Cortena

What It Is

Cortena is an AI operator for accounts payable that automates the manual work of reading, coding, and processing invoices. The platform combines AI invoice processing with a no-code workflow builder that lets finance teams design how invoices move through their organization without writing code. Cortena's site is aimed at finance teams in SMEs, financial professionals and accounting firms who want to move from manual invoice processing (reading, coding, splitting lines, routing to entities, and entering into ledgers) to automated workflows while keeping people in the loop for approval and review decisions. The platform emphasizes that the work is slow, reactive, and easy to get wrong when done by hand, and says it aims to change that.

The company positions Cortena as an alternative to traditional rules-based automation. Classic automation fires a rule when a field matches a pattern, but Cortena reads the whole invoice first, codes every line according to your company's chart of accounts, weighs its own confidence, and only then does the workflow branch decide where the invoice goes next. The company's line is that the workflow acts on judgment rather than just a matched value.

What You Build and How

Cortena's workflow builder uses a drag-and-drop canvas where you add, remove, and rewire process steps to create your approval flow. Every node represents one step in the workflow. The agent reasons before the branch decides. Condition nodes read the invoice and the agent result, then send each invoice down the right path. You split on the recipient entity, the amount, the supplier, or whether the agent coded the invoice with high confidence, nesting conditions as deep as you need.

A condition can read the recipient entity, the amount, the supplier, the invoice date and the agent result, including its confidence and any review flags. The sample flow on the page branches on an amount over 5.000,00 EUR to a two-step approval, sends one entity (Cortena B.V., NL) to a local approver, holds anything the agent flagged for review, and marks the rest ready for export. Conditions are set with plain dropdowns for the field, the operator and the value, and the page says there is no scripting language to learn. You add review or approval nodes wherever you want a person to look. Set who approves based on a person, a role, or a rule from your approval matrix. Approved invoices continue down the flow; rejected ones return to the sender with a reason. For multi-entity organizations, the root workflow is inherited by sub-entities but locked by default so it cannot drift. When one Mandant needs a local difference, you can customize that entity's copy while others keep following the root.

Cortena manages the invoice workflow end-to-end. Capture pulls invoices from email, cloud drives, and supplier portals with every field extracted and duplicates caught before they reach you. The platform parses e-invoice formats including UBL, CII, ZUGFeRD, and Factur-X. Cortena categorizes invoices with AI, booking each invoice the way your business does: line by line with accounts, cost centers, cost carriers, accruals, finding the right general ledger account beyond simple supplier-to-ledger rules and using your chart of accounts and your business logic. Route each invoice to the right entity, apply that entity's own rules, and run approval flows as complex as your organization needs. A human stays in the loop: nothing posts until the right people sign off.

Once approved, invoices go straight into DATEV, Exact Online, Twinfield, or AADE myDATA, with payment prepared. The company says this takes seconds. A Google Drive node builds folder paths from a template with placeholders such as the invoice year and the supplier name, resolves them per invoice and creates folders that do not exist. It runs after export, and the page says the DATEV archive stays the record of truth.

You save a draft of a workflow and publish when ready, with nothing changing for live invoices while you work. Save as many drafts as you like, then publish when it is right. Preview the path to trace how a sample invoice would move through every node before you commit. Make the draft live in one click, and new invoices follow the new flow from that moment. Every published version is kept, so you can see what a workflow looked like on any date.

Plans, Pricing, and Integrations

The company's pages show no prices. Its closing pitch is "Run a pilot, commit later. See it work on your own invoices, then decide," and the calls to action are demo requests: the company says it maps your current approval process in the demo and shows you the exact workflow in Cortena.

Cortena integrates with major accounting systems: DATEV Rechnungswesen, DATEV Unternehmen Online, Exact Online, Twinfield, and AADE myDATA for posting approved invoices. The platform offers bank connections for live bank feeds from 2,000+ banks, and a bank reconciliation area that matches payments to invoices. The navigation also lists expense management, always-on payables for preparing and scheduling payment runs, receivables with CRM invoices, payment advice and dunning, and a GoBD-aligned audit trail on every step. Cortena includes an MCP server, allowing you to ask Cortena questions from ChatGPT or Claude. The company states that approximately 90% of payables are booked automatically, processing takes about 30 seconds per invoice from capture to booking-ready, and it has processed 50,000 or more invoices on the platform.

Who It Suits and Who It Does Not

Cortena is written for finance teams in SMEs, financial professionals who want a faster close, and accounting firms that want to serve more clients per accountant. The site also groups its pitch by industry, listing VC and family offices, high tech and deep tech, food and beverage, e-commerce, and entertainment. Companies with several legal entities, an approval matrix that depends on amount and supplier, and a DATEV, Exact Online or Twinfield ledger are the clearest match, because the workflow builder is built around entity inheritance, per-entity rules and those export targets. One quoted customer, a CFO at eigenblue, says no tool they have seen integrates with DATEV as smoothly and that it takes repetitive work off the team.

The caveats are about scope. This is an accounts payable product with a workflow builder inside it, not a general process platform: the nodes on the page cover invoices, entities, agent results, approvals, exports and a Google Drive step, and the pages describe nothing for HR, IT or customer processes. The named export targets are DATEV, Exact Online, Twinfield and AADE myDATA, so a team on another ledger should ask what is supported. The pages show no prices and mention no free plan, so the first step is a demo or a pilot. A company with very few invoices and one entity may find a flow this configurable more than it needs.