Automate Accounting Workflows with a Custom AI System
The best way is a custom AI pipeline that extracts data from PDFs and emails. It then applies your business rules to route approvals and sync with your accounting software.
This approach is for businesses whose approval logic is too complex for off-the-shelf software. The build scope depends on the number of unique invoice formats you receive and the complexity of your approval matrix. A direct integration with QuickBooks Online is a standard part of the build.
We built a system for a 25-person construction company processing 600 subcontractor invoices monthly. They were spending 20 hours a week on manual entry. The system went live in 4 weeks, reducing processing time to under 10 seconds per invoice and eliminating data entry errors.
What Problem Does This Solve?
Most teams start with an accounts payable tool like Bill.com. It's effective for standard invoices but fails when approval logic gets complex. For example, an invoice over $5,000 for a specific project requires the project manager's approval, but only if the vendor is a subcontractor. Off-the-shelf tools cannot support this multi-conditional logic, forcing you back to manual email forwarding. Their per-user pricing also penalizes growth, with costs rising to over $400 a month for a small team.
Some businesses try a DIY approach with generic OCR software to read scanned invoices. These tools extract text but lack the intelligence to understand context. They confuse PO numbers with invoice numbers and struggle to parse complex line items. This results in messy, unreliable data that an AP clerk still has to manually correct, which defeats the purpose of automation.
A 30-person agency we worked with had this exact problem. Their AP clerk spent every Monday forwarding invoices to project managers on Slack and chasing approvals. A $10,000 invoice for a critical software subscription was paid two weeks late because the approval request was buried in a Slack channel, resulting in a service interruption and a 5% late fee.
How Does It Work?
We start by setting up a dedicated email address, like ap@yourcompany.com, that automatically forwards incoming invoices to an AWS Lambda function. The function identifies and extracts PDF or image attachments. For each document, we make a call to the Claude 3 Sonnet API, which classifies it as an invoice, receipt, or other document type in under two seconds.
For valid invoices, a second, more powerful Claude 3 Opus API call extracts key-value pairs like vendor name, invoice number, due date, line items, and total amount into a structured JSON object. This process takes 6-8 seconds and, after being tuned on 50 of your historical invoices, achieves over 99.5% accuracy on structured fields. The extracted data is then stored in a dedicated Supabase database table.
A FastAPI service contains the core business logic. We codify your approval matrix into Python functions. For example, `if amount > 5000 and department == 'Marketing': route_to_cmo()`. This logic is far more flexible than visual workflow builders. Approval requests are sent as interactive messages in Slack or Microsoft Teams, allowing for one-click approvals. This entire infrastructure typically costs under $50 per month to run for up to 2,000 documents.
Once an invoice receives final approval, a webhook triggers a function that connects directly to the QuickBooks Online or Xero API. It creates a new bill with the vendor, amount, and line-item details pre-filled from the extracted data, attaching the original PDF. Your accounting team just needs to review and schedule payment.
What Are the Key Benefits?
Go Live in 4 Weeks, Not 4 Months
From our first call to a fully deployed production system in 20 business days. Your team can stop manually processing invoices next month.
One-Time Build Cost, Not Per-Seat SaaS
You pay for the initial scoped project. After launch, you only cover minimal cloud hosting costs, not a recurring subscription that grows with your team.
You Own the Code and the System
We deliver the complete Python source code to your company's GitHub repository, including a runbook for maintenance and future modifications.
Get Alerts for Exceptions, Not Every Action
The system runs silently in the background. You only receive a Slack notification when the AI cannot parse a document with high confidence, with a direct link for manual review.
Integrates with Your Accounting Stack
We build direct API connections to your existing tools: QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. No need to change your core financial software.
What Does the Process Look Like?
Week 1: Document and Logic Audit
You provide a sample of 50-100 past invoices and document your current approval rules. We analyze the formats and deliver a technical plan mapping your logic to code.
Weeks 2-3: Core Engine Build
We build the data extraction pipeline using the Claude API and the approval routing with FastAPI. You receive a private staging environment to test with new invoices.
Week 4: Integration and Deployment
We connect the system to your accounting software and internal chat tools. After a final end-to-end test, we deploy the system to your production environment.
Post-Launch: Monitoring and Handoff
For 30 days, we monitor 100% of the processed documents to fine-tune accuracy. You receive the final source code, documentation, and a runbook for your team.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the typical cost and timeline for an invoice automation build?
- A typical build takes 3-4 weeks. The cost is a fixed price based on scope. The primary scoping factors are the number of unique invoice formats to support, the complexity of your approval rules (e.g., multi-step, conditional routing), and the number of systems we need to integrate with (e.g., accounting, ERP, project management). We provide a fixed quote after our initial discovery call.
- What happens when the AI misreads an invoice or makes a mistake?
- If the AI's confidence score for any extracted field is below a set threshold (e.g., 95%), it's flagged for human review. The invoice, original PDF, and highlighted discrepancy are sent to a designated Slack channel or email address. A team member can then correct the data in a simple form in about 30 seconds. The system learns from these corrections to improve future performance.
- How is this different from using an AP automation tool like Bill.com?
- Bill.com is a SaaS product with a defined feature set and per-user pricing. It works well for standard workflows. We build a custom asset that you own. Our system is designed for businesses with unique, multi-conditional approval logic that SaaS tools cannot handle. You get a system molded to your exact process, not the other way around, and you avoid escalating monthly fees.
- How do you ensure the security of our financial data?
- The entire system is deployed within your own cloud account (e.g., your AWS). Syntora does not host or store any of your data on our infrastructure post-launch. All data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2+ and at rest using provider-managed keys (AWS KMS, Supabase's encryption). You retain full control over the infrastructure and data.
- Can this system handle employee expense reports too?
- Yes. The same core pipeline can process receipts for expense approvals. Employees can forward receipts to a specific email, and the system extracts the vendor, date, and amount. We then apply your T&E policy as code. For example, any expense over $250 or without a receipt automatically routes to a manager for approval before syncing to your accounting software.
- Why use Python and custom code instead of a no-code platform?
- No-code platforms are great for simple, linear workflows. Financial document processing requires sophisticated error handling, data validation, and the ability to retry failed operations, which are difficult to build reliably in no-code. Custom Python code gives us precise control over the logic and allows us to integrate with any API, ensuring the system is robust enough for a critical business function like accounts payable.
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