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workflow: invoice processing automation

Every invoice gets paid twice: once to the vendor, once in labor

The vendor's number is printed right on the invoice. Yours is invisible: the download, the keying, the GL lookup, the approval chase, the duplicate hunt, the month-end pile that eats a Friday. We install a system that carries an invoice from inbox PDF to posted, coded, and exception-flagged with nobody touching a keyboard. Your team only ever sees the handful that genuinely need a decision.

the manual version

Where the hours actually go

Follow one invoice through a manual AP process and count the touches. Someone opens the email and downloads the PDF. Keys the vendor, invoice number, date, and amount into the accounting system. Looks up the PO, if there is one. Decides which GL account each line belongs to, or guesses, or pings someone who might know. Forwards it to an approver and waits. Follows up. Waits again.

One invoice looks harmless. Multiply it. If a touch-heavy invoice takes your bookkeeper ten minutes and a few hundred land every month, put that against their loaded hourly cost and the number stops being cute. Then add the part that actually stings: the duplicate that got paid because two people keyed the same PDF a week apart, the early-payment discount that quietly expired in an approval inbox, the close that slipped because nobody cleared the pile in time.

None of this is accounting. It's typing, looking things up, and nagging people, and every piece of it can be read, decided, or escalated by software instead of by the person you hired to close the books.

  • Header keying: vendor, number, date, terms, amount, all retyped from a PDF a machine already generated
  • GL coding: the same vendor coded the same way for the hundredth time, by hand, from memory
  • The approval chase: forwarded emails, hallway nudges, and 'did you see my last message?'
  • Duplicate and fraud checks: done from memory, when they get done at all
agentclaw · invoice run

the automated version

Invoice processing automation, from inbox PDF to posted

Three stages, running around the clock, inside the tools you already own. No new portal for your vendors to ignore, no new system for your team to resent.

  1. 01

    Capture and extraction

    An agent watches your AP inbox and vendor portals. Every attachment gets read the second it lands: clean PDFs, scans, even a phone photo of a paper invoice. It pulls the vendor, invoice number, date, terms, totals, and every line item into structured data, then checks the number and amount against history so duplicates die on arrival instead of getting paid twice.

  2. 02

    Matching, coding, posting

    The agent matches the invoice to its purchase order and receiving record where those exist, and flags any quantity or price gap. It codes each line to your chart of accounts the way you've coded that vendor before, applies the right tax treatment, and posts to QuickBooks, Xero, or NetSuite. Invoices that pass your rules go straight through. Nothing rots in a queue waiting for a human keystroke.

  3. 03

    Exceptions and approvals

    Anything that fails a rule gets routed to the right person: a price above the PO, a first-time vendor, a missing receipt, a change in bank details. Each one shows up with the reason spelled out, the original PDF attached, and a one-click decision. Your team stops keying invoices and starts judging the few that actually deserve a human. That is the whole trade.

Signs your invoice pile has outgrown doing it by hand

You don't need all six. Two or three is usually enough to make the math obvious.

  • Someone keys invoice data into the ledger by hand for more than a couple of hours a week
  • You've paid the same invoice twice, or caught a near-miss during close and felt your stomach drop
  • Approvals sit in email until a vendor calls asking where their money is
  • Month-end close waits on a stack of unprocessed invoices, every single month
  • GL coding lives in one person's head, and AP grinds to a halt the week they're on leave
  • Early-payment discounts expire because invoices surface too late to take them

The questions to ask before you trust a bot with your ledger

Will this work with our accounting system?+

Almost certainly. We build against QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage, and most ERPs with an API. If your system only accepts file imports, the agent produces clean import files instead of posting directly. The extraction and coding layer doesn't care where the data lands. The integration is the part we scope during the audit, and it's rarely the hard part.

What happens when the AI misreads an invoice?+

It will, now and then. Scanned faxes and handwritten totals are real, and anyone who tells you their model reads them perfectly is selling you something. That's exactly why the system never posts anything it isn't sure about. Every extracted field carries a confidence score, and anything below your threshold, or anything that trips a business rule, drops into an exception queue for a human with the original PDF right there. You set the threshold. Cautious teams start with every invoice reviewed and loosen it as trust builds. The AI reads. Your people still hold the pen.

Can I do this myself?+

A narrow version, yes, and we'll hand you the parts. If your volume is low and your invoices come from a handful of well-behaved vendors, our free invoice data extraction prompt pack plus an off-the-shelf connector gets you surprisingly far, and the rest of our free skills library shows the how. Where DIY falls apart is PO matching, duplicate detection, exception routing, and keeping the whole thing alive when a vendor quietly changes their invoice layout. When a DIY pipeline breaks, it breaks quietly, and quietly wrong books are the expensive kind.

What does it cost?+

Engagements start at $5,000/month, which covers building the workflow and running it: monitoring, tuning the exception rules, and fixing things when vendor formats change. Do the math before you book. Count the hours a week your team spends keying, coding, and chasing invoices, price them at loaded cost, and add whatever the last duplicate payment or missed discount cost you. If that number sits well under the fee, you don't need us yet. Start with the free resources and come back when volume grows. We'd rather tell you that than sell you something you don't need.

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Keep going

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We take on companies ready to invest $5,000+/month in doing this properly.