AI and your data
Langbyrde reads receipts and makes its suggestions on your own computer, with no AI provider. If you add a provider of your own, this page lists every feature that reaches it, what is sent, what is replaced first and what is not, and how to check it afterwards.
Receipts are read by the text recognition built into macOS and Windows. Category suggestions come from your past choices and a built-in model. Match suggestions come from plain rules, worked out on your computer. None of it needs the internet, an account or an AI provider, and it all works in the Offline setting.
Add a provider with your own key, or a model runner on your own computer. AI is off until you do. In this version a provider is reached for three things: drafting a memo when you press Draft with AI, helping with a receipt whose reading on your computer was weak, and the Test button that checks the provider itself. Your key stays in your computer’s own keychain.
The picture of a receipt. Your company file and your documents. In the Offline and Manual network settings, nothing is sent to a provider at all. In the Connected setting, what is sent is text, with the numbers and contact details the app recognises replaced first, and nothing is sent on a schedule: a request happens only inside something you started, a press of Draft with AI or Test, or the reading of receipts you dropped.
This is what you get without adding anything, and it is the same whether or not a provider is ever added.
Every reading and every suggestion stays a suggestion until you accept it, and your acceptance is recorded as yours.
Three in this version. Each one runs only when the conditions in its row hold; if any of them does not, nothing is sent.
| Feature | What it does | When it runs | What is sent | What is replaced, and what is kept | What you see afterwards |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Draft a memo | Writes a first draft of a memo to file from the records you linked to it: why a transaction happened, what was decided. | Only when you press Draft with AI in the memo editor, and only if you have added a provider and the network setting is Connected. Nothing is shown before it is sent; the text is stored and shown afterwards in AI activity. | The memo’s subject and date and, for each linked record, its number or file name, date, amount and currency, the vendor’s or client’s name, and its note, together with the app’s fixed instructions for drafting. | Before the text is sent, Langbyrde looks for bank account, transit and institution numbers, tax and social insurance numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, street addresses and postal codes, and your company’s name as saved in your company profile, and replaces the ones it recognises with stand-ins; a card number it recognises is cut to its last four digits. Kept, as written: the names of people and businesses on the records, the notes, the file names, the amounts and the dates. It recognises the usual ways these are written. A number written in an unusual way (with dots, misread by the scanner, or split over two lines), a postal code in lower case, or your company’s name written differently from your profile can still be sent. Names of people, shops and clients, amounts, dates, notes and descriptions are sent as written. | The draft appears beside your memo marked AI draft — not saved. It is filed only if you accept it, and the memo is then marked AI-drafted. The call is listed in AI activity. |
| Help with a weak receipt reading | Asks the provider to read the text that was already read off a receipt on your computer, when that reading came out too weak to trust. | While the receipts you dropped on Receipt intake are being read, without a separate click for each one, for a receipt whose reading on your computer fell below the app’s confidence floor. It needs a provider you added and the Connected network setting; without those, nothing is sent. Nothing is shown before it is sent. | The text that was read off that one receipt, how it was read (from the PDF’s own text, or by the text recognition on your computer), and the app’s fixed instructions for reading a receipt. One provider is asked, once. The picture of the receipt is never sent. | Before the text is sent, Langbyrde looks for bank account, transit and institution numbers, tax and social insurance numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, street addresses and postal codes, and your company’s name as saved in your company profile, and replaces the ones it recognises with stand-ins; a card number it recognises is cut to its last four digits. Kept, as written: the shop’s name, the date, the items and the amounts, and any person’s name printed on the receipt, such as the cashier’s or the buyer’s. It recognises the usual ways these are written. A number written in an unusual way (with dots, misread by the scanner, or split over two lines), a postal code in lower case, or your company’s name written differently from your profile can still be sent. Names of people, shops and clients, amounts, dates, notes and descriptions are sent as written. | A new proposal to check in Receipt intake, marked as read with AI. Nothing becomes an expense until you accept it. The call is listed in AI activity. |
| Test a provider | Checks that the address, the key and the model you entered work. | Only when you press Test in Settings → AI providers. | Your key, with a request for the list of models the provider offers. None of your books. For a provider of the OpenAI-compatible kind, the app also asks the address two short questions about which models it offers, once, before its first call to it. | Nothing of yours to replace: no text from your books is in this request. | The result on the page. A connection test is recorded in Network activity, not in AI activity. |
The choice Allow receipt images to be sent to this provider in a provider’s settings sends no picture in this version, whatever it is set to; the privacy policy would change first.
Suppose a photographed hardware-store receipt was read on a Mac, the reading was weak, you have added a provider, and the network setting is Connected. This is the message the provider receives: the app’s fixed instructions, and the text that was read, with the stand-ins the app puts where it replaced something. Every detail below is made up.
# Extract one receipt You are reading one receipt or supplier invoice for a small Canadian corporation's bookkeeping. Return what the document says, and nothing you had to infer. The text below was read from the document by ocr_native. An image of the same document may accompany this message; when it does, the image is the primary source and the text is a cross-check. When the two disagree, follow the image. --- begin document text --- MAPLE LANE HARDWARE <<ADDRESS_1>>, Toronto <<ADDRESS_2>> Tel <<PHONE_1>> GST/HST <<TAX_ID_1>> 2026-09-14 14:32 Cashier: Dana Sold to <<COMPANY_1>>, attn M. Dupont Paint roller set 24.99 Drop sheet, 2 at 4.99 9.98 Subtotal 34.97 HST 4.55 TOTAL 39.52 CAD Paid by card ****4242 --- end document text --- Rules: 1. Answer with a single JSON object matching the schema you were given, and nothing else — no prose, no code fence, no commentary. 2. Every amount is a string with a decimal point, no thousands separator and no currency symbol: "1234.56". The currency is its own field, as a three-letter code. 3. The date is the date printed on the document, as YYYY-MM-DD. Never today's date, and never a date taken from anything but the document itself. 4. Copy values as printed. If the document does not say something, answer null for it rather than guessing. An empty list is the right answer for taxes or line items that are not there. 5. tax_registration is the supplier's own registration number as printed — a GST/HST number, a business number, a VAT number. If none is printed, answer null. 6. Do not calculate. If a line's amount is printed, copy it; do not multiply a quantity by a price, do not add a subtotal and a tax to make a total, and do not correct a document that does not add up. A discrepancy is for the person reviewing this to see. 7. Text such as <<PERSON_1>> is an already-redacted stand-in for something you must not see. Copy it through unchanged if a field genuinely contains it; never try to reconstruct what stood there. 8. You are proposing, not deciding. A person reviews every field before any of it is recorded.
The shop’s address and postal code, its phone number and its GST/HST number were replaced, and so was your company’s name where it was printed exactly as in your company profile. A person’s name printed on the receipt, such as the cashier’s or the buyer’s, is not taken out. A card number printed in full in one of the usual ways would be cut to its last four digits; one written unusually or misread by the scanner could be sent as it was read. The shop’s name, the date, the items and the amounts stay, because they are what the reading is for. No picture goes with this message. What comes back is a proposal with those fields, which you check in Receipt intake before anything becomes an expense.
What you send to your provider is between you and that provider, under its own terms. Langbyrde the company does not receive it.
Try every feature for 45 days. No account, no card, and your books stay on your computer unless you choose to send them.
macOS 13 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel · Windows 10 or 11