Accountant or AI Tool: Why More SIA Owners Are Choosing the Second Option

Why are SIA owners looking for an alternative to an accountant?

Bookkeeping for a small company in Latvia usually looks like this: every month you collect receipts and invoices, send them to your accountant, wait for questions about unclear transactions, sign the prepared declaration, and hope that nothing has been missed. For most SIA owners who are not trained accountants, this process is not transparent. You trust the person handling it, but you rarely fully understand what is being submitted on your behalf.

Three pain points appear most often:

• Time. Collecting, scanning, and sending receipts takes hours every month - time that could be spent on clients, sales, or product development.

• Lack of transparency. Accountants often work with Excel files or outdated software that has no mobile app and no simple overview a business owner can easily understand.

• Reacting instead of forecasting. Most small companies only learn about their financial situation after the accountant sends a finished report, not in real time.

These three issues are exactly why AI bookkeeping tools have become a serious alternative in recent years, not just an experiment for technology enthusiasts.

How much does an accountant cost in Latvia - and what do you really get for that money?

Outsourced accounting prices for a small SIA in Latvia usually start at around €100–150 per month for basic service and increase depending on the number of transactions, payroll calculations, and VAT registration status. For this money, you usually receive:

• data entry based on the documents you provide;

• preparation and submission of tax declarations to the State Revenue Service of Latvia (VID);

• consultations on request - often with a response time of 1–3 working days.

The problem is not necessarily the quality of accountants’ work. The problem is the model. You pay for human time spent on repetitive and predictable tasks: reading a receipt, entering the amount, choosing a category, and matching the document with a bank transaction. This is exactly the part that AI tools can now handle faster and cheaper, leaving human expertise for truly complex questions.

What is an AI accounting tool, and how is it different from old-style software?

There is an important difference many SIA owners do not know: old-style accounting software and an AI accounting tool are not the same thing.

Traditional software, such as locally installed accounting systems, still requires someone - either you or your accountant - to manually enter each transaction, choose the right accounting category, and understand accounting terminology. These systems were often built for accountants, not business owners, so the interface can be complex and the learning curve can be steep.

An AI accounting tool works differently:

1. You connect your bank account. Transactions appear automatically, without manual entry.

2. You take a photo of a receipt with your phone, just like taking any other photo.

3. The AI algorithm reads, categorizes, and matches the transaction with the correct receipt, recognizing the amount, date, and transaction type.

4. The system prepares the required report, such as a VAT declaration, and you approve it in a few clicks.

You do not need to understand debits and credits. You do not need to know what input VAT means. The tool is designed for someone who runs a business, not for someone who studied accounting.

Can an AI tool fully replace an accountant?

The honest answer: for most small and medium-sized SIAs, yes - at least for day-to-day bookkeeping. An AI tool such as SelfSIA can:

• automatically import and categorize bank transactions;

• read receipts and invoices from photos;

• prepare and submit VAT declarations and other standard reports to VID;

• give you a real-time overview of your company’s finances without waiting for an accountant’s reply.

What still remains in the hands of a human expert are less common and more complex situations: international transactions with unclear VAT treatment, company restructuring, tax disputes, or specific legal questions. But these situations make up only a small part of what many companies currently pay an accountant for every month.

So it is more accurate to say this: an AI tool does not replace accounting knowledge as a whole. It replaces the repetitive work you used to pay a person for every month, regardless of how simple your transactions were.

How SelfSIA works in practice - from receipt photo to VID report

SelfSIA was built specifically for SIA owners, not accountants. The process looks like this:

1. You connect your bank account - direct integration means transactions appear automatically, without exporting and importing files between systems.

2. You take a photo of a receipt when the transaction happens - at a café, a petrol station, or after buying office supplies.

3. AI matches the receipt with the bank transaction and automatically assigns the correct category and VAT rate.

4. The system generates reports in real time - at any moment, you can see how much the company has earned, spent, and owes in taxes.

5. Tax declarations are prepared and submitted to VID automatically, according to the required deadlines.

For example, in Latvia, a VAT declaration must be submitted by the 20th day of the following month for the previous tax period. This is exactly the type of deadline a person can forget, but an automated system will not. The standard VAT rate in Latvia is 21%, with reduced rates of 12%, 5%, and 0% for certain groups of goods and services. From 1 January 2026, the reduced 12% rate also applies to bread, milk, eggs, and fresh poultry. An AI system can take such changes into account automatically, while in a manual Excel file they can easily go unnoticed.

It is also important to remember that from 2025, the VAT registration threshold of €50,000 is calculated for the calendar year, not for the previous 12 months. This is another example of why an automated and continuously updated system is safer than relying on someone to remember every legal change manually.

Accountant or AI tool - a quick comparison

Who still needs an accountant?

Honestly, in some cases human experience is still very valuable. If your company has a complex international structure, is going through a merger or sale, or needs legal advice on a specific and unclear tax question, an expert’s opinion is useful. But for most small Latvian SIAs - trading, service, or consulting companies with a standard transaction flow - day-to-day bookkeeping is exactly the kind of work an AI tool can handle faster, cheaper, and with a lower risk of human error caused by fatigue or rushing.

How to start using SelfSIA

Switching from a traditional accountant or old software to SelfSIA does not require accounting knowledge or a complicated setup process:

1. Register at selfsia.com and create your SIA profile.

2. Connect your bank account - the process takes only a few minutes.

3. Start taking photos of receipts in your daily work - the system handles the rest automatically.

4. Track your financial position in real time and let SelfSIA prepare and submit your VID reports on time.

If you are tired of waiting for an accountant’s reply, unsure what exactly is being submitted on behalf of your company, and tired of paying for repetitive manual work, SelfSIA was built for you. It is not just another accounting program, but a tool that finally allows an SIA owner to understand and control company finances without wasting time and money on a process that can be automated.

Sources: State Revenue Service of Latvia (vid.gov.lv) - VAT declaration and tax payment deadlines, VAT rates; likumi.lv - Value Added Tax Law and related Cabinet regulations. The article has been updated according to the 2026 regulatory framework.