Automate Accounts Payable and Receivable with AI Agents

Many businesses start with accounting software add-ons like Bill.com. These tools are effective for standard digital invoices but falter with complexity. They often misread line items on multi-page scanned PDFs, forcing manual correction on 15-20% of documents. Their per-invoice or per-user pricing models also penalize businesses with high transaction volumes, turning efficiency into a recurring cost.

A 15-person services firm we worked with was managing AP/AR manually with QuickBooks and Gmail. Their bookkeeper spent 10 hours every week downloading PDF invoices, keying in data, and then running aging reports to chase late payments. This manual process led to errors and delays. Last quarter, a $4,500 invoice was paid 30 days late simply because it was buried in a crowded inbox.

These off-the-shelf tools and manual workflows are rigid. They cannot handle business-specific logic. For example, they cannot automatically hold payment to a subcontractor until a specific client project milestone is marked complete in Asana or Jira. This forces you to build fragile, multi-step manual checklists outside the system, defeating the purpose of automation.

Syntora's approach to an AI agent system for AP/AR starts with a discovery phase to understand your current workflows and specific integration requirements. For accounts payable, a common architecture involves an AWS Lambda function configured to monitor a dedicated inbox, such as invoices@yourcompany.com. This function would use the Claude 3 Sonnet API to process incoming emails and their attachments (PDF, PNG, JPG). Claude's capabilities allow for the extraction of key invoice details, including invoice number, amount, due date, and line items.

The extracted data would then be stored in a Supabase database, where it can be validated against your existing vendor information. Syntora would develop a custom FastAPI service to provide a secure web interface for your team. This interface enables efficient review and approval of extracted data. We would design and implement custom validation rules based on your business logic—for example, automatically flagging invoices above a specified amount for mandatory approval or verifying project codes through your project management system's API before queuing payments.

For accounts receivable, Syntora would architect a separate AWS Lambda function to run as a scheduled daily job. This function would connect to your accounting API, such as QuickBooks or Xero, to retrieve an AR aging report. Utilizing the Claude API, the system would draft personalized reminder emails. These communications can be configured to reference specific project names or prior payment dates, aiming for effective client follow-up.

The system would integrate with your existing email provider, like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, to send reminders from a familiar address. All actions, from data extraction to email dispatch, would be logged using `structlog` into a Supabase table, establishing a clear audit trail. This design focuses on creating efficient, maintainable systems with typically low monthly cloud operational costs.