Receipts read locally, Claude sees only the books
Trevor lets a local model read the documents, and Claude keep the books. 380 of 392 old receipts were linked automatically. Personal documents are not visible to the agent until they are marked for the books.
Done with ClaudeAdvanced
This is a public report, not advice from Skatteetaten, NAV, Altinn or an accountant. Check figures, deadlines and decisions against the original.
What was done
On 20 October 2026 Trevor writes that Claude already keeps the books in its own container. It has cleared a two-year backlog in Invoice Ninja, files the dull monthly invoices every morning, and asks him before it touches anything it is unsure about. The papers lived in folders. Paperless-ngx 3.3 is now the archive. paperless-gpt and Ollama with qwen3-vl:8b-instruct run on a GTX 1080 Ti with 11 GB of memory. The model uses about 6 GB. Photos and scans get their text locally. Born-digital PDFs keep their own text and never touch the GPU. The text is about South African receipts and SARS paperwork.
How it went
Of 392 old receipts in the done folder, 380 were linked to existing expenses. The rest were invoices of 0.00 rand, a duplicate, and one invoice with no expense behind it. A personal receipt is never linked to an expense. Photos and scans are not auto-filed in the unattended run. Only born-digital PDFs from confirmed vendors are. Claude sees only documents marked for the books.
Worth knowing
He writes that an 8B model on a 1080 Ti can still misread handwriting. A plumber's receipt of 550 was read as 556. The agent checks that the lines add up, and Claude itself reads what is marked unclear. Two service users have no delete permission. Check the original. This is not advice from an accountant.
How to do it
- Put the documents in an archive where the agent only sees what you mark for the books.
- Let a local model read photo receipts. Ask the agent to check that the lines add up to the total.
- Do not let it file photos and scans until you have seen them. Born-digital PDFs from known vendors can go in the regular run.
Try it with Claude
Read only documents marked for the books in [archive]. Link [receipt] to an expense only when the amount and the date match exactly one record. If the total does not add up, or a digit is uncertain, stop and show me the document. Do not delete anything. Do not file personal documents.
Replace text in brackets with your own.
Done when. Each link matches one record, uncertain digits have been shown to you, and personal documents have not been filed.
Safety rule. The agent sees only what is marked for the books. It deletes nothing, and it does not file a document whose total does not add up.
Read the original
Read the original · Trevor Botha ·