The Vault is a desktop app that uses Veryfi APIs to unlock your mind about all the cool experiences you can have (and build) around documents you already have at home or in your organization.
The idea
It hit me harder than a rogue cricket ball to the skull while I was on “LPM (low power mode)” visiting family back in the land of drop bears and meat pies. LPM is the ripper time we give all the legends at Veryfi around Christmas to chuck it in neutral, stop being a galah about work, and actually spend some quality time with your mob — while still keeping one eye open for anything urgent, like. It’s a chance to rack off from the daily grind, crack a cold one, and let those big brain shower thoughts bubble up to the surface. This little ripper idea? That’s exactly what happened, mate.
At the core of this app is AI powered by Veryfi APIs. These APIs are like Ayers Rock! Solid, time & battle tested and hold a level of mystery we plan to unlock. Veryfi APIs can process a vast range of documents to rip data out into structured form in seconds. So I thought.. what if there was an app that let you jump straight in the deep end and actually experience it based on whatever document type you’re poking around with? And what if the whole bloody thing ran locally, right there on your own device, where all your docs (not crocs) already live! Yeah I’d love that. I became obsessed with this idea like a croc thats got a tight grip on ya. Yeah nah, I know what you’re thinking sounds like we’re doing a U-turn back to the old days of native apps? I had a good chuckle about that myself. But pull up a chair and hear me out, mate…
Quick note about the author
G’Day mate! I’m one of the founders of Veryfi, Ernest Semerda. I’m an Aussie 🦘 living in Silicon Valley working on that hot stuff called AI. Been at it before the sexy prefix was added to AI. I love finance hence The Vault. I come from a family of accountants and bookkeepers so this pet project aka The Vault is close to heart. So sit back and enjoy the ride as we explore the power of data through The Vault together.
Ok onwards!
The App Experience
Some thinking was essential here. I didn’t want to recreate what’s already out there but did want to create a sense of easy to use so some commonality was essential. A common experience is easier to digest than one where you have to spend hours learning a new year to do something that could have been done easier and faster. I realized I could essentially create a macOS Finder (Windows File Explorer for pc) like experience allowing the user to browse local folder of documents or files on a shared drive and when each file is clicked, like magic it would explode into a contextual experience.
Ok, sounds reasonable. Tick.
Now if I used Electron to build this app it could run natively on macOS, Windows, and Linux across all supported architectures (operating systems). Accountants love PCs so even tho I develop on a Mac I need to support both. I was once a PC but that’s a story for another day.
Also making this app run on device (and not web) meant that it could be super duper fast. Especially features like searching, running insights on large data sets and more. This is because the app is not dependent on a server to respond with a search request and the search can be very broad from looking at files to json responses from data extraction to md files used to take notes on each document to logs generated that keep track of multiple people edits to… whatever else my brain farts and I build it. It also means I don’t have to be online or in a good reception/connection area to embrace the product. Of course extracting data via the Veryfi API requires an internet connection but once extracted its all oki doki.
So essentially it’s a box where you throw documents into and based on document type you will get different experiences. It looks simple like your finder (see below) until you start those experiences. Now you know what you might not have known that you can do with a document.
Contextual Experiences
This is all about different use cases based on what document type we are exploring.
Documents support
As of writing, The Vault has support for the following document types with fraud & document integrity + insights baked in for common financial documents Receipts, Invoices and Bank Statements. This is just the start, there is support coming for many more document types.
Fraud & Document Integrity
This requires a whole whole new page to explain but essentially I grabbed Veryfi’s Fraud Detection Suite and GenAI Detector (both bolt on services to the Veryfi APIs) and wrapped the service in this You Beauty! experience. To say I’m excited is an understatement. Best of all the little buttons {} you see in the screenshot show you EXACTLY which JSON keys to use to generate such a stellar experience.
Did you notice how The Vault came to life like a bloody croc in the billabong when it pounces on it’s prey. Yap she’s a beauty!
What can this bloody thing do?
So, Ernest — what can this thing actually do? (Glad you asked.) Quite a lot, as it turns out — and this is only v1. Click on any receipt, invoice, or bank statement that’s been processed by the Veryfi API and here’s what you’ll find.
- Expense Tracking
- Expense Reports
- Spend Insights by vendor, products, fees and custom parameters
- Fraud & Document Integrity Inspection
- Budgeting (and Forecasting in the works!)
- Closing Monthly Books (Accounting)
- Financial Audit “Occurrence/Existence Testing”
- 3-Way Matching (Procurement)
- Vendor Spend Analysis
- Product Purchases Inspection
- Fraud & Document Integrity Inspection
Not bad hey. But there is more but I don’t want to bore you with it all in a long blog post. Stay tuned for what’s coming next.
Who it’s for?
It’s really for everyone who’s interested in data and data driven decision making. However there are some obvious immediate practical business / professional use cases:
- Existing Veryfi Customers looking to expand their existing offering or improve existing use cases with more data points and deeper complexity to realize value for their customers.
- Auditors and finance teams interested in fraud & document integrity of their financial documents and wanting to see where they can save on vendor expenses.
- Bookkeepers wanting to close monthly books matching receipts to bank statements, running trial balances and even doing procurement.
- Individuals interested in budgeting and staying on top of their finances. I was rather bemused to discover the cost of fuel per gallon over the last decade I’ve been living in California. Recently returning from my trip in Australia seeing how forex affected my spend and then running a trial balance revealed I have too many recurring subscriptions for stupid things.
Try it
If you want to play with The Vault then please email me on [email protected] and tell me what use case you plan to explore and I will give you a build + access to our private slack channel. One catch tho is you need to have a Veryfi API account and even if you aren’t ready to commit you can use the free API plan.
