Fully Automate Accounts Payable and Receivable

Most small businesses rely on QuickBooks Online's bank rules or a tool like Bill.com. QBO's rules are simple string matching, not true intelligence. They fail when vendor invoice descriptions vary slightly or when a single payment covers multiple invoices, forcing you into constant manual review and re-categorization. You cannot create a rule like, "If amount is X from vendor Y, but memo contains 'credit', categorize as Z."

In practice, this means a 20-person company processing 400 vendor invoices a month still has someone manually keying in data. An AP clerk opens each PDF from an email, types the invoice number, date, and line items into QBO, and then tries to match it to a purchase order in a separate spreadsheet. This 5-10 minute task per invoice adds up to over 30 hours of error-prone work every month.

Tools like Bill.com manage the workflow but are closed systems. If you need to check inventory levels in Shopify before approving a vendor payment, you cannot add that step. The API lets you move data in and out, but it does not let you change the internal logic. This forces your business process to conform to the software's limitations.

The structural issue is that these tools are configured, not coded. Their data models are fixed. You cannot solve a problem that requires connecting financial data to operational data (like inventory, project hours, or shipping manifests) inside the tool itself. You need a system built for your specific flow of money and goods, not a generic template.

The process begins by mapping your exact financial workflow. Syntora traces an invoice from its arrival as a PDF to its final journal entry. We audit the specific fields you need to extract, your rules for payment approvals, and how you match payments to open invoices. This discovery phase produces a data flow diagram and a technical plan you approve before any code is written.

The technical approach for invoice processing would use an AWS Lambda function that triggers when an invoice lands in your inbox. The PDF is sent to a Claude API endpoint fine-tuned on your invoice formats to extract data as structured JSON. A FastAPI service then handles the business logic, like matching the invoice against a purchase order in a Supabase database. This serverless architecture is event-driven and costs only a few dollars per 1,000 invoices processed.

Syntora has built the core of these systems before, deploying an Express.js application that connected Plaid and Stripe to a custom PostgreSQL ledger for automated transaction categorization. That system processes bank syncs in under 3 seconds. Your AP/AR system would be an extension of this proven pattern, creating a clean data stream that feeds directly into your existing accounting software.