Business plan check
Does the plan start from the books?
Plan against the books and against the company's own history, every material gap flagged.
saktoBeta
For M&A and due diligence teams
Every figure, traced to the row.
Reconciled statements in minutes. Drop in the company's financials, bookings and invoices and get a deal-ready databook.
Verified figures for your AI. Connect your own AI assistant: it reads sakto's checked figures with their sources, and sakto checks the figures it writes against the books.
Built by a former Big Four and M&A adviser and a banking-software engineer.
Reads exports from
- DATEV
- BMD
- RZL
- SKR03
- SKR04
- EKR
- Excel and CSV trial balances
How it works
From the upload to the databook
- 1
Upload the exports
- 2
Check the mapping
- 3
Export the databook, in German or English
- 100%of balances traced to the row
- Excelwith live formulas, not pasted values
- 9checks gate the final export
- No AIon client files
Balance sheet, trial balance, opening balances, equity roll-forward and five tie-outs.
Forecast and cash planning
A forecast that balances
An integrated three-statement forecast. A cash plan over 13, 26 or 52 weeks.
For the deal
From adjusted EBITDA to the equity value
- Enterprise value to equity valueNet debt, debt-like items and the NWC peg, with a leakage check for a locked-box deal.
- Customer concentrationTop customers, retention and cohorts, from the company's DATEV bookings.
- Current tradingThe plan against the actuals, month by month as the books come in, while the deal runs.
Every step traceable
No final databook that doesn't add up
The final databook exports only once
- every balance sits on a statement line,
- every check passes: balance sheet, trial balance, opening balances, equity roll-forward and five tie-outs,
- and every EBITDA adjustment has a reason.
Data and security
Built for confidential deal data
- Files encrypted per mandate
- Strict separation between customer organisations
- Access log
- Daily encrypted backups, restore tested every quarter
- No AI on client filesFigures come from deterministic code. An AI assistant reads them only if you connect one.
- No tracking
- Two-factor sign-in, enforceable for your whole team
Who builds sakto
The founders
We built the tool we wanted on our own deals.
Sheila Kastner
Co-founder, M&A and sales
10 closed M&A deals
Financial due diligence at a Big Four firm on €10M–€500M deals. Then sell-side M&A for software companies.
LinkedIn
Oscar Andersson
Co-founder, product and engineering
MSc Engineering
Five years building banking systems for savings and payments, latterly leading the savings product team.
Pilot partnership
Pilot slots for the first firms
Built from sell-side M&A advisory practice, for the first firms that want a say in it.
- Set up personally by the founders, around your first deal.
- A say in the roadmap: what your deals need is what we build next.
- A direct line to the people who build sakto.
Until the pilot agreement is signed: the demo or anonymised files, no client files.
Or write to hello@sakto.ai
Questions
Which exports does sakto read?
sakto reads trial balances (Excel, CSV, DATEV, also printed as PDF); DATEV BWAs (PDF, Excel or CSV); annual accounts (balance sheet and P&L printed to PDF); DATEV booking exports (Booking batches (Buchungsstapel), customer accounts (Debitoren) and supplier accounts (Kreditoren) as CSV); business plans (Excel); and invoice lists and e-invoices (Excel or CSV, XRechnung or ZUGFeRD / Factur-X, on the Customers screen). Trial balances exported from DATEV and RZL, BMD's account-grid export, and most trial balances as Excel or CSV (.xlsx, .xls, .csv): monthly DATEV trial balances, a column or a tab per year. As PDFs, sakto reads DATEV's printed trial balance and its BWA (forms 01, 04 and 05) and annual accounts, each checked against its own sums; a BWA alone gives the P&L, beside the trial balance it is checked against it. sakto detects the chart of accounts (SKR03, SKR04 or the Austrian EKR) and asks you to confirm when it is unsure. A file sakto can't read is refused with the reason. Scans aren't read: ask for the Excel or CSV export.
How long does it take?
A trial balance reads in under a second, five years of monthly trial balances in seconds. On SKR03, SKR04 and EKR most accounts land on their line by default, so your time goes into reviewing the mapping and the adjustments.
What does the first hour look like?
Sign in with your email to try sakto on a fictional demo company: a finished case with its statements, NWC, net debt and EBITDA bridge. As a pilot partner, you then create a mandate, upload synthetic or anonymised trial balances, confirm the chart of accounts if sakto asks, and review the mapping. Statements, NWC, net debt and the EBITDA bridge appear as soon as the files are read; a draft databook exports at any point.
Where does the data live?
Files and databases are hosted in Germany, at Hetzner, and so are the daily encrypted backups. Stored files are encrypted with their own key for each mandate, and each organisation's data is kept apart in the database itself. Deleted data is gone from the backups within 21 days in normal operation. Connecting an AI assistant is optional and opt-in, and the connection can be limited to one deal.
Can my client's tax adviser send the files directly?
Not today. The tax adviser sends the exports to you as usual, and you or a colleague upload them to the mandate.
What if a check doesn't pass?
Opening balances that don't match the prior year, or a period with P&L accounts only, go final only with a written reason, shown in the databook. Any other warning you accept marks every sheet "with accepted warnings". A draft is always possible, marked as one on every sheet.
What does the databook contain?
A cover, an executive summary and the scope and limitations of the work; the P&L by year and month, and one period against another; the balance sheet and cash flow by year; NWC and net debt by year and month; revenue gross to net, the personnel costs and the lender figures; the checks; the trial balance by year and month; a sources sheet; how each figure was calculated; the mapping and its changes; the management P&L and the EBITDA bridge with every adjustment; the figures as one flat table to link your own Excel model to; and, with a business plan loaded, the plan and its comparison with the books. Sign in to try it on a fictional demo company.
Can my team work on the same deal?
Yes. Invite colleagues to your team: everyone in it works on the same mandates, and the access log shows who viewed and exported what.