What breaks first when your volume doubles?
That was the question behind Finance Unlocked. Here is what the room learned: the lessons, the numbers, the research behind them and the quotes worth sharing. Test each lesson against your own team as you read.
You first add your name, so your score builds up as you answer the checks. Email is optional.
- 6sessions
- 27lessons
- 9quote cards
- 6checks for your team
6 sessions, 27 lessons
Pick a session to go straight to its lessons, or read on from the top. Each one ends with a quick check for your own team.
Opening and researchWhy finance breaks firstPeter Engel, CEO Actuals, plus Actuals Research3 lessons 
KeynoteAI in finance: real talkRonald Kemmeren, Partner at Smile Sail5 lessons 
Breakout: AI in accountingWhat AI really does in the booksAndré Kwakernaat, Tibata, and Jennifer Kuiper4 lessons 
Breakout: order-to-cashInside the payment black boxBram van Kessel and Sven Liefting, Actuals5 lessons 
PanelControl, speed and truthPatrick Roozeman, Uwe van Rensburg and Marinda van Harskamp, moderated by Peter Engel6 lessons 
Launch and customer storyWork from the differencePeter Lem, CTO Actuals, and Arturo Arpón, Helloprint4 lessons There was also a breakout on building the ERP foundation for scale. It was not recorded, so its lessons are not on this page.
Why finance breaks first
Peter Engel, CEO Actuals, plus Actuals Research
Peter Engel opened with the state of the market. Everyone wants AI on their numbers, but most finance data is not ready for it. Actuals' own research into 10 large Dutch e-commerce companies found only 2 hiring to build it.
3 lessons below
- 1.1
AI without ready data gets scrapped.
Through 2026, Gartner expects organisations to abandon 60 percent of AI projects that lack AI-ready data. Peter put that number on screen to open the day.
Gartner, February 2025 - 1.2
The ambition is everywhere. The foundation is not.
87 percent of CFOs call AI important or extremely important for finance in the year ahead. Yet when Actuals read the open finance roles of 10 large Dutch e-commerce companies, only 2 were visibly hiring people to build data and systems into finance.
Gartner 2025; Actuals Research, June and July 2026 - 1.3
Look at who a company hires, not at what it says.
Hiring shows the plan long before the figures do. 7 of the 10 companies hire to keep the current machine running. 1 is barely hiring in finance at all.
Actuals Research, June and July 2026
AI in finance: adoption has levelled off
Finance functions using AI
Finance organisations
Source: Gartner CFO surveys, November 2025 and June 2026
of AI projects without AI-ready data will be abandoned through 2026
Gartnerof CFOs call AI important for finance in the year ahead
Gartnerlarge Dutch e-commerce companies are visibly hiring to build data and systems into finance
Actuals ResearchWhat breaks first in your business when the volume doubles?
Pick one to see what other readers chose.
AI in finance: real talk
Ronald Kemmeren, Partner at Smile Sail
Ronald invests in software and AI companies across the Benelux, and his own team went through AI adoption this year. His message: the tools are not the hard part. People, habits and ownership are.
5 lessons below
"You all have Copilot now. I wish you all good luck."
- 2.1
Leadership has to lift AI from islands to the whole team.
Across Smile Sail's portfolio everyone knew about AI, but people were figuring it out "on their own little island". That doesn't scale to a team or a company unless leadership makes it a priority.
Keynote, 07:05 - 2.2
Expect people to fall back when it gets busy.
When his own team got busy in May, they stopped using AI. It only came back in June and July, once they trained together and built their own agents.
Keynote, 10:01 - 2.3
Name champions and make building fun.
Make it a CEO topic, name 1 AI champion at C-level and 1 in each team, and run hackathons. How people learn to build matters more than what they build first.
Keynote, 22:53 - 2.4
Automate what you do 10 times, not what is new.
Don't judge an agent by the effort of building it once. Look at the saving over the 10 times you do the task, such as accrual estimates, collections or credit-risk signals.
Keynote, 33:44 - 2.5
Your team owns what it sends you.
AI can produce endless output, so reviewing it is where people struggle. In a vendor test Ronald showed, a specialised AI data tool got 85 percent of a complex request right; 2 general AI models scored 25 and 50 percent. Someone on your team still owns the other 15 percent.
Keynote, 27:19 and 36:51
How often AI gets it right on business data
The test Ronald showed (vendor test, 1 complex request)
The public BIRD benchmark for business database questions
The gap to 100% is what someone on your team has to own. Sources: Finance Unlocked keynote; BIRD benchmark, September 2026
Who owns what AI produces in your finance team?
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What AI really does in the books
André Kwakernaat, Tibata, and Jennifer Kuiper
André, co-founder of Twinfield and now of Tibata, showed what AI agents already do inside accounting firms. Jennifer, a former CFO, made it about your own role.
4 lessons below
- 3.1
Connecting an accounting system is harder than it looks.
Ask Exact's API for the open items of 31 December and you get today's. Details like that decide whether AI gives you the right answer, and they are why do-it-yourself connections break.
Session André and Jennifer - 3.2
Put your expertise into the agents.
André built his knowledge as an accountant into Tibata's agents. That is why the system knows what a is.
Session André and Jennifer - 3.3
15 sets of books, checked in a single Saturday.
Last Saturday André checked 15 sets of books, for his son and people in his neighbourhood, and found the errors. They get a list of what to change, fix it, and he runs it again. He estimates it saves them thousands of euros in accountant fees.
Session André and Jennifer - 3.4
AI literacy is now part of risk management.
Since August 2026, regulators can check under the EU AI Act, Jennifer said. If your team can't show it, that is a risk, just like compliance gaps or unclear responsibilities.
Session André and Jennifer
AI literacy under the EU AI Act
- 1 Aug 2024The AI Act enters into force
- 2 Feb 2025Duty to build AI literacy of staff applies (Article 4)
- July 2026Digital Omnibus: the duty stays, but no specific level is prescribed
- 2 Aug 2026National supervisors start supervising and enforcing
Source: European Commission, AI literacy Q&A, updated July 2026. In the Netherlands, the AP and RDI coordinate AI supervision.
Watch the session and answer along
The video of André and Jennifer pauses at each question. Answer it and see how you score against other viewers.
- 17 minutes of video
- 11 questions
- In Dutch, with English subtitles
Could you connect your accounting system to an AI tool today and trust the dates and balances it gets back?
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Inside the payment black box
Bram van Kessel and Sven Liefting, Actuals
Bram took the room from order to money in the bank, at high volume. Every step between your shop, your payment provider and your bank is a place where the numbers can drift apart.
5 lessons below
- 4.1
A payment and the money in your bank are 2 different events.
When a customer pays, they no longer owe you the money. Your does, until moves it on to your bank.
Breakout, 00:08 to 00:12 - 4.2
Record every payment event, then work out the status.
A stored status like "paid" can change, and you can miss events. Log every payment and refund, and you can show that nothing is missing.
Breakout, 00:24 - 4.3
Your payment provider is a black box.
Between what customers pay and what reaches the bank sit refunds, , fees, currency conversion, and holds, each with its own timing. As volume grows, providers keep more in reserve.
Breakout, 00:25 to 00:29 - 4.4
Use your payment provider's balance report for accounting.
It works like a bank statement per currency and shows every flow. Settlement reports come late, and payment reports miss later fees. Not every provider offers one, so ask.
Breakout, 00:29 to 00:33 - 4.5
Agree which truth you are talking about.
Your shop, your and your bank each see different open items. The shop view runs on , which usually arrive, "but sometimes they don't". Miss one and the statement is wrong.
Breakout, 00:38 to 00:39
From payment to bank: where it drifts
Sources: Adyen Help Center (settlement delay); Stripe (rolling reserves). Webhooks between these steps can arrive twice, late or out of order (Stripe and Adyen docs).
Would you tick these statements for your own order-to-cash?
- We register individual payment events and work out the payment status from them.
- We can trace a gross payment, in the currency the customer paid in, all the way to the net payout.
- We know which type of payment provider report to use for accounting.
- We can trace aggregated journal entries back to individual transactions.
- We match and reconcile our transitory and clearing accounts.
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Control, speed and truth
Patrick Roozeman, Uwe van Rensburg and Marinda van Harskamp, moderated by Peter Engel
Patrick Roozeman runs fuel and charging cards at MultiTankcard, with about 700,000 users. Uwe van Rensburg is CFO of the camper rental marketplace Goboony and Yescapa. Marinda van Harskamp designs finance processes for high-volume companies at Hudifine.
6 lessons below
- 5.1
Design from the business event.
Marinda starts with each event in the business and asks what it means financially. Like engineers digging a tunnel through the Alps, she works from both ends: the event on one side, the report you need on the other. Then she connects the middle.
Panel, 02:28 and 13:40 - 5.2
Report the exceptions, not the totals.
Patrick wants every amount on an invoice, even a 10 euro line, linked to the exact transaction behind it. Once that holds, the monthly report only shows what you didn't expect.
Panel, 11:10 - 5.3
Put finance at the start of the process.
Today finance collects data at month-end and repairs mistakes made earlier. Patrick turns it around: what does staying in control mean for the steps before the report?
Panel, 12:37 - 5.4
Agree what your words mean.
Uwe's team wrote down shared definitions, so that revenue, cancellation and refund mean the same to everyone. "When someone says revenue, everyone knows what revenue means."
Panel, 22:53 - 5.5
You don't always need one big ERP.
At Goboony and Yescapa the logic lives in the platform, which keeps changing. Their choice: a small ERP per entity, tooling to consolidate, and their own BI on top.
Panel, 29:47 - 5.6
Take the big bite.
Book big blocks of time for change, in a regular rhythm. Otherwise the backlog keeps growing. You are building the track while the train is running.
Panel, 15:51 and 17:02
Why EV charging cards multiply the work
Fuel card customer, per week
1 transactionSame customer, driving electric
about 4 transactionsPatrick Roozeman, panel. For context: Dutch drivers with a home charger plug in 11 times a month (Nationaal Laadonderzoek 2025). The Netherlands had almost 210,000 public charge points in 2025.
more transactions when a fuel card customer starts charging: about 4 charges a week against 1 fill-up
Patrick RoozemanCan you trace every amount on an invoice back to the exact transaction behind it?
When your team designs a finance process, where do you start?
Work from the difference
Peter Lem, CTO Actuals, and Arturo Arpón, Helloprint
Peter Lem launched the new Actuals. Arturo Arpón showed what Helloprint found when it matched every supplier invoice line against its orders.
4 lessons below
- 6.1
Hiring more people is a symptom.
As payment methods, entities and currencies grow, teams hire. Then the close gets longer, open items pile up and write-offs follow.
Launch, 43:58 - 6.2
A gap tells you nothing until you know what is in it.
A gap of 40,000 euros tells you nothing on its own. It could be a late payout, partial refunds or a bank transfer someone entered by hand. You need to see which.
Launch, 45:41 - 6.3
The money isn't missing. It's hiding in the reconciliation.
Helloprint handles more than a million order lines a year from over 200 suppliers, each with its own formats. Matching every invoice line against the purchase order surfaced more than 500,000 euros in overcharges in 2025.
Helloprint, slides 73 and 75 - 6.4
Let AI agents work with your finance data.
The new Actuals connects to AI agents through , an open standard, so an agent can work with your finance data, for example to clear unclear open items. Helloprint helped build the first one.
Launch, 52:12
Out of every 1,000 payments, 15 go wrong
At the median company, 1.5% of payments are duplicate or erroneous. Helloprint only found its overcharges by checking every line.
Source: APQC benchmark, 1,686 organisations
net supplier overcharges found in 2025
Helloprintrecovered from suppliers
Helloprintcorrected in Helloprint's own books
HelloprintHow do you check supplier invoices against purchase orders?
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