Essentials or Analytics: which Exact AI Connect subscription suits you?

Written by Yannick van den Bergen | 8 May 2026

Exact AI Connect comes in two versions: Essentials and Analytics. Both give you AI access to your Exact Online administration. The difference lies in what you can do with that access.

The short version: Essentials is for daily lookups. Analytics is for analyses that go beyond a single screen in Exact Online.

What can you do with Essentials?

Essentials gives you everything you need to query and update your administration through AI. Specifically:

Looking up and checking:

"Which invoices are outstanding for customer X?"
"Show the contact details of supplier Y"
"What is this month's revenue?"

Creating and editing:

Create new customers or contacts
Enter invoices
Update customer data

Viewing reports:

Profit and loss statement
Balance sheet overview
Outstanding receivables and payables
VAT preparation

This covers the daily needs of most entrepreneurs and bookkeepers. You ask a question, you get an answer. Done.

Where do you hit the limit?

Essentials retrieves a maximum of 60 records per question. For most lookup questions that is more than enough. But with analyses over larger datasets you notice it:

Question	Essentials	Reason
"Show the top 5 customers by revenue"	Works, but only over the first 60 invoices	Dataset too large for a complete overview
"Compare the revenue per month across the whole year"	Incomplete with >60 invoices per month	Monthly aggregation requires the full dataset
"Which product group delivers the highest margin?"	Not reliable	Requires a join between invoice lines and items
"Show the payment behaviour per customer group over 2 years"	Not possible	Too much data, too complex a combination

What does Analytics add?

Analytics opens up the full dataset through an analysis layer. No limit of 60 records, and the ability to combine tables.

Analyses on full datasets:

"What is the revenue per customer per month for this year?" (all customers, all months)
"Top 20 items by margin, including cost price"
"How is the average payment term developing per quarter?"

Combining tables (joins):

Connecting invoice lines to item data for margin analysis
Combining outstanding items with customer data for a risk overview
Grouping transaction lines per general ledger account and period

Trend analyses:

Revenue trends over multiple years
Seasonal patterns in orders
Customer churn and retention based on invoicing history

Which subscription suits which role?

Role	Typical questions	Advice
Entrepreneur (1 administration)	Quick checks, creating invoices, outstanding items	Essentials
Bookkeeper	VAT preparation, reconciliation, daily checks	Essentials
Controller	Margin analyses, trend reports, budget comparisons	Analytics
Accountant (multiple clients)	Benchmarks, client comparisons, quarterly reports	Analytics
Sales manager	Pipeline, payment behaviour per customer, revenue ranking	Depends on data volume

The honest rule of thumb

Ask yourself two questions:

Do I have more than 60 invoices per month? If so, Essentials gives you an incomplete picture when it comes to total calculations.
Do I want to combine data from different tables? Margins, customer analyses with payment behaviour, item performance connected to revenue, that requires Analytics.

If you answer "no" to both questions, Essentials will do. No reason to pay more than necessary.

Give it a try

During the free 30-day trial period you have access to all features, including Analytics. That way you can find out for yourself whether you need the extensive analyses before you make a choice.

For a full overview of the pricing and what is included with each subscription, see our product page.

Want to try it yourself? Start for free with Exact AI Connect →

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