Key Concepts

Before working with Finpilo, it helps to understand the core terms used throughout the platform. These terms appear in the interface and throughout this guide.

Workspace

A workspace is the top-level container for your organization. It holds all your entities, users, documents, and settings. If you are an accounting firm managing multiple clients, you have one workspace that contains all client entities. If you are a single company, your workspace contains your company entities (legal entities, branches, or departments).

You can switch between workspaces using the workspace selector in the top-left corner of the header, next to the Finpilo logo.

Entity

An entity represents a single company or legal entity within your workspace. Each entity has its own registration details (legal name, registration number, VAT number, address), its own set of partners, dimensions, document types, and field settings.

Documents are always associated with a specific entity. When you upload a document, you select which entity it belongs to. When you forward a document by email, it automatically routes to the entity whose email address you used.

An entity has the following key properties:

• Display Name — a short name shown in lists and selectors.
• Legal Name — the official registered name.
• Registration Number — the company registration number.
• VAT Number — the value-added tax registration number.
• Legal Address — the registered office address.
• Bank Accounts — one or more bank account numbers.
• Reference ID — an internal identifier (auto-generated if not provided, format: ENT-00001).
• Email Processing Address — a unique email address (e.g., abc123@in.finpilo.com) for automatic document intake.

Partner

A partner (also called a supplier or vendor) is a company or person you do business with. Partners are managed per entity — each entity has its own partner list.

When Finpilo processes a document, it tries to match the supplier information extracted from the document against your partner database. If a match is found, the partner is linked automatically. If no match is found, you can link or create the partner manually from the document view.

A partner record contains: legal name, registration number, VAT number, legal address, bank accounts, and a reference ID (auto-generated if not provided, format: SUP-00001).

Dimension

A dimension is an accounting classification category that you define for an entity. Dimensions represent the analytical tags that your accounting system needs but that are not printed on the document itself.

Common examples of dimensions include:

• Cost Center — which department or business unit bears the cost (e.g., Administration, Sales & Marketing, Operations).
• VAT Rate — the tax treatment applied to each line item (e.g., VAT 21%, VAT 0% — EU).
• Employees — which employee the expense is attributable to.
• Product — which company product or service the expense supports.

Each dimension contains a list of values. For example, the "Cost Center" dimension might contain values like "Administration," "Sales & Marketing," "Infrastructure Services," and "Office." Each value has a name, an optional description, and a reference ID (auto-generated if not provided, format: DIM-00001).

Finpilo's AI assigns dimension values to each line item on a processed document. You can see the AI's assignment, its confidence level (as a percentage), and a brief explanation of why it chose that value.

Document Type

A document type defines what kind of financial document Finpilo is processing. The default document types are:

• Invoice — purchase invoices and sales invoices.
• Receipt — payment receipts and transaction confirmations.
• Delivery Note — goods delivery documentation.
• CMR — international road transport documents.
• Other — any document that does not match the above categories.

Each document type has an extraction schema that defines which fields Finpilo extracts from the document header and line items. You can view these schemas but not modify them directly — they are managed by the AI processing service.

Document Statuses

Every document in Finpilo has one of the following statuses:

Document Direction

Every document has a direction that indicates whether it is incoming (received from a supplier) or outgoing (sent to a customer):

• Incoming — a document you received. The supplier section shows the external party; the recipient section shows your entity.
• Outgoing — a document you issued. The supplier section still shows the external party, but the direction label changes.

Direction is auto-detected by the AI based on registration and VAT number matching. You can change it manually if needed.

Roles

Finpilo has three user roles with different levels of access:

• Member — can view and work with documents (upload, edit, validate, export) and view entity information. Cannot manage workspace settings, users, or entity configuration.
• Admin — full access to all features, including entity management, workspace settings, and user management.
• Owner — same access as Admin. Typically the account creator.

See Roles and Permissions for a detailed breakdown.