An AI that really sits inside your Moneybird, and writes nothing until you say yes.
You searched for Claude and Moneybird, so let us be straight about it: Schakel does not connect to Claude and not to your Anthropic account. Schakel runs its own AI assistant, on DeepSeek, and that one does work straight inside your Moneybird administration. For what you are after that hardly matters: you want your bookkeeping to do itself, not a particular brand of model behind it. What you do want to know is what such an assistant is allowed to do, and what holds it back. That is below.
What that looks like
What the assistant does
What this automation does, and when.
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A fixed list of actions, and no more
The model is handed exactly one list of actions and can call nothing else. Asking questions, creating invoices and quotes, booking receipts and purchase invoices, logging hours, looking up and updating contacts, registering payments. What is not on the list does not happen, even if you ask for it.
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Confirmation before anything is in Moneybird
Every action that records something shows a preview first: which contact, which lines, which VAT rate, which project, which total. Say nothing and nothing happens. That is not a setting you switch on, it is how it works.
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Asking never changes anything
What is outstanding, how much revenue this month, how much VAT for this quarter, which bank entries are still unprocessed, how many billable hours are waiting. Those answers come out of your own administration and leave nothing behind in it.
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It remembers what you teach it
That one supplier usually belongs to one project, or that a customer is billed per hour: that becomes a knowledge card. Every card records who wrote it, you, the guided setup or the assistant itself, and you can switch it off.
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Sending and deleting come last
Sending an invoice reaches your customer, and deleting one cannot be undone. Those actions sit deliberately at the bottom of the list and, like the rest, ask for your confirmation first.
Can I not just ask Claude this myself?
For explaining and thinking along: absolutely, go ahead. For your administration it breaks on one thing: a chat window has no access to your Moneybird. It can read what you paste in and write back what you copy out. Nothing further.
Where does it get its data?
From what you paste into the conversation. An export from last week is last week, and an amount you mistype goes unnoticed.
Straight out of your own Moneybird administration, at the moment you ask. Open invoices, hours, quotes, purchase invoices, contacts.
Can it record anything?
No. You get text back that you then retype into Moneybird yourself. That retyping was the work.
Yes, from a fixed list: create a sales invoice or quote, book a receipt or purchase invoice, log hours, create or update a contact, register a payment.
What if it gets something wrong?
Then a wrong answer sits in the conversation and you miss it while retyping.
Anything that records something first shows what it is about to do: contact, lines, VAT, project, total. Nothing reaches Moneybird until you confirm.
Does it speak up on its own?
No. A chat window waits for you to start. An invoice going overdue does not turn itself into a conversation.
Yes. Payment received, invoice overdue, quote expired, new purchase invoice, monthly overview, VAT reminder, unprocessed bank entries. Every type is its own switch.
If you do want to use your sales data in Claude yourself, for analysis or to draft copy, that is a different story and it has its own page.
What it saves you
- You type a sentence, you see a draft, and only then is it in Moneybird.
- The assistant can only do what is on the action list, so you know where the edge is.
- Questions about your own figures without building reports or exporting anything.
- What it learns about your business sits as separate cards in your dashboard and can be undone.
Setting it up
- 01
Connect your Moneybird administration
You grant Schakel access once through Moneybird itself and pick which administration it concerns. No second system is needed: this is an automation, not a link between two parties.
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Walk through the guided setup
You settle which ledger account your revenue belongs to, which VAT rates you use and which projects are running. That becomes the base knowledge the assistant starts with.
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Start with a question
Start with something that changes nothing, for instance what is outstanding. That way you see whether it reads your administration correctly before you let it record anything.
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Switch on the notifications you want
Every notification type is its own switch, and quiet hours hold them in the evening and at weekends. You can also just say so in the chat.
What you need
- A Moneybird administration you administer
- Clarity on the ledger account and VAT rates you use
- A Schakel account, which holds the chat and your knowledge cards
Not sure how to get those keys? Step by step:
Where it runs
On app.schakel.app, with your own Schakel account. No webshop required.
Then from €10 a month billed yearly, or stay on free. See the tiers
Set the automation upRelated connections
Connect a different pair
Schakel also links two systems to each other directly. Pick two and see what travels between them.
Common questions
Does Schakel run on Claude?
No. The language model behind the assistant is DeepSeek. We do not connect to Anthropic and you cannot attach a Claude account of your own. What we do build is an assistant that works inside your Moneybird.
Can I use my own model or API key?
No. There is one model behind the assistant and we pick it, because the actions, the confirmation step and the prompts are tuned to it. Attaching your own key is not possible.
Does the assistant book anything without me knowing?
No. Every action that records something shows first what it is about to do and waits for your answer. Notifications that arrive on their own are messages, not bookings.
What if the model makes something up?
The model only picks an action from a fixed list and fills its fields. The figures in an answer come out of your administration, not out of the model. And because you see the draft before anything is recorded, a misunderstanding is a question rather than a booking.
Where does the conversation live?
In a chat in your Schakel dashboard. With the WhatsApp add-on you can use the same assistant from your phone as well.
Does this file my VAT return?
No. You can ask what stands for this quarter and you get an overview from your own figures. That is an overview, not a return, and filing stays with you or your bookkeeper.
Can you connect Claude to Moneybird?
Yes. Schakel connects through the official APIs of Claude and Moneybird, so you install nothing on your own server and nothing travels outside those two parties.
Which VAT rate do my sales get in Moneybird?
The rate is set per line: 21%, 9% or 0%. Sales to Belgium and other EU countries get the rate of the destination country, ready for your OSS return.