Honest answers to obvious questions.

Upload a PDF. It can hold anything readable: printed and thermal receipts, supplier invoices, scanned pages, and photos your client took on a phone. A single PDF can carry a whole period's pile, hundreds of pages across dozens of suppliers, and Pileform splits it back out by supplier for you.

If a human can read the document, Pileform can extract it. Blurry or handwritten items still come through; they are just flagged for a quick look before posting.

No. Pileform does not replace Xero, QuickBooks, or your ledger; it feeds them. You keep the software you already use; Pileform just does the slow part (turning the document pile into clean, coded entries) and posts the results across.

You also keep an Excel workbook of every batch, so the work is yours whether or not you stay connected to a ledger.

Pricing depends on how many documents you run and how many clients you put through Pileform, so we size it with you rather than box you into a tier. There is a free way to start, and no per-seat charge for features local practices don't need.

The easiest first step: send a sample PDF of up to 20 pages and we'll run it free, no card. See pricing or email contact@pileform.com.

Pileform reads VAT on every line across 55 jurisdictions. Cyprus VAT (19%, 9%, 5%, and zero-rated) is tuned in by default; UK VAT, EU country-detected VAT, GST regimes, and zero-rated and exempt supplies are all handled. Reverse-charge and inclusive-versus-exclusive totals are detected in 11 languages.

Whatever rate the document declares, that's the rate Pileform applies. It never normalises a foreign receipt to a single local rate.

An inclusive total already contains the VAT: a €119 receipt that includes 19% VAT is €100 net plus €19 VAT. An exclusive total adds VAT on top: €119 net becomes €141.61 once 19% is added. Mix the two up and both numbers (the cost and the VAT you reclaim) come out wrong.

Pileform reads which one each total is, in 11 languages, and splits net from VAT correctly every time. There's a plainer walk-through on the features page.

Handwritten receipts are extracted too, just with lower confidence. The row is yellow-flagged for a quick check before posting, so validating it takes seconds instead of typing the receipt from scratch.

We infer it from the supplier, the line items, and the regime, then yellow-flag the row so you can confirm before posting.

We never silently guess, and the Adjustment column always reconciles to the cent.

Accuracy depends on the source PDF. Clean printed receipts extract reliably; smudged thermal prints and handwritten slips are harder. We don't quote a single accuracy figure because the honest answer depends on what the client handed over, and because the figures are computed by code, not estimated by a model that could be 99% confident and still wrong.

Every workbook comes back in two states: high-confidence rows ready to post, and yellow-flagged rows for review. Your time goes to the flagged rows, not to every line.

Yes. Connect Xero or QuickBooks and the entries you confirm post straight through: supplier invoices as Bills in Xero, journal entries in QuickBooks. Your chart of accounts syncs in, and bank-statement transactions post as double-entry too. You still keep the Excel workbook, and you're never locked in. Sage isn't supported. Tell us at contact@pileform.com if you need it.

Both. Drop a bank statement and Pileform extracts every transaction, classifies it (salaries, bank charges, transfers, card payments) and posts it as double-entry alongside your invoices. The statement reconciles, and the entries go to Xero or QuickBooks like everything else.

Most capture tools are built for continuous daily capture, where staff photograph receipts one at a time, all month. Pileform is built for the opposite: the period-end batch, the 200-page PDF that lands right before the VAT return. Drop the whole pile at once and it comes back reconciled.

Two more differences matter for VAT work: Pileform reads VAT on every line across 55 jurisdictions (not one figure per document), and it hands you an Excel workbook you keep, with the source document embedded, so there's no lock-in. See how it works.

Yes. Pileform remembers each supplier and how you code them (name variants, VAT ID, default accounts) so repeat suppliers code themselves. Your categorisation rules build up, and the entries you confirm most often can post automatically. The review pile shrinks over time.

Servers in Frankfurt (EU). Records are retained for the period you configure in Settings → Data & exports (default 10 years; range 6–30 years with country presets: Cyprus / UK / Ireland / Malta / Spain / Greece 6 years, Netherlands 7, Germany / France / Italy / Lebanon 10) to satisfy the strictest applicable tax-record statute. You can request earlier deletion of any individual job. GDPR-compliant. AI inference runs via a vetted third-party AI provider, contractually prohibited from training on your content. Full sub-processor details (including each provider’s role, location and transfer safeguards) are in our Data Processing Agreement.

You're never locked in. Every batch comes back as a standard Excel workbook (and CSV), yours to keep, open in any spreadsheet, and hand to anyone, with the original document embedded in each row. If you ever stop using Pileform, you walk away with every workbook you've made.

Posting to Xero or QuickBooks is something you switch on, not something you're tied to.