An AI Assistant answers one specific question about a document. Instead of re-reading a receipt to extract everything on it, an assistant looks for a single thing — is there a UK VAT number on this? does this look like a meal? whose name is on it? — and writes what it finds into its own column in your expense list. That is the whole idea: one question, one answer, one column. Because the answer lands in a normal column, you can filter, sort and export on it like any other field, which is what turns a pile of documents into a worklist you can actually act on. Assistants run in bulk: you filter Manage expenses down to the expenses you care about, pick an assistant, and it works through them in the background while you carry on.

If your expenses might require more than one assistant, you can run multiple assistants together:

This costs the same as running one. The cost is charged per document, not per question, and both assistants are answered in a single read of each document — so running both together costs half of what two separate runs would. Each answer still goes to its own column.

Processing happens in the background. You can close the window without interrupting anything, and follow progress in the Running Jobs report, where the batch appears as AI Assistant Processing followed by the assistant's name.

As part of Smart AI, we’ve launched an assistant that automatically detects the Canadian province listed on an invoice.

This feature works quietly in the background, scanning the content of each expense document and displaying its findings in the AI Province Canada column:

If a province is not detected, the field will simply remain empty.

Our Smart AI suite also includes a tool that helps identify whether an expense document contains food or meal-related purchases. This assistant analyzes invoice content and shows its results in the AI Potential Meal column:

The result can be found in the Manage Expenses table under the field AI Potential Meal.

Under Smart AI, the "Identify Potential Invoice or Receipt" assistant automatically analyzes each uploaded document to determine whether it is an invoice or another type of document (e.g., boarding pass, itinerary, or miscellaneous receipt).

The assistant returns either "Invoice" or "Other", and its response is displayed in the AI Potential Invoice field within the Manage Expenses table. This insight helps streamline your review process by allowing you to quickly filter and prioritize valid invoices for VAT recovery or compliance checks.

Please note: this AI insight is for reference only. It does not alter the original expense data and is visible only within the Manage Expenses interface.

To enable the Smart AI Assistant for extracting employee names from documents, administrator approval is required due to the sensitive nature of the data involved. This feature uses OCR to process document content and identify personal information such as employee names.

The answer will be placed in the field AI Employee Name.

This Smart AI assistant determines whether an attached expense document is a native (digitally created) PDF or a scanned document/image. It analyzes the document structure and metadata to make this distinction.

The result will be recorded in the AI Potential Native PDF field within the Manage Expenses table, showing either “Native PDF” or “Other” based on the findings.

This Smart AI assistant detects whether an uploaded expense document may have been generated using AI tools. Each document is analyzed for indicators of AI generation and classified into one of three categories: Low AI risk, Potential AI risk, or High AI risk.

The result is displayed in the AI Potential GenAI Invoice field in the Expenses Table.

Processing time may vary based on the number of expenses selected. You can track progress in the Running Jobs report. Once completed, you can filter by AI risk level to prioritize documents that may require closer review.

The AI Assistant automatically reviews meal receipts to detect indicators of multiple attendees:

If such signs are found, it tags the expense with "Pot. Multiple Attendees" in the AI Potential Multiple Attendees field within the Expenses Table. If no indicators are present, the field will display a dash ("-"). This helps streamline compliance checks and audit readiness.

The AI Assistant scans receipts to detect potential gift or entertainment expenses:

When such indicators are present, it flags the entry with "Pot. Gift/Entertainment" in the AI Potential Gift Entertainment field of the Expenses Table. If no signs are found, the field will display a dash ("-"). This helps ensure accurate categorization and supports policy compliance.

The AI Assistant automatically analyzes receipts to identify potential service tips:

When detected, it marks the entry with "Pot. Service Tip" in the AI Potential Service Tips field of the Expenses Table. If no tip-related indicators are found, the field will show a dash ("-"). This helps ensure accurate expense classification and supports compliance with tipping policies:

Processing time may vary based on the number of expenses selected. You can track progress in the Running Jobs report. Once completed, you can filter by AI risk level to prioritize documents that may require closer review.

Two Smart AI assistants read your receipts and tell you the supplier's tax identification number: one for UK VAT numbers, one for Australian Business Numbers (ABN). This guide explains what they do, how to run them, and how to read and use the answers.

A valid supplier tax number is one of the things that makes an invoice reclaimable. When it is missing, unreadable, or belongs to the wrong country, the document usually cannot be used as it stands — and finding those documents by hand means opening them one by one.

These two assistants do that reading for you:

Each one reads the document, finds the number, and writes it into its own column in your expense list. You can then sort, filter and export on that column like any other.

They always look for the supplier's number — the business that issued the invoice. They are explicitly instructed to ignore the customer's number, including your own company's VAT and tax numbers, which VAT4U supplies to the assistant automatically for every expense. So a receipt that prints both your VAT number and the supplier's will still return the supplier's.

They tell you when there is nothing to find. Rather than guessing, each assistant returns a short, fixed answer when the number is absent or belongs to another country. Those answers are the most useful part of the result — see Reading the answers.

What they do not do: These assistants are informational. They do not change any data on your expenses, do not update the supplier record, and do not affect compliance checks or your VAT claim. Nothing else in VAT4U moves as a result of running them.

Where to find the results: The results are written to two columns in Manage expenses:

Both live in the AI Assistant & Human Review group in the column picker. Add them to your view once and they stay.

Each assistant returns either the number it found, or one of two short codes.

The two codes are what make the result actionable. VAT_ID_absent and ABN_absent point at documents that likely need a corrected invoice from the supplier. VAT_ID_notUK and ABN_notAU usually mean the expense is filed under the wrong country.

Like other text columns, you can filter them, which is where most of the value is:

The Identify car repair type assistant reads an invoice and tells you whether it was for labour, for parts, or for both — and when it is both, which side cost more.

Many countries treat repair services and vehicle parts differently for VAT recovery, so knowing the split matters before a claim is built. On a workshop invoice that split is usually buried in the line items, and finding it means opening documents one at a time.

This assistant reads the line items for you and returns exactly one of five answers:

The two Mix answers are decided by amount, not by line count — the assistant adds up the service lines and the parts lines and compares the two totals. Net amounts are used where the invoice shows them, gross otherwise.

Any amount on both sides makes it a mix: a labour invoice with a few euros of consumables comes back as Mix - Dominant service, not Service only.

What counts as what:

The result lands in the AI Car Repair Type column in Manage expenses, in the AI Assistant & Human Review column group. Each value is colour-coded so the four repair outcomes are separable at a glance.

Unlike the other AI assistant columns, this one filters with a dropdown rather than a search box, because the answer is always one of the five values. The dropdown also offers Not analysed, for expenses the assistant has not run on yet.

Each document costs a quarter of a Smart AI transaction, whether you run one assistant or multiple — so four documents cost one transaction. The exact figure for your batch is shown on the summary screen before you start, so you always see the cost before committing to it.