How SyncWise works
Five stages, the same for a sales invoice and a supplier bill: ingest, interpret, validate, post, reconcile.
SyncWise sits between everything you receive and the accounts you file from. Documents come in from wherever they live, are interpreted, are checked against your rules and your ledger, and only then reach your accounting system — with what happened kept alongside the document it happened to.
Every document goes through the same five stages, in the same order, whether it is an invoice you are sending or a bill you have received.
1. Ingest — get the document, wherever it lives
Documents reach SyncWise four ways: forwarded by email, uploaded, synced from a watched folder in cloud storage, or pulled directly from your order or job system. Where a system has no API, the connection is built for you during onboarding.
Nothing is required to arrive in a particular format or a particular way. The point of taking documents from four sources is that businesses genuinely receive them from four sources.
2. Interpret — work out what it actually is
SyncWise reads the document and works out what it represents: whether it is an invoice, a credit note or something that is not a bill at all; who the supplier or customer is; what each line is for; what was ordered against it.
On the payables side, this is where each line is coded — against what you have confirmed before for that supplier, against how that supplier has been coded in your own ledger, or, failing both, against what the line itself says. Which of those the answer came from is recorded, and shown.
3. Validate — check it before it counts
Sales documents have their VAT treatment determined against 59 UK, EU and international rules, with place of supply worked out from where the goods moved and EU VAT numbers checked live against VIES.
Supplier bills are checked against your live ledger for duplicates, against your purchase orders, and against that supplier's previous bills for changed bank details. Anything that fails is held with the reason written in plain English.
This is the stage that defines the product. If a document cannot be validated, it does not proceed, and a person is asked.
4. Post — into your ledger, on your terms
Validated sales entries post to your accounting system with the correct treatment, codes and references. Supplier bills post as drafts only, and a person approves every one — SyncWise never approves, never finalises and never pays anything.
Where SyncWise proposed a code itself rather than following something confirmed or your own history, the bill cannot be approved until a human has confirmed that line. Uncertainty is a stop, not a shrug.
5. Reconcile — prove it landed
What was posted is tied back to what is actually in your ledger and to the system the document came from, and anything that does not agree is listed with the reason. Supplier statements are reconciled line by line, and suppliers who normally invoice and have gone quiet are reported before the period closes.
Every decision is filed against the document it was made on, append-only, retained for seven years. The answer is filed before it is asked for.
What happens when SyncWise is not sure
It stops and asks, in words rather than percentages. A line SyncWise proposed itself blocks approval until a human confirms it. A validation failure holds the document rather than posting it with a caveat. A credit note's link to its original invoice is suggested, never made automatically.
The design principle is that the machine does the work and a person makes the call. Everything a person is asked is asked once — corrections are remembered, so the same question does not come back next month.
Questions people ask about this
What are the five stages of SyncWise?
Ingest, interpret, validate, post and reconcile. Ingest takes the document in from email, upload, a watched folder or your order system. Interpret works out what it is and how each line should be coded. Validate checks it against VAT rules, your ledger and your purchase orders. Post puts it into Xero or QuickBooks — supplier bills as drafts a person approves. Reconcile ties it all back to your ledger and its source.
Does SyncWise post anything without a human?
Supplier bills never post beyond draft without a person approving them. Sales entries post once they have passed validation; anything that fails is held for review with the reason attached.
How does SyncWise decide which account a supplier bill line goes to?
In order of confidence: what you have confirmed before for that supplier, then how that supplier has been coded in your own ledger historically, then a proposal from what the line says — and a proposal must be confirmed by a person before the bill can be approved.
See it run on your own documents
The demo uses a sample of your own invoices and bills, not a canned one. Plans are £30, £50 and £90 a month per client, with setup from £200. There is no free trial, and there is a 14-day money-back guarantee.
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