KARTAL — Document Analysis Engine
KARTAL is the document analysis engine we developed in our office. It reads every document that reaches us, determines what it is, which client and which period it belongs to, and flags the points that need attention. It does not make the decision — it prepares it.
Below you will find, step by step, the route one of your documents takes from the moment it reaches the office to the moment it enters the archive.
The journey of a document
The document reaches the office
Your document arrives by e-mail, through a messaging application or through an upload link created for you. If you delivered it on paper, it is scanned into the same place. Whichever route it takes, the document is recorded in the system and its record is not deleted.
The text of the document is extracted
First the document's own text is read. If the document is a scanned image or a photograph there is no text; in that case optical character recognition steps in and produces text from the image. At the end of this step we always hold the content of the document.
Most of the analysis errors we experienced in the past came from file names: a document arriving as “kdv.pdf” could turn out to be a withholding return, and a badly named file could land under the wrong client. For that reason we stopped analysing by file name. What the document itself says is what counts; the file name remains only as a last resort where nothing at all can be read from the content.
The document is identified
Once the text is obtained, KARTAL answers three questions together:
- What is this document? More than forty document types are defined: VAT, withholding, advance tax, income and corporate tax returns together with their assessment slips, social security service lists and assessments, payslips, wage slips, ledger declarations, lease agreements, tax certificates, signature circulars, powers of attorney, certificates of activity, inspection reports, and commencement and cessation of business notifications.
- Whom does it belong to? The client is identified from the tax identification number, national identity number, trade name or social security workplace number on the document.
- Which period does it belong to? The statutory period of the document and the period under which it is tracked inside the office are determined separately; the two are not always the same month.
It goes through checks
Before the document settles into place it passes a series of checks. The main things flagged are:
- The same document having been uploaded before
- The amount on the return not matching the amount on the assessment slip
- The invoice line total not matching the VAT amount on the document
- An export invoice falling in the wrong month according to the customs declaration
- Carried-forward VAT being inconsistent with the previous period
- A document expected for the period not having arrived yet
The decision comes to a person
KARTAL brings a suggestion to the accountant only where a decision is genuinely needed: where the information in the system conflicts with the information on the document, where an empty field on the client record can be filled from the document, where the document can be linked to an assessment or a task, or where confidence in the identification is low.
No suggestion appearing for a document does not mean “it was not analysed”; it means “there is no difference to approve”. Asking for repeated confirmation of what is already correct draws the accountant's attention away from what actually matters.
It settles into the file and the archive
The document is filed under its own category within the client and the year; it enters the period's work and the preparation of returns from there. It stays in the archive for the statutory retention period and is sent to you whenever you ask for it.
How we check that it is not going wrong
Breaking one document type while fixing another is the best known risk in systems of this kind. We keep a fixed reference set against it.
- One document from each type, each individually confirmed as correctly analysed, was selected to form a reference set of 45 documents.
- After every change to KARTAL's code these 45 documents are analysed again and the result is compared against the expected values: document type, client, statutory period and tracking period.
- If even a single document deviates, the change does not go live.
- This check does not write to real records; the analysis is run, compared and then rolled back. The check itself changes no client's data.
When we deliberately change a behaviour, the relevant entry in the reference set is updated the same day, so that the set always remains a picture of what is correct.
What KARTAL does not decide
Drawing the boundary is as important as describing what it does:
- It does not decide the content of a return, the tax base or the amount payable. The whole of the tax assessment rests with the certified public accountant.
- It deletes no document. Documents are never deleted automatically; permanent deletion rests with the owner of the office alone.
- It does not contact you on its own. There is a person behind every message you receive.
- When it is not sure it does not guess; it flags the document and brings it to the accountant.
You can reach us with your questions about KARTAL or our infrastructure.
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