Circula
AI-driven expense platform from Berlin covering employee and travel expenses, corporate VISA cards, incoming invoices and tax-optimised benefits, with German tax compliance and receipt OCR built in. Sold to businesses only, from 10 licences upwards.
What is Circula?
Circula is a Berlin-built software platform for the money employees spend on their employer's behalf. Its terms describe the Circula Portal as a single platform bundling several software products: Employee & Travel Expenses, Credit Cards, Accounts Payable and Employee Benefits. Each is priced as its own package and they combine into one contract.
The artificial intelligence sits inside the expense workflow rather than beside it. Receipts photographed on a phone are read the moment they arrive: data is extracted, fields are predicted, transactions are matched, and incomplete or non-compliant receipts are flagged back to whoever submitted them. The publisher reports a 92% cut in manual data entry, and says 54% of expenses are ready for export at the moment of submission. Approvals follow the same logic, with low-risk claims routed automatically against company rules and past behaviour while unusual items are held for review.
What sets the product apart is how deeply it is wired into German tax law. Per diems are computed for any country from the current BMF tables, and the three-month rule, the midnight rule, BRKG and the section 14 UStG invoice checks are handled by default rather than configured. A software certificate issued under IDW PS 880 in August 2025 covers the travel expense capture product against GoBD and related criteria.
The card side issues physical and virtual VISA cards with limits up to 750,000 euros each, the cards themselves being issued by Pliant Oy under a VISA Europe licence. The benefits side administers five tax-optimised allowances, covering vouchers, lunch, mobility, internet and recreation, and pushes them into payroll.
Circula GmbH was entered in the Berlin commercial register on 7 February 2017, originally as Beckett Labs GmbH and renamed that September. It reports more than 2,800 corporate customers, over 150,000 users and upwards of 700 million euros processed a year, naming ABOUT YOU, DATEV, Deutsche Fußball Liga, Securitas and Noerr among them. Data is hosted in Germany. The product runs in a browser and as actively maintained iOS and Android apps, and is sold to businesses only.
What it does
- Scan a receipt from a phone and let the AI extract, pre-fill and validate it
- Flag invalid, incomplete or duplicate submissions in real time, back to the submitter
- Calculate per diems and mileage automatically from the current BMF tables
- Route low-risk claims through automatic approval and hold unusual ones for review
- Issue physical and virtual VISA cards with limits up to 750,000 euros per card
- Process incoming supplier invoices with automated section 14 UStG checks
- Administer five tax-optimised employee benefits and transfer them to payroll
When to use Circula / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Circula is the right fit.
When to use Circula
- German small and mid-sized companies still processing expense claims by hand
- Finance and accounting teams that must close the month on GoBD-compliant records
- Tax advisory firms, which get a dedicated programme and a DATEV Premium Partner integration
- Organisations already running DATEV, Personio, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Workday
- Employers wanting expenses, company cards and tax-free benefits under a single contract
When not to use Circula
- Individuals and freelancers: the terms restrict use to businesses, public bodies and public funds
- Teams under ten people, since every contract carries a minimum of ten licences
- Buyers who want month-to-month billing, as the contract runs for a year and renews automatically
- Developers looking for a public API to build against, none being documented
- Companies outside the German tax framework expecting the same depth of local compliance
How to use Circula
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Choose between booking a demo and starting a free trial from any page of the site
- Discuss the package mix with the vendor, since the four products are priced separately
- Budget for the minimum of ten licences and a first contract term of one year
- Agree the free trial period contractually, which can be ended without giving reasons
- Work through implementation with the vendor's team, including the IT integration
- Connect the accounting and payroll systems, most standard integrations being included
- Assign fixed licences to heavy users and flexible ones to occasional submitters
- Roll out the mobile app so employees capture receipts as they go
- Configure travel policies, approval routes and controlling rules to match internal practice
- Use the Help Center and the Compass learning platform to bring the wider team on board
Pros & Cons
Pros
- German tax compliance is native to the product rather than an option to configure
- A named software certificate under IDW PS 880, with issuing auditor, report number and date
- Data hosted in Germany, with a stated commitment to no uncontrolled third-party models
- Deep DATEV integration as a Premium Partner and successor to DATEV Reisekosten Classic
- Expenses, cards, supplier invoices and benefits available under a single contract
- Real, actively maintained mobile apps on both iOS and Android
- Concrete efficiency figures published by the vendor, including 92% less manual data entry
Cons
- The ten-licence minimum and one-year term put the real entry cost well above the unit price
- Displayed prices assume annual billing; no monthly rate is published
- The four packages are priced separately, so a full suite costs considerably more than any one
- Accounts Payable still carries a coming-soon badge while being priced at 149 euros
- Businesses only: no access for individuals, freelancers or very small teams
- No documented public API, leaving partner connectors and CSV files as the integration routes
- The English pricing page still shows untranslated German labels in several places
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanently free plan; a free trial is provided for, though its length is not published. Prices are quoted per month on annual billing. The cheapest paid package is Benefits at 1 EUR per licence per month, followed by Employee & Travel Expenses at 15 EUR per licence per month; Credit Cards starts at 99 EUR per month as a platform fee and Accounts Payable at 149 EUR per month including 100 invoices. A minimum of ten licences applies to every contract, so the realistic entry point is closer to 10 EUR per month for Benefits and 150 EUR per month for Expenses. Six add-ons are offered without published prices, and complex integrations are charged separately.
- AI receipt management with OCR
- automatic per diem and mileage calculation
- local legal and tax compliance
- approval and controlling workflows
- essential integrations and exports
- physical and virtual VISA cards in unlimited number
- 750
- 000 EUR transaction limit per card
- real-time transaction insights
- automatic expense creation
- admin and spend controls
- centralised inbox for incoming invoices
- OCR extraction
- automated UStG section 14 checks
- app-based approval
- DATEV and SEPA integrations (marked as coming soon)
- Voucher
- Lunch
- Mobility
- Internet and Relax benefits
- with payroll integrations and exports
- Add-ons — Document Management System for GoBD archiving
- Customer Care Plus
- Daily Trips
- CO2 Reporting
- Multi-Entity Setup and Tailored Customisations
- none publicly priced
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Circula handles your data.
GDPR overview
The privacy policy, version 1.4 dated 23 February 2024, is specific rather than generic. It names the controller, an external data protection officer appointed through Simpliant, and sets out the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection and complaint under Articles 15 to 21. Each processing activity carries its own legal basis, recipients, transfers and retention period. Transfers to Stripe and Chargebee in the United States are covered by the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses, and a data processing agreement is published. No Article 27 representative is designated, which is expected for a company established in the Union. One defect is worth knowing: the address printed for exercising these rights is misspelt and undeliverable.
Who owns the data?
Circula GmbH, Oranienburger Straße 74 in Berlin, is the controller for the data processed through the platform, and has appointed an external data protection officer through Simpliant. Processing rests on performance of the contract, legitimate interest and legal obligation. The customer remains the owner of its business records; Circula acts on instructions and has published a data processing agreement built on the EU standard contractual clauses. Named recipients are limited and functional: Stripe and Chargebee for payment and invoicing, PostHog for product analytics, and a provider running a high-security data centre in Frankfurt. Each is contractually bound to process only within Circula's instructions.
Reuse rights
Data is used to do the job the customer bought: reading receipts, electronic invoices, allowances and card transactions, predicting the accounting fields, matching transactions, checking them against tax and policy rules, and pushing the result into accounting and payroll through connectors or CSV and SEPA exports. Customers keep their records and export them freely to their own systems, which is the whole point of the DATEV, Personio, Workday and SAP integrations. One question the site never answers is whether customer data feeds the training of Circula's AI models: no page, policy or contract addresses it either way. The AI page states only that processing is GDPR-compliant, hosted in Europe, and uses no uncontrolled third-party models.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Circula hosts in Germany and says so in several places. The product pages state that all servers are hosted in Germany; the privacy policy locates the website servers in Frankfurt am Main and describes a processor operating a high-security data centre in the same city; the AI page describes the platform as hosted in Europe. Product analytics through PostHog keep EU data on AWS infrastructure in Germany, despite the vendor being a US company. The exceptions are financial: payment and invoicing data reaches Stripe and Chargebee in the United States, and occasional usage data may be transferred there too. Those transfers rest on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework adequacy decision and on standard contractual clauses approved by the Commission, with a published data processing agreement behind them. The jurisdiction governing the contract is German, with disputes heard at the seat of the contracting Circula entity.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Circula.
- Automation invites trust: when the AI pre-fills and auto-approves, reviewers stop reading, and an incorrectly classified expense can travel all the way into payroll unchallenged
- The advertised unit prices do not describe what a company will actually pay, because a ten-licence minimum and a one-year commitment sit behind them
- ISO 27001 appears on the site as the framework a management system follows, and elsewhere as a property of the hosting servers; neither means Circula holds the certificate
- The registration number printed in the footer belongs to Pliant Oy, the Finnish card issuer, not to Circula, and should not be taken as the publisher's own
- Nothing published states whether customer data is used to train the AI models, so a buyer with that concern has to ask rather than read
- The e-mail address given for exercising data protection rights is misspelt and its domain has no mail server, so a request sent there will silently fail
- One of the four priced packages is still flagged as coming soon, so a signed contract may cover a product that is not yet delivered
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for a finance platform, and deliberately so. The technical prerequisites are a current browser and an internet connection; the mobile apps come from the public stores. Standard integrations are plug-and-play and included, with the Business Central connector advertised as a one-day job, while complex integrations are scoped and charged. The vendor accompanies implementation and IT integration, claims product adoption above 90% within weeks, and runs a public Help Center plus a learning platform. The real effort is organisational rather than technical: mapping travel policies, approval routes and licence allocation onto existing practice.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Circula
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Circula.
Frequently asked questions
What does Circula actually do?
How much does it cost?
Is there a minimum number of licences?
Is there a free trial or a free plan?
Where is the data hosted?
Is the product certified?
Are there mobile apps?
Does Circula offer a public API?
Who can buy it?
Which systems does it integrate with?
Should you pick Circula?
Circula is a credible answer to a narrow, expensive problem: making employee spending survive a German tax audit without a person retyping every receipt. Its strength is not the AI in the abstract but where the AI is pointed. Per diems from the BMF tables, the three-month rule, BRKG and section 14 UStG checks are handled as defaults, and the claim is backed by a software certificate issued under IDW PS 880 with a named auditor and date, which is rarer than the compliance badges most vendors display.
The commercial shape deserves attention before the technology does. The four packages are priced separately, quoted per month on annual billing, and every contract carries a minimum of ten licences. A headline of 1 EUR per licence therefore describes the benefits module, not the platform; a company wanting the AI expense product should read 15 EUR per licence against at least ten licences and a year of commitment. One of the four packages, Accounts Payable, is priced at 149 EUR while still marked as coming soon.
The company itself is settled rather than early: registered in Berlin in 2017, three funding rounds behind it, more than 2,800 corporate customers, and mobile apps that are genuinely maintained. Data stays in Germany, which will matter to the buyers this product is aimed at.
Two gaps are worth raising with the vendor. Nothing published says whether customer data is used to train its models, in either direction. And the address printed for exercising data protection rights contains a typo that makes it undeliverable, which is a small error in an unfortunate place.
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