Automate Accounts Receivable with Custom AI

Most SMBs use QuickBooks Online or Xero for accounting. Their AR features are designed for standard Net-30 invoices. When you have a client with custom terms, like a 2% discount for payment in 10 days or milestone-based billing, these systems require manual workarounds. You end up tracking these exceptions in a separate spreadsheet, completely disconnected from your main ledger. Bill.com attempts to solve this, but its invoice parsing often fails on non-standard formats, forcing manual correction.

Consider a 20-person consulting firm that invoices 50 clients monthly. Ten of those clients have unique contracts. Client A pays on project milestones, Client B requires invoices submitted through their Ariba portal, and Client C has a 60-day term but pays faster if reminded on day 45. A bookkeeper spends hours each week cross-referencing spreadsheets with QuickBooks, manually logging into the Ariba portal to re-enter invoice data, and setting calendar reminders. That manual process for Ariba takes 15 minutes per invoice and has a 5% error rate on PO number entry, causing payment delays.

The problem is architectural. QuickBooks and Xero are systems of record, not workflow engines. They are built to store financial data in a standardized format, not to execute custom logic based on that data. This architectural rigidity means you cannot build conditional logic like 'IF client is Enterprise AND invoice is >$10k, THEN start reminder sequence at Day 20 ELSE start at Day 25'. You are stuck with a one-size-fits-all dunning process.

The result is delayed cash flow and an increased risk of human error from manual data entry. Every hour spent reconciling a spreadsheet is an hour not spent on financial planning or analysis. This manual overhead directly impacts an SMB's ability to manage its cash reserves and grow.

The process starts with an audit of your current accounts receivable workflow. Syntora maps every step, from invoice creation to cash reconciliation. We identify the specific rules, exceptions, and third-party systems like procurement portals that your team currently manages by hand. This produces a detailed system design document you approve before any code is written.

Syntora has built foundational pieces for financial automation, including a PostgreSQL ledger integrated with Plaid and Stripe using Express.js. For your AR system, the approach would use a modern Python stack. A FastAPI service would manage the core logic, connecting to your accounting software's API. We use the Claude API to read client contracts to extract payment terms or generate context-aware reminder emails, a task where AI excels over static templates.

The final system is a dedicated service that runs on AWS Lambda, costing under $50/month to operate. It connects to your existing QuickBooks or Xero account and processes new bank transaction data from Plaid in under 3 seconds. An AI model trained on your last 24 months of invoice history predicts payment delays, allowing your team to focus on at-risk accounts. This infrastructure can handle up to 5,000 invoices per month. You receive the full Python source code and a runbook detailing its operation.