Show HN: Invoice Detector – All your invoices in one place, every month

invoicedetector.com

5 points by zainbahari 4 days ago

Hey HN,

We're building Invoice Detector (https://invoicedetector.com/), a tool that uses LLMs and computer vision to automate invoice collection for startups.

Our AI agents automatically extract, process, and categorize invoices, helping startups stay on top of their expenses. In addition to extracting invoices, we send smart spend optimization notifications and generate easy-to-understand, accurate expense reports.

Our pricing is transparent and available on our website. You can try our tool for free without a credit card. We're really interested in any feedback you have, as we aim to make this tool as user-friendly as possible.

We’re still very early in development and would love to hear your thoughts!

chris-orgmenta 3 days ago

This is a compelling use case for AI, and a solution that was sorely needed.

- If you refer to it as '(payables) bills' not '(receivables) invoices' it will tie in more neatly with your customers' payables departments, and employees will be less likely to confuse it with receivables. It also future proofs your dictionary for when you scale. It also opens you up to B2C (Individuals refer to their bills as bills, not invoices).

- This is too small in scope for the long term (presumably preaching to the choir). Businesses can't have one integration per entity class. I.e.: If a business installs this, then they will also need another LLM agent scanning for customer tickets, another for sales, etc. Having 100s of integrations is a security problem, on top of cost and complexity considerations.

- Thus, presumably your plan is to introduce more integrations for more entity classes over time, a single agent scanning and each routing different entities into their respective bucket. The low hanging fruit is probably: Other supplier comms/tickets, Customer leads/sales/rfqs, Customer tickets/support, Customer complaints, Outgoing invoices (detect when a recurring invoice has not been issued, for example), RMM augmentation (e.g. warranty/domain expiry warning emails), Marketing notifications to correct campaigns.

- The pricing is interesting, as the lower tier is in a range that will be very price elastic for 'small businesses that are not particularly profitable'. I.e., tiny water-treading companies tend to quibble over $20/month (despite it preventing >$100 in equivalent labour) as they will assume that it is one of many necessary other integrations. Adjusting price down would bring in many more customers, but they would arguably not be 'ideal' customers (less of a problem since this is a subscription pay-in-advance system, though).

- I like the clear simple copy (a neat springboard for target audience to think 'this will save me so much effort'). I suppose some people would argue that you should go harder on the 'This will save you lots of employee time and prevent catastrophes' message.

- Far more transparency please - Website sparse on details (inc. privacy, data storage). You can't really onboard EU customers until then.

- Upcoming integrations with Xero, MYOB et al?

Great entry point into what can evolve into an 'IFTTT-v2' business routing system. If you're getting <0.1% false negatives then well done, you're onto something.

  • zainbahari 3 days ago

    Thank you so much for your insightful feedback! I really appreciate your detailed comments. Here are my thoughts on the points you raised:

    Terminology: Interesting suggestion to use "(payables) bills" instead of "(receivables) invoices". We recognize that "invoices" might be more understandable for people in Europe, but we’ll aim to balance clarity for both regions.

    Scope: I know what you mean. This is our beachhead. Our vision is to build a tool for freelancers, contractors, consultants, and SMBs to monitor their financial health. We want to enable people to run their businesses smarter.

    Integrations: That's correct. We are going to start by fetching and analyzing data from invoices, but we will expand the system to include contract, license, and usage data. And yes, we will introduce data destinations in the future. QuickBooks and Xero are already on our list.

    Pricing: Valid point. With our 'Essential' plan, companies can connect multiple inboxes and have some simple notifications and reports. Our data shows this is sufficient for freelancers and early-stage startups.

    Messaging: We will go harder. For now, we are going to keep it simple :)

    Transparency: We'll work on providing more details on our website, especially to meet EU standards. By the way, did you check the FAQ section on our website?

    Thank you again for your encouragement and valuable suggestions!

    • chris-orgmenta 2 days ago

      NP at all, happy to see you tackling this.

      In addition to the FAQs, here's what I would love to see on the landing page:

      - Clear blurb on what data you're taking offsite (regardless of encryption), what you are storing, and confirmation that no third parties obtain any data (regardless of whether anonymized).

      - Privacy policy & terms + conditions

      - A screenshot showing an email inbox on the left, Xero bill templates on the right, and lines linking between the two (demonstrating the emails you have found, matched & synced to recurring xero bills).

      - Assurance that 99.9% of bills would be captured and synced.

      Those things together would be so compelling that I would get easy change signoff from most of my clients.

      • zainbahari a day ago

        Love those suggestions. We'll update our website soon with more supporting information.

        "Easy signoff" is what I love! What kind of clients are we talking about here? Let's connect on Twitter and see how we can help each other: @zainbahari