong through Peppol as through PDF, just more neatly formatted. So Peppol solves precisely the step that was already the easiest. Practical point: expect a mixed flow for years. Some of your suppliers move over, the rest keep emailing PDFs, and you need both at once.
The data is there. You record purchase orders, you register receipts, and you see which orders are still open. What Exact Online does not do is lay those three against each other automatically at line level and work out the difference for you. You do that comparing yourself: quantities side by side, prices side by side, and on a deviation work out whether there was a back order, whether a partial delivery stands against it, or whether the supplier simply got it wrong. So the data is there, the comparing and the working out stay human work.
At five hundred invoices a month with seventy percent running through untouched, a hundred and fifty are left. At eight minutes each that is twenty hours a month, or half a day a week. Work out your own situation with the calculator.
No. Your books stay in Exact Online, and that is the intention. Claridy reads from it and writes to it, and keeps no administration of its own. What Claridy can replace is the scan-and-capture step: invoices then arrive with us and the posting goes back to Exact. Switch Claridy off and your administration looks exactly as it did before.
Yes. When your team corrects a coding, a cost centre or a project assignment, that correction becomes an instruction applied automatically from then on. Same supplier, same situation, same outcome, without anyone having to do it again. That is why the number of invoices passing a person falls every month instead of staying flat.
Yes. And on NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Two to four weeks, including setting up the instructions on your own invoices.
You see it, because every posting carries reasoning and a confidence score. Above your line it runs through, below it a person picks it up. Correct something and that is immediately the instruction for next time.
No. They keep sending what they sent, to the same address.