How Companies Automate Payroll Accounting with Rita

Anyone working in a payroll office or a tax consultancy knows the scene: The desk is overflowing with sick notes, Excel sheets, and emails with payroll data. The client has once again sent the overtime as a photo from the timesheet. The colleague next door is already typing the third correction of the day because someone has transmitted a bank account incorrectly.

The preliminary payroll accounting consumes time. It is not the actual accounting that causes the effort, but rather the gathering, checking, and structuring of the data beforehand. This is exactly where Rita comes in.

What is Rita and what does she do differently?

Rita is the AI assistant from project b., a Munich-based startup founded in 2023 by experienced payroll professionals. Unlike traditional payroll software, Rita does not replace DATEV, Agenda, or Lexware. She works as an intelligent layer beforehand.

The principle: Clients still send their payroll data via email, upload, or portal. Rita recognizes what is in the documents, structures the information, and prepares everything for payroll processing. Only when a staff member releases the data does it flow into the payroll system.

Rita's core functions at a glance

The typical process: From email to completed preliminary entry

An example from practice: A nursing service with 80 employees sends about 200 documents to its tax consultancy each month. Sick notes, vacation requests, overtime lists, new hires. Previously, the responsible staff member took three days to record and check everything.

With Rita, the process looks like this:

Step 1: Data entry: The client uploads their documents or sends them via email. Rita automatically recognizes the type of document.

Step 2: Extraction and assignment: A sick note is scanned. Rita reads the date, the period, and the employee's name. She assigns the document to the correct employee records and checks whether the data is plausible.

Step 3: Review and release: The staff member sees all the prepared changes in the cockpit. Green marked: complete and plausible. Yellow: inquiries needed. They review, correct if necessary, and release.

Step 4: Transfer: The released data flows directly into DATEV LODAS. No export, no import, no intermediate step.

The result: The three days have been reduced to half a day.

What tasks of preliminary payroll accounting does Rita take over?

Preliminary payroll accounting includes all activities that must be completed before the actual payroll run.

Maintaining master data

Creating new employees, recording address changes, updating bank account information. Rita recognizes these changes in incoming documents and suggests the corresponding adjustments. When a new bank account is added, she automatically checks the IBAN format. When there is an address change, she matches the postal code with the city.

A logistics company with 500 employees processes around 50 master data changes each month. Before Rita: 4 hours of effort. With Rita: 30 minutes for review and release.

Absence management

Vacation, illness, parental leave, training. Each type of absence affects payroll processing differently. Rita automatically categorizes absences based on the submitted documents and the employee's historical patterns.

Particularly valuable: Rita recognizes when continued pay during illness is expiring and the transition to sick pay is imminent. She warns in time before it is too late.

Time recording check

Time sheets, shift plans, project time recordings. Rita checks the reported hours against the required hours and marks anomalies: missing clock-ins, unrealistically long working hours without breaks, deviations from the usual pattern.

For a nursing service with shift work, the automatic detection of shift allowance errors alone saves 8 hours per month. Night shifts that were not marked as such are immediately noticeable.

Document processing

Sick notes, certificates, employment contracts, terminations. Rita scans incoming documents via OCR, extracts the relevant data, and stores them in the digital personnel file. The recognition rate is between 85 and 95 percent for well-trained systems.

Why control remains with humans

A question that regularly arises in discussions with payroll offices: What happens if the AI makes a mistake?

The response from project b. is clear: Rita makes suggestions, but the decision is always made by a human. This is not marketing jargon, but technical reality. Every change must be approved before it flows into the payroll system.

This principle has several reasons:

Legal responsibility: The employer is liable for errors in payroll accounting, not the software.

Professional requirements: Tax consultants are subject to special duties of care.

Client trust: Clients expect that a professional checks their accounting.

Integration into existing systems

A common obstacle with new software: The fear of a large transition. New training, data migration, weeks of onboarding. With Rita, that is eliminated.

Supported payroll systems

• DATEV LODAS

• DATEV Payroll

• Agenda Payroll

• SBS Payroll

• Other systems available upon request

The integration works via standardized interfaces. Released changes are transferred directly. The existing payroll system remains as it is. The processes beforehand become more efficient.

Who benefits from Rita?

Tax consultancies with payroll clients

Firms that manage 20 or more payroll clients benefit the most. The effort for preliminary entry scales with the number of clients. The more diverse the clients, the greater the effect.

Payroll offices and accounting service providers

For specialized payroll offices, efficiency is vital. Margins are tight, and competition is fierce. Those who work faster can serve more clients or deliver higher quality.

Companies with internal payroll departments

Even companies that handle their payroll accounting themselves can use Rita. Especially in decentralized structures, the central data collection significantly simplifies the process.

Time savings in numbers

The figures come from the experience of project b. and may vary depending on the starting situation.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions About Automating Payroll Accounting

Can payroll processing be fully automated?

Technically, full automation is not yet possible. German payroll accounting is complex: collective agreements, allowances, special cases, regional peculiarities. Rita automates the preliminary entry and data validation. The actual accounting and final review remain with humans.

What is done in preliminary payroll accounting?

Preliminary payroll accounting encompasses all activities before the payroll run: recording working hours, maintaining master data, processing sick notes and vacation requests, checking for completeness and plausibility. These tasks are exactly what Rita handles.

How does outsourcing payroll accounting with Rita work?

Rita does not replace outsourcing but complements it. If you outsource payroll accounting to a tax consultant or payroll office, you can use Rita to simplify data transfer. Your service provider benefits from structured, verified data instead of email chaos.

Which program is best for payroll accounting?

It depends on your situation. DATEV is the standard in tax consultancies. Agenda and Lexware are alternatives for smaller firms or companies. Rita works as a front-end system and can be combined with all common programs.

What are the costs for automation?

The costs vary depending on the number of clients and the range of functions. The key factor is the time saved: If Rita saves you 20 hours per month and your staff hour costs 40 euros, the investment is worthwhile from a savings of 800 euros monthly.

Conclusion: Less data chaos, more consulting time

Payroll accounting will not disappear. But the way it is done is changing. Rita takes over the tedious tasks: scanning documents, extracting data, finding errors, bundling inquiries. What remains is the professional review and consulting.

For payroll offices and tax consultancies, this means: More clients with the same team. Or more time for clients with complex questions. For staff members, it means: Timely finishing work, even in payroll week.

Project b. developed Rita together with practitioners. You can tell. The software thinks in accounting cycles, not in features. It knows the pitfalls of German payroll accounting. And it understands that in the end, a human bears the responsibility.

Sources and further links

• project b.: https://project-b.dev

• DATEV: https://www.datev.de

• Federal Chamber of Tax Consultants: https://www.bstbk.de