Fin AI project: from a WhatsApp photo to the general ledger

OPE Software, AI Fin Tech and Quartal built an MVP that takes a receipt sent with WhatsApp, has FinAI interpret it and books it in Quartal Accounts, all connected through Quartal Hub.

Can an AI receipt-interpretation service work as one part of a wider financial management ecosystem, not only inside one bookkeeping product? To find out, OPE Software Oy, AI Fin Tech Oy and Quartal Accounting Software Oy built an MVP together. It connects FinAI to other financial management software through the Open Financial API.

Before the project, FinAI had been in proof-of-concept and production use only with Kompassi bookkeeping. The goal of the MVP was to show that FinAI can be used on its own, as a building block in an ecosystem with other financial management players.

The use case: send a receipt, see it in the books

The user takes a photo of a receipt and sends it with WhatsApp to a given phone number. That’s it. There’s no login to a financial management application and no form to fill in.

Behind the scenes, the workflow:

  1. checks whether the message contains a PDF or an image,
  2. fetches the chart of accounts from Quartal Accounts,
  3. sends the receipt and the chart of accounts to the FinAI API, which interprets the content and suggests the accounting entries,
  4. saves the interpreted receipt to Quartal Accounts bookkeeping in real time,
  5. replies in WhatsApp with the key details: date, description, total and the VAT breakdown.
A receipt photo sent with WhatsApp and the booked details in the reply

In the same WhatsApp conversation, the user can then ask the bookkeeping. An AI agent built on an OpenAI model answers simple reporting questions. This shows straight away that the receipt reached the books: its costs appear in the general ledger and the income statement.

Architecture

Fin AI MVP architecture: WhatsApp, n8n, OpenAI, Quartal Hub, FinAI and Quartal Accounts
  • WhatsApp is the user interface.
  • n8n runs the workflow that listens to incoming WhatsApp messages.
  • OpenAI powers the agent that interprets incoming text messages and answers questions about the bookkeeping.
  • Quartal Hub is the integration platform. It already had ready support for n8n and Quartal Accounts. For the MVP, we connected the FinAI open API to it and opened connections to both the FinAI and Quartal Accounts APIs in a dedicated Hub project.
  • AI Fin Tech (FinAI) interprets the receipt.
  • Quartal Accounts is where the receipt is booked.

The n8n workflow splits in two: one branch for receipts and purchase invoices, one for “ask the bookkeeping” conversations, plus an error reply.

The n8n workflow: receipts, ask-the-bookkeeping conversations and the error reply

Results

The project delivered the planned whole. A receipt sent with WhatsApp was interpreted by FinAI’s AI service and saved to Quartal Accounts bookkeeping, and its costs showed up in the general ledger and the income statement.

This proved that FinAI integrates easily into a larger whole together with other players in the financial management ecosystem. It also showed how quickly Quartal Hub lets you combine separate services into a working AI workflow: connect the APIs to a Hub project, build the flow in n8n, and you’re done.

The MVP was built so that it can be demonstrated and used together with a customer. It does not yet have the security and production environment that continuous commercial use would require. Its next job is to explore demand in different partner channels and to gather feedback from end users.

Partners

  • OPE Software Oy: implementation of the MVP
  • AI Fin Tech Oy: FinAI, the AI service for interpreting receipts and invoices
  • Quartal Accounting Software Oy: Quartal Hub integration platform and Quartal Accounts bookkeeping