What capture gives you
Invoice capture, whether you pay for a dedicated tool or get it bundled with your accounting software, reads a document and turns it into a transaction: supplier, date, net, VAT, gross, a nominal code, posted to your ledger. It is useful, and it is increasingly free or included. But getting the numbers into the ledger was never the risky part.
What capture doesn't answer
Getting the numbers into the ledger says nothing about whether the document behind them stands up. A captured transaction looks identical whether or not:
- the supplier's VAT number is actually on the register, and registered to the name on the invoice;
- the document carries the particulars a VAT invoice is expected to show;
- the VAT and the line totals reconcile to the stated total;
- you have already processed this invoice (the same one, re-sent);
- a credit note says which invoice it corrects.
Those questions surface later, at a VAT return, at year end or in an inspection, when the paperwork is four quarters old and the supplier has moved on.
What NoticeDesk does
NoticeDesk audits the invoice at the moment it arrives, and shows its working. Every document is read field by field, with anything doubtful flagged, then put through 16 compliance checks (a 17th on credit notes and on receipts) covering the VAT-invoice particulars and the arithmetic, with the gov.uk reference attached wherever an HMRC rule applies. The supplier's VAT registration is checked against the official register: VIES for EU numbers, HMRC's Check-a-UK-VAT-number service for GB; a lookup that can't be completed is recorded as unverified, never assumed. Duplicate detection compares each document against everything you've already processed, on invoice number plus supplier name or VAT number, so the same invoice re-sent under a different spelling of the supplier's name is still flagged against your history before you pay it. Like every NoticeDesk check, it's advisory: it warns, you decide.
When a check fails, NoticeDesk reads that one figure again from the document, exactly as printed, and the check runs on what comes back. Nothing else on the record moves.
And it keeps the record. Every verdict, edit and export is stored per invoice with who did it and when, and the whole VAT period rolls up into one review screen and an audit pack you can hand to whoever asks.
If Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has reached you (or reaches you in 2027 or 2028), that stored record matters even more: the typed date, amounts and VAT, the check results and the chain of custody are the evidence behind the digital record your ledger keeps, and the exports are the digital link into it. NoticeDesk doesn't file, submit or send anything to HMRC; the software that holds your records does. The category each transaction is posted to stays yours to choose, in your ledger, at export.
Where the difference shows up
- Before you pay an invoice. Capture has told you what it's for. NoticeDesk adds whether the document supports the claim, while the money is still yours.
- When the VAT return is due. A coded list from capture is a starting point. What you want is the short list of invoices with defects, separated from the ones with none, with the evidence behind each verdict. That is what the VAT Invoice Check gives you.
- Months later, when someone questions a figure. The transaction is in your ledger either way. The record of who checked what, and when, is in NoticeDesk.
You can have both
NoticeDesk checks the document behind the posting, which is the job capture was never built to do. This isn't an argument for replacing anything. If capture is already included in what you pay for, keep it; it does the posting. Where capture is free, the checking is what's worth paying for.
What it costs
Plans start at £19/month ex VAT, and one credit covers a document of up to 10 pages. See what each plan includes and which plans start with a free trial.