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Solution · Dynamics 365 Business Central

Capture PDF documents in Business Central automatically

Purchase orders, invoices, and delivery notes arrive as PDFs — and your back office types them into Business Central. The kitun Document Pipeline reads documents template-free, validates every line item deterministically, and creates them in BC via the standard APIs. The AI runs on-premise: documents stay in-house, costs stay fixed.

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Template-free
New senders with zero setup
On-premise
Open-weights models on your hardware
Zero undetected errors
An operating target, not a marketing claim
No per-document pricing
Fixed costs instead of volume tiers
Your code
Repository handover, no lock-in

What Business Central can already do

Business Central ships with solid built-in capabilities for structured documents — and a strong add-on ecosystem:

  • E-invoices: Receiving and processing structured formats (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD, Peppol) is standard depending on localization and setup — no extraction needed.
  • Continia Document Capture & co.: For the accounts payable process (incoming invoices), the add-on market is mature — OCR, vendor templates, PO matching, approval workflows. If you only want to automate incoming invoices and can live with cloud OCR and document-based licensing, you'll find established solutions there.

The gap — and what the pipeline is built for

  1. The sales side: Customer purchase orders that arrive as PDFs and need to be created as sales orders — including resolution of customer item numbers against your own master data. The A/P process is well covered; order intake is not.
  2. Template-free instead of vendor templates: Classic capture solutions work with per-sender templates — maintenance overhead that grows with every new business partner. Modern LLM extraction reads layouts with zero setup; quality is ensured by content-level checks instead of layout rules.
  3. On-premise, no cloud OCR: Where documents must not leave the network, cloud recognition is off the table. The pipeline runs entirely locally — combined with BC on-premise, that gives you a fully sovereign chain; with BC SaaS, extraction at least stays in-house, and only the validated record goes to the ERP.
  4. No per-document pricing: Document-based licensing scales with your success. After the build, the pipeline essentially costs electricity.

How the pipeline works with Business Central

  1. Intake: Email mailbox, folder, or scan; duplicate detection by file hash before any processing.
  2. Extraction — locally: Layout parsing + open-weights models, on-premise, template-free.
  3. Validation: Per-line arithmetic, master data matching (items, customers/vendors via API lookup), source grounding. Uncertain documents → review screen.
  4. Creation in BC — through official paths: Validated documents are created via the standard REST API (v2.0 entities such as salesOrders, purchaseInvoices) or — where project requirements demand it — via a lean AL extension with custom endpoints. In both cases, BC business logic and permissions apply exactly as with manual entry; nothing bypasses the platform.

On-premise: sovereignty as the default

Extraction on your own hardware (GPU workstation or compact AI appliance), open-weights models, no third-country transfers, no model vendor lock-in. Architecture in detail →

Process and effort

  • Pilot (2–3 weeks): ~10 real documents, gold set, end-to-end through to a draft document in BC (sandbox).
  • Validation: ~100 documents incl. unknown senders, threshold calibration.
  • Production: Review queue active, per-sender monitoring, corrections feeding back in.

Effort on your side: sample documents, API access to the sandbox, one contact person for master data questions.

Frequently asked questions

Cloud or on-premise BC — what's supported?

Both. The standard API exists in both worlds; with BC on-premise, the entire chain stays local; with BC SaaS, extraction runs locally and only the validated, structured document goes to the cloud.

We already use Continia for incoming invoices — any conflict?

No. The pipeline typically adds the sales side (purchase orders → sales orders) and additional document types (order confirmations, delivery notes). Existing A/P workflows remain untouched — or get replaced, if on-premise requirements or the cost model make that the better call.

Do we need an extension, or is the standard API enough?

For standard documents, the REST API usually suffices. A lean AL extension is worthwhile when you want custom fields, special number series, or additional validation logic inside BC itself. Both are official, upgrade-safe paths.

How does the pipeline handle customer item numbers?

Both numbering worlds are extracted; resolution runs against the item master or item references in BC. Ambiguous matches go to the review queue instead of silently entering the system wrong — the target is zero undetected errors.

What does it cost?

One-time project cost, fixed operations (hardware, power, maintenance) — no per-document pricing. A first calculation with your own numbers in the intro call; calculation logic openly documented.

20 minutes, one honest assessment

Bring two or three typical documents — in the intro call, we'll tell you what can be automated, what it costs, and whether it pays off. If it doesn't, we'll tell you that too.

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