Operations teams
AI for operations: back-office work your team can read, replay and trust
For operations and finance leads whose week goes on documents, reconciliations and copying data between tools. We automate the hand-offs, send uncertain fields to a review queue instead of into a record, and give every run a log your team can read, search and replay without calling a developer.
Who owns it
Who owns the workflow
The operations or finance lead owns the workflow and the rules it follows: approval limits, matching tolerances, the supplier list and which system is the record for each field. A named reviewer clears the review queue every working day, with a backup for leave. IT owns access and grants each step only the scopes it needs. We build the pipeline, the rules table and the review screen, set up alerts for runs that stop, and train your team to read the run log, so routine work and its exceptions stay with the people who are accountable for them.
Jobs to be done
The jobs AI can take off the team
Read documents into fields
Supplier invoices, purchase orders, delivery notes and forms are read into structured fields, each with a confidence score and the original file one click away from the record.
Match and reconcile
Invoices are matched to purchase orders and receipts, and payments to invoices. The breaks are listed with a suggested match for a person to confirm; adjusting entries are never posted automatically.
Move data between tools
Approved records are written to your accounting system, CRM or ERP through their APIs. Each write carries a key, so replaying a step never posts the same record twice.
Route approvals
Anything above an approval limit or outside tolerance goes to the right approver with the document, the extracted fields and the reason it was flagged, in the tool they already use.
Chase what is missing
A missing receipt or an unanswered supplier query gets a drafted follow-up for your team to send, and the whole thread stays attached to the record it concerns.
Answer process questions
Staff ask how a process works and get the answer from your SOPs with the section cited, limited to the documents their role is allowed to see.
KPI definitions
What to measure
- Straight-through share
- Documents that went from arrival to posted record without a person touching them, reported by document type and supplier rather than as one overall figure.
- Review queue age
- How long items wait in the review queue, oldest first. A growing tail usually means a rule needs changing, not that reviewers are slow.
- Field correction rate
- Fields a reviewer changed before approving, by field and supplier. It shows where extraction or a matching rule needs work.
- Exceptions by reason
- Runs stopped for review, split by cause: low confidence, no matching order, over tolerance, duplicate suspected or supplier unknown.
- Failed and replayed runs
- Runs that stopped on a system error, how long they waited and whether a replay completed them without a duplicate write.
- Close-task cycle time
- Elapsed time for the recurring tasks you choose, such as month-end reconciliation, measured against the baseline months before launch.
Buying checklist
Before you buy, check these
- Does every uncertain field go to a review queue instead of straight into a record?
- Can your team read a run log for any document without asking a developer?
- Are writes idempotent, so a replayed step cannot post the same record twice?
- Do approval limits and tolerances live in a table your team can change?
- Does each step get only the system access it needs, and is that access listed?
- Is the original document kept with the extracted fields and the reviewer’s decision?
- Who is alerted when a run stops, and what does the alert contain?
- What is the fallback when a system has no API: export, watched folder or assisted entry?
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What does a run log show, and who on our team reads it?
One line per step for every run: what triggered it, the input document, the fields read and their confidence, each decision with its rule, any retries and the final write with the record it created. The operations lead and the queue reviewer read it day to day; auditors can be given a read-only export.
What happens when one of our systems is down mid-run?
The step retries with increasing waits. If it still fails, the run parks in a waiting state with an alert to its owner, and nothing is left half-written. When the system is back, a person or a schedule replays the run from the failed step, and the write key makes sure nothing posts twice.
Can we start if our older system has no API?
Yes. The first version can use a scheduled export and import, a watched folder or a review screen where staff confirm each record before it is keyed in. That proves the workflow on real documents, and the direct connection can follow once it is clearly worth the integration work.
Who can change a business rule such as an approval limit?
The people you name, usually the finance or operations lead. Rules such as approval thresholds, matching tolerances and supplier lists live in a table that takes effect without a deploy. Every change is logged with who made it and when, so a sudden rise in exceptions can be traced to its cause.
How do month-end reconciliations fit in?
As a scheduled job that compares your ledger with bank, payment and sales-system exports and produces a list of breaks, each with a suggested match and the evidence for it. A person confirms or rejects every suggestion; the job never posts adjusting entries on its own.
Will automating hand-offs weaken the audit trail?
It usually strengthens it. Every document keeps its original file, the extracted fields, the rules applied, the reviewer’s decision and timestamps for each step, all exportable. Today much of that lives in inboxes and spreadsheets, which is harder to show an auditor than a single record per document.
How do you choose which back-office process to automate first?
By weighing three things on a sample of last month’s work: how often it happens, how clear its rules are and how costly a mistake would be. A frequent task with clear rules and a reviewer already in place is the sensible first pick; a rare, judgement-heavy one waits.
Do we have to change our approval policy before it can be automated?
Rarely. We write down the policy you already follow, including the unwritten parts people apply from habit, and encode that. Writing it down is where gaps show up, such as two approvers applying different limits, and we raise them for you to settle rather than choosing a rule on your behalf.
Next step
Have a workflow in mind? Let’s scope it together.
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. Bring one process you want to automate and we will talk through scope, integrations and a sensible first step.
Free 30-minute call · no commitment