Managing Partners

Partners are the verified, canonical records for the companies and individuals your workspace does business with — suppliers, customers, platforms, and service providers. Keeping partners up to date means the AI can recognise the other party on every new invoice or bank transaction automatically, without requiring manual review each time.

Verified vs unverified partners

When AI Finance Team extracts an invoice or imports a bank transaction, it records the other party as a partner — using the name exactly as it appeared on the document. The same real-world business can appear under several names (for example, "OpenAI OpCo, LLC" on one invoice and "OpenAI, L.L.C." on another).

A verified partner is the single canonical record that ties all those name variants together. An unverified partner is a raw extracted name that hasn't been curated yet.

The ⚠ Unverified badge

Any invoice or bank transaction whose partner has not yet been linked to a verified partner shows an amber ⚠ Unverified badge next to the partner name. This badge is a prompt to review and link, not an error — the document is fully processed, it just lacks a verified partner connection.

Where you'll see partners

Partners appear in three places:

  • On an invoice — the Partner field on the invoice detail page
  • On a bank transaction — the Partner row in the transaction detail panel (click any row on the Transactions page)
  • In the bank statement editor — the Partner column when editing an uploaded PDF statement

Each surface uses the same partner picker, with the same verified/unverified pill and the same "+ New partner" affordance.

Getting to Partners

From the workspace sidebar, click Master data, then Partners. The page has two sections:

  • Verified partners — your curated list of known partners. Each row shows the count of Alternative names (other forms this partner has been seen under) for that partner.
  • Unverified partners — raw partner names that have appeared on documents but have not yet been matched to a verified partner. Sorted by transaction count so the most active ones appear first.

The Partners page is only visible to workspace members with the Accountant or Accountant admin role.

Filter by where the partner first appeared

The Unverified partners table has three filter chips above it: All · Invoices · Transactions. Each unverified partner also shows a Source badge:

  • Invoice — first seen on an uploaded or extracted invoice
  • Transaction — first seen on a synced bank transaction
  • Statement PDF — first seen on an uploaded bank statement

Use the filter to focus on, say, only the bank-transaction-side names when curating after a fresh statement upload.

The Tax ID collision banner

When two verified partners share the same tax ID, an amber Possible duplicate partners banner appears at the top of the Partners page. Click Review to expand the panel — each pair has two actions:

  • Merge — opens the merge dialog with the first partner pre-selected as the one to merge
  • Not a duplicate — dismisses the suggestion so the banner stops surfacing it

The banner is visible to accountants only.

Adding a Partner

  1. In the Unverified partners table, find the name you want to verify and click Add as partner.
  2. The form pre-fills with the name and any tax ID extracted from documents. Review and adjust as needed.
  3. Click Create partner.

The unverified partner is immediately linked to the new verified partner, and the ⚠ badge disappears from all invoices and transactions that referenced it.

From scratch

Click New partner in the top-right corner. Fill in the required Name and any optional fields (Partner ID, Tax ID, country, address, bank accounts), then click Save.

Adding many at once? To bring in a whole list of partners from a spreadsheet, use the Import button on this page — see Importing Master Data.

The Partner Detail Page

Click any partner name to open its detail page. It is divided into these sections:

Identity

The partner's canonical name, partner ID, Tax ID, country, and address. Click Edit to change these details.

Alternative names

A single consolidated list of every other name this partner is known under — both:

  • Auto entries — names from unverified partners that have been linked to this verified partner (blue badge)
  • Manual entries — names you have added by hand (grey badge)

Why alternative names matter: When a new invoice or bank transaction arrives, AI Finance Team checks the extracted partner name against every verified partner's canonical name and all its alternative names. An exact match (normalised for punctuation and legal-suffix variants) automatically links the new record to the partner — no manual action needed.

To add an alternative name:

  1. Type the name in the input field at the bottom of the Alternative names section.
  2. Press Enter or click Add.

To remove an alternative name, click the × next to it, then click Remove to confirm. Removing an auto entry unlinks the underlying unverified partner so it can be linked elsewhere or left unverified.

Contact & banking

Address and bank account details for the partner.

How Automatic Matching Works

Every time an invoice or bank statement is processed, AI Finance Team runs through these steps to identify the partner:

  1. Tax ID match — if the extracted tax ID matches a partner already in the workspace, that record is reused.
  2. Name match — if the extracted name (normalised) matches an existing partner name, that record is reused.
  3. Alternative-name match — if the extracted name matches a verified partner's canonical name or any of its alternative names, a new unverified-partner record is created and automatically linked to that verified partner.
  4. New partner — if no match is found, a new unverified partner is created and the ⚠ badge appears.

The key insight: once you have added the right alternative name for a partner, every future document from that party is verified automatically.

Extra steps for bank transactions

When a bank transaction is processed (via open banking or after a statement upload), two additional auto-link checks run before the alternative-name step:

  1. Own-account IBAN check — if the IBAN on the transaction matches one of your own entity bank accounts, the transaction is treated as an internal transfer between your own accounts and no partner is auto-created.
  2. Verified-partner IBAN match — if the IBAN matches one stored on a verified partner record (the Contact & banking section of the partner's detail page), the transaction is auto-linked to that partner with no further action needed.

Adding partner bank IBANs is therefore as valuable as adding alternative names: a single saved IBAN means every future incoming or outgoing transfer from that partner is verified automatically.

Verifying a Partner Inline

If you spot the ⚠ Unverified badge while reviewing a document, you can resolve it without leaving the document.

From an invoice

  1. Open the invoice detail page.
  2. In the Partner dropdown, select the verified partner you want to assign.
  3. The dropdown saves automatically.

From a bank transaction

  1. On the Transactions page, click any row to open the detail panel.
  2. In the Partner picker at the top of the panel, search and select the verified partner.
  3. The picker saves automatically and the verified pill appears immediately.

The raw bank name (the text the bank actually sent) is preserved in the picker dropdown header as "Raw bank name: …" so you can see what was originally extracted.

From the bank statement editor

When editing an uploaded statement (Statements tab → click a statement → Edit rows), the Partner column on each row has the same partner picker. All edits are saved together when you click Save.

For transactions that genuinely have no partner

Bank fees, interest, and own-account transfers don't belong to a partner. The picker has a dedicated — No partner (e.g. bank fee) — option at the top — selecting it clears any existing link cleanly.

When you reassign from an unverified partner to a verified partner, AI Finance Team automatically adds the original unverified name as an alternative name on the verified partner. The next invoice or transaction from that same name will be verified without any action from you.

Alternatively, click Verify now → (shown beneath any unverified picker) to go directly to the Partners page, where you can create a new partner or link the name to an existing one.

Merging Duplicate Partners

If two verified partners represent the same real-world entity, you can merge them — either from the Tax ID collision banner on the Partners page or from the partner detail page directly.

From the partner detail page

  1. Open the partner you want to merge away (the duplicate you want to retire).
  2. Click Merge into… in the page header.
  3. In the dialog, search for the partner you want to keep — by name or tax ID. Click the match in the results.
  4. A confirmation screen summarises what will happen. Click Merge to confirm, or Back to choose a different target.

What happens during a merge

When you merge partner A into partner B:

  • All linked partner records that were attached to A are re-attached to B.
  • A's name is preserved as an alternative name on B (with a "manual" badge), so future invoices and transactions that mention A's name are still matched automatically.
  • A's tax ID, IBANs, and other identity fields are not copied — B's values are kept as-is. Review B's Contact & banking section afterwards if A had information B did not.
  • A is archived with a permanent reference back to B (so audit-log links to A still work).
  • Any pending tax-ID collision suggestions involving A are automatically dismissed.

The merge is one-way and cannot be undone — verify you have the right source and target before confirming.

Merging requires the Accountant or Accountant admin role.