Concept buildA worked example of how we would build this for a typical business. Not client work: no client, no client data, no achieved results.
Workflow Automation
Concept buildA concept build for the finance team of a UK small or mid-sized business that keys supplier invoices into its cloud accounting system by hand. Invoices arriving by email are read into structured fields with a confidence score, matched to purchase orders, approved in team chat by the budget owner and posted to the accounting system, while anything that does not match lands in an exception queue with the reason attached.
The brief
A typical UK SME finance team receives supplier invoices as PDF attachments in a shared mailbox, in every layout imaginable. Someone opens each one, types the supplier, invoice number, dates, net, VAT and gross into the accounting system, then chases the budget owner for approval by email. The work piles up at month end, approvals stall in inboxes, and duplicates slip through when a supplier resends. The occasional “we have changed our bank details” email is exactly the kind of message that should never be processed on autopilot.
Explainer
Explainer · 7 slides · about 47 s
Concept buildConcept build: Invoice Intake and Approval Workflow for a UK Finance Team
Concept build, explained in 7 slides: a concept build for the finance team of a UK small or mid-sized business that keys supplier invoices into its cloud accounting system by hand.
Slide 1 of 7
01 · Workflow automation
Invoice Intake and Approval Workflow for a UK Finance Team
Concept build: Invoice Intake and Approval Workflow for a UK Finance Team.
02 · The problem
What a typical SME finance team is up against
A typical UK SME finance team receives supplier invoices as PDF attachments in a shared mailbox, in every layout imaginable.
03 · The approach
How we would build it, in 5 steps
We would build it in 5 steps, from map the invoice flow and choose the first suppliers to exception queue and retries.
04 · Architecture
How the pieces connect
How the parts connect, from the first input to the person who reviews the result.
05 · Demo · sample run
One clean invoice and one that needs a person
A sample run, step by step, including where a person steps in.
06 · Typical targets
What we would measure it against
Typical targets, each with the basis it would be measured against.
07 · Next step
Scope a build like this for your business
Book a strategy call to scope a build like this.
Architecture
Architecture of the Invoice Intake and Approval Workflow for a UK Finance Team concept: Invoice mailbox → LLM extraction (invoice PDF); LLM extraction → Checks + PO match (fields + scores); Purchase orders → Checks + PO match (open POs); Checks + PO match → Chat approver (clean match); Checks + PO match → Exception queue (failed check); Chat approver → Accounting system (approved bill).
Diagram with 7 parts: Invoice mailbox (source), Purchase orders (source), Checks + PO match (processing), LLM extraction (model), Chat approver (human), Exception queue (human), Accounting system (system of record).
Connections:
Sample run
Invoice email arrivesRoutine
A PDF from a repeat supplier; fields extracted with confidence scores.
Checks passRoutine
Net + VAT = gross, the VAT number matches, and a PO is found within tolerance.
Approved in team chatRoutine
The budget owner approves in chat; the bill posts with the PDF attached.
Ledger API timeout, then a retryNeeds care
Posting retries with backoff and succeeds with no manual step.
Second invoice: totals mismatchStopped
Gross does not equal net plus VAT, so it stops before approval.
Exception queueA person takes over
A finance reviewer sees the reason, corrects the field and resubmits.
Build plan
We sample a few months of invoices and the approval trail behind them: which suppliers send most, how many invoices carry a purchase order, and where approvals wait. Repeat suppliers with clean PO matches go first; one-off and scanned paper invoices stay manual until the pipeline has earned trust.
An LLM reads each invoice into a fixed JSON schema (supplier, VAT number, invoice number, dates, line items, net, VAT and gross) with a confidence score per field. Validation then checks the arithmetic, the date logic and the supplier against the accounting system’s contact list. Any failed check sends the invoice to review rather than guessing.
Validated invoices are matched to open purchase orders by supplier, reference and amount within an agreed tolerance. The same supplier and invoice number seen twice is flagged as a likely duplicate. Changed bank details always stop the flow and go to a named person, whatever the confidence score says.
The budget owner receives a team-chat message with the invoice image, the extracted fields and the PO match, and approves or rejects in one click. Approval posts the bill to the accounting system through its API, with the original PDF attached; rejection returns it to the finance queue with the approver’s note. Every step writes to an audit log.
Failed checks, low-confidence fields, unknown suppliers and accounting-API errors each land in an exception queue with a plain-language reason. API failures retry with backoff before anyone is alerted, so a short outage does not become manual work. The finance team works the queue; the pipeline handles the rest.
Typical targets
Typical target
60–80% of standard supplier invoices posted with no field corrected
Basis: For typed, digital PDFs from repeat suppliers with a clean purchase-order match; scans, handwriting and new suppliers land lower. Measured on a sample of your own recent invoices in the pilot.
Typical target
Every exception routed with a reason
Basis: Design property: each failed check writes a named reason to the exception queue
Typical target
Bank-detail changes always reviewed by a person
Basis: Design property: a hard stop in the workflow, independent of extraction confidence
Typical target
Approval waits measured in hours rather than days
Basis: Time from invoice receipt to approval, compared with the email-based baseline during the pilot
Your project
Your current process timed and written down step by step, so every target has a starting point you agree with.
Each connection gets its own least-privilege key in your accounts, with rotation and revocation documented.
Retries with backoff, a dead-letter list and an exception queue owned by a named person, so nothing fails silently.
How to pause a flow, replay a failed run and change a step without waiting for us.
Where this fits
FAQ
No. It is a concept build, written to show how we would take a typical UK SME finance team from manual keying to approved bills in its accounting system. The invoices in the demo are sample data, and the keying range rests on an audit sample we would run at scoping, not on any client’s figures.
Most errors are caught before anyone sees them: totals that do not add up, a VAT number that does not match the supplier, or a low confidence score all send the invoice to review. The reviewer corrects the field on one screen, and each correction becomes a test case for the next extraction update.
No. It removes the keying and the approval chasing, while the finance team keeps supplier setup, payment runs and month-end close. The workflow pays nothing: it posts approved bills to the accounting system, and payments are made there exactly as they are today.
VAT is checked arithmetically and against the supplier’s VAT number; an invoice where net plus VAT does not equal gross stops for review. Invoices in a foreign currency are extracted as issued and flagged for the finance team to confirm the rate, because the posted amount must follow your accounting policy, not a model’s guess.
For every bill: the original email and PDF, the extracted fields with their confidence scores, each check and its result, who approved it and when, and the posting reference returned by the accounting system. Corrections made in the exception queue keep the before and after values, so the record shows what changed and why.
Worked examples
Concept builds are worked examples, not client work.
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Concept buildWorkflow Automation
A concept build for an Indian startup that hires every month and runs onboarding from one person’s memory and a long checklist. A signed offer starts a workflow that creates the email and team-chat accounts, raises the laptop ticket, shares a day-1 checklist and books the 30-day check-in. When a step fails, it retries and tells that step’s owner instead of failing silently.
Concept buildWorkflow Automation
A concept build for an independent insurance agency in the US, the broker between its policyholders and several carriers, that receives first notices of loss by email and web form with photos and documents attached. Intake reads each claim into a structured record, checks it against a completeness checklist for that line of business, asks the policyholder for anything missing right away, and queues complete files for an adjuster. The AI never decides coverage.
Next step
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
