How VanVox uses AI

1. In short

• AI helps VanVox understand your voice notes and messages and turn them into drafts;
• AI can make mistakes, so its output is always treated as a draft, never a final answer;
• fixed, rule-based logic — not AI judgement — handles the arithmetic, VAT, dates and numbering;
• quotes and invoices stay as drafts until you explicitly confirm them;
• silence, or simply reading a message, is never treated as confirmation;
• you can correct any detail before you confirm.

2. What AI is used for

VanVox uses AI in a focused way, to save you time when you send information. In practice, AI helps with:

• converting voice notes into text;
• extracting structured details from a voice note or a typed message;
• identifying possible customers, dates, amounts, quantities, descriptions and the kind of document you seem to want;
• assisting with clarification when information looks incomplete;
• supporting the creation of a draft you can review.

Whatever AI produces remains subject to validation and your own review. It is a starting point for a draft — not a decision, and not a confirmed record.

3. Turning voice notes into text

When you send a voice note, VanVox needs to turn the audio into text before it can do anything useful with it:

• the voice note may be retrieved from the messaging provider;
• the audio may be sent to a transcription provider to be converted into text;
• transcription can contain mistakes — accents, background noise, product names and numbers are all easy to mishear;
• the transcript is an intermediate processing artefact used to create your draft, not a record of its own;
• temporary audio and transcripts are governed by our lifecycle and retention controls.

Because a transcript can be wrong, it is worth reviewing the names, dates, quantities and prices in the resulting draft before you confirm anything.

4. Reading the details

Once your words are in text form — whether you typed them or they came from a voice note — VanVox converts that free-form wording into structured draft fields such as the customer, the line items, amounts and dates.

• the fields VanVox looks for depend on the workflow you are in;
• extraction may miss, misread or infer details incorrectly;
• application validation checks the result for missing or inconsistent details;
• where something is unclear or missing, VanVox may ask you a question rather than guess;
• the extracted result does not become a confirmed record automatically.

5. Fixed rules versus AI judgement

Not everything in VanVox is AI. A lot of the work is handled by deterministic controls: fixed rules that follow the same steps every time and do not rely on AI judgement. This matters, because the parts of your paperwork that must be exact are handled by rules, not by a model guessing.

Deterministic controls include things like:

• arithmetic and totals;
• VAT calculation;
• date handling;
• required-field validation;
• the supported set of status changes a document can move through;
• document numbering;
• duplicate-message protection, so sending the same thing twice does not create two records;
• explicit confirmation before anything is finalised;
• recognised direct edits, where a clear instruction can be applied without AI.

Where you give a clear instruction that can be handled safely, deterministic correction is preferred, and AI assistance is used only where it is genuinely needed to interpret what you meant. This does not mean every correction is deterministic — some wording is genuinely ambiguous, and AI helps interpret it before you review the result.

6. Confidence and clarification

Before showing you a draft, VanVox assesses whether the required information is sufficiently clear to proceed.

• this internal sense of confidence is not a guarantee of accuracy;
• when clarity is low, or a required detail is missing, VanVox may ask you a clarification question;
• a clarification question asks only for what is needed to move forward, not for cosmetic extras;
• you can correct the draft before confirming it.

A confident-looking draft can still be wrong, which is exactly why the final check is always yours.

7. You stay in control

An expense follows its own confirmation step, and it too requires your explicit confirmation before it becomes a kept record. In every case, AI-assisted output stays a draft until you confirm — it does not become a record automatically, and no VanVox employee confirms your documents for you.

8. What VanVox AI does not do

To be clear about the limits, VanVox AI does not:

• send a confirmed quote or invoice on its own without the confirmation step in the workflow;
• make tax-filing decisions;
• submit VAT, Self Assessment or Making Tax Digital (MTD) returns;
• provide regulated legal, tax or accounting advice;
• make credit-scoring decisions;
• make employment, insurance or eligibility decisions;
• access unrelated WhatsApp conversations on your phone;
• intentionally use your business content for public advertising;
• replace your responsibility to review your own commercial records.

VanVox is a beta service and is not approved or endorsed by HMRC. It does not currently submit tax returns or MTD filings on your behalf.

9. Providers and where processing happens

VanVox relies on a small set of service providers to make AI features work:

• OpenAI is publicly disclosed where it is used to process audio and text for transcription and extraction;
• Meta operates the WhatsApp platform involved in delivering your messages and media;
• the role and category of each provider is listed in our subprocessor register rather than duplicated here.

Some processing may take place outside the United Kingdom. Provider contracts, the regions in which they process information, and the transfer safeguards that apply remain subject to the published register and to human and legal verification. We do not claim that providers never retain any information; what each provider does with data is governed by its own terms and by the arrangements described in the subprocessor register.

10. Privacy and logging

• ordinary logs are designed to exclude message bodies, transcripts and customer records;
• processing and security events may retain safe metadata, such as identifiers, statuses and timestamps, rather than raw content;
• AI inputs and outputs may be retained only according to the applicable lifecycle and retention rules;
• deletion and provider copies may follow separate cycles, so removal from the live service is not immediate everywhere.

For the full picture, see the data-lifecycle walkthrough, the Privacy Notice and the data deletion instructions.

11. Getting the best results

A few simple habits help AI understand you and keep your records accurate:

• where you can, describe one job or document at a time;
• include the customer, the work, the price, the VAT position and the date;
• review the names, amounts, dates and VAT treatment before you confirm;
• correct any errors first — it is much easier to fix a draft than a confirmed record;
• do not send passwords, access tokens or unnecessary sensitive information;
• contact us if AI behaviour ever looks unsafe or incorrect.

You can reach us for general questions at support@vanvox.co.uk, or for privacy matters at privacy@vanvox.co.uk. Full routes are on the contact page.

12. Current assurance status

The AI transparency and human-confirmation controls described on this page are implemented in the application and covered by automated tests. To keep this honest, we separate what is built from what still depends on people:

Application controls implemented

Draft-only AI output, deterministic checks, clarification, and explicit confirmation before a quote, invoice or expense becomes a record are implemented in the codebase and covered by automated tests.

Legal and provider-contract review outstanding

Provider roles, regions and transfer safeguards, and the data-protection position around AI processing, remain subject to final qualified legal review and provider-contract verification. They are not presented as concluded.

Deployment verification outstanding

Production configuration — including which providers are active, where they process information, and the retention values in the running environment — still requires operational verification and is not proven by this page.

This statement describes controls that are built and honest limits that remain. It is not a certification or a guarantee, and it will be updated as those checks are completed.