How to collect your clients’ documents
without chasing them at month-end
Most month-end delays don’t come from the accounting itself but from documents that arrive in pieces. In Romania, e-Factura now brings invoices between Romanian companies into the tax authority’s Virtual Private Space (Spațiul Privat Virtual, SPV), but till receipts, invoices from foreign suppliers and bank statements still arrive as photos and PDFs, by email and WhatsApp. The accounting firms that close the month calmly check what is missing as documents arrive, not after the 10th, and ask each client for what is missing once, with one clear list.
Citește în română →Where the delay comes from
Since 1 January 2024, invoices between companies in Romania must go through the RO e-Factura system and land in the SPV. That solved part of the problem, but a month of documents is more than the invoices in the SPV. Outside the system you still have:
- till receipts from cash registers (fuel, small purchases), which clients send as WhatsApp photos, sometimes cropped or faded;
- invoices from foreign suppliers (software subscriptions, online advertising, EU suppliers), which arrive as PDFs by email or sit in the client’s account on the supplier’s website;
- the bank statement, which the client downloads from online banking and sends when they remember;
- expense claims, travel orders, timesheets and new contracts, which arrive on paper or as photos.
Even the invoices in the SPV don’t book themselves. Someone has to download them, work out what they relate to, match them to a payment on the bank statement and notice what is missing: a paid invoice that never reached the SPV, or a payment with no document at all. The receipt photos arrive on the evening of the 9th, the bank statement on the 12th after two phone calls, and meanwhile the 25th is getting closer.
The volume grows every year. According to the tax authority’s (ANAF) report for 2025, RO e-Factura processed 1.24 billion invoices in a single year, and the SPV had 3.67 million users at the end of 2025. And the document matters: to deduct VAT you need the XML invoice from the system, a PDF is not enough, so every invoice missing from the SPV has to be followed up until it appears.
What collecting documents costs you
An accounting firm with 60 clients that spends, on average, 40 minutes per client each month gathering and chasing documents loses 40 hours a month to work it bills to nobody. That is a full working week of one person, every month.
One question for today: how many clients did you call or message more than once last month for the same documents?
What can change
Two changes most accounting firms are not making yet:
- Each client’s documents are checked on the day they arrive, against what you expect from that client (the invoices in the SPV, the payments on the bank statement, the usual documents from previous months), not after the 10th.
- The client gets one clear and complete list of what is missing (“bank statement for the 1st–15th, three till receipts from the 14th, the invoice for the 1,200 lei payment on the 18th”) instead of several calls about one document at a time.
The hard part is not the accounting decision but the small work between the steps: downloading from the SPV, searching through chats, renaming files, matching against the bank statement, retyping. That is exactly the part AI agents can take over today, working in the email, folders and accounting software you already use, without a big IT project.
| Step | Who does it today | What an AI agent can take over | What stays with people |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downloading invoices from the SPV | The accountant, by hand | Downloads them daily and files them in the client’s folder | — |
| Receipts, foreign invoices and bank statements sent as photos or PDFs by email and WhatsApp | The accountant, searching through chats | Collects them, reads the data even from photos, renames them and files them under the right client | — |
| Matching against the bank statement | The accountant | Proposes matches and flags what doesn’t match | The decision on unclear cases |
| List of missing documents | Repeated calls and messages | Prepares the list for each client | Sending it to the client |
| Booking in the accounting software | Retyping | Prepares the data in the import format you already use | Validation and booking |
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to change our accounting software (SAGA, WinMentor or another)?
No. The agent prepares the data in the import format you already use, and the accountant validates the entry.
Do clients have to change anything?
No. They send documents as they do now, by email or WhatsApp.
Who decides what the agent may do?
You do. One page sets out what it can do on its own, what it hands to a person and what always needs a human “yes”. Tax returns and everything sent to clients or to ANAF stay with the accountant.
Does this also apply to payroll or to a company’s finance team?
Yes. The same pattern shows up with timesheets, leave and supplier invoices: documents arrive in pieces and the list of what is missing is made at the end.
How many hours a month does your firm spend collecting documents?
KYA Audit sets up AI agents that collect and match clients’ documents in the firm’s own software, and accountants validate every entry and every message to a client.
Sources
- ANAF annual performance report for 2025, as reported by CursDeGuvernare.ro, 13 July 2026: cursdeguvernare.ro.
- What stays outside e-Factura and the XML / VAT rule: Fiscalitatea.ro, “Facturi neprimite în e-Factura”, 7 October 2024: fiscalitatea.ro.
- Till receipts and e-Factura: Fiscalitatea.ro, 20 December 2024: fiscalitatea.ro.
