AI Invoice and Receipt Automation for South Africa
# AIRAuto – AI Invoice & Receipt Automation for South Africa
> A full-stack AI-powered invoice/receipt automation system tailored to the South African SME market. Process invoices, extract key fields using OCR + AI, validate against SARS VAT requirements, and export to local accounting platforms.
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## Table of Contents
- Overview
- Market Context
- Key Features
- Tech Stack
- Project Structure
- Quick Start
- Configuration
- Development
- API Endpoints
- Database Schema
- Testing
- Known Issues
- Deployment
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## Overview
AIRAuto is an MVP invoice processing system designed specifically for South African SMEs. It combines:
- **OCR** (server-side Tesseract) for text extraction from PDFs and images
- **AI** (OpenAI GPT with cheap-first strategy) for structured field extraction
- **SARS Validation** (South African tax compliance rules)
- **SA Accounting Integrations** (Sage, Xero, QuickBooks stubs + functional CSV export)
- **Async Processing** (BullMQ/Redis queue for scalability)
- **POPIA Compliance** (encryption, audit logging, data retention)
### Why Built for South Africa?
SA invoice processing has unique requirements not addressed by global solutions:
| Area | Requirement | Implementation |
|------|-------------|-----------------|
| **Currency** | South African Rand (ZAR, R) | All amounts default to ZAR; R symbol recognized |
| **VAT** | 15% standard rate | Auto-calculated & validated; detects inclusive/exclusive |
| **SARS Tax Invoice** | Specific mandatory fields | Label, VAT#, sequential #, date, description, qty, value + VAT |
| **Invoice Thresholds** | Full > R5,000 / Abridged R50–R5,000 / None ≤ R50 | Auto-classified; enforces field requirements per type |
| **Accounting Software** | Sage (dominant), Xero, QuickBooks | Integration stubs ready; CSV fully functional |
| **POPIA** | Data protection (ZA privacy law) | Encrypted storage, audit logs, 5-year retention, consent tracking |
| **Date Format** | DD/MM/YYYY common | Parser handles multiple …