A person releases every payment
The AI reads, codes and routes bills. It never pays a bill, moves money or schedules a payment on its own. Payments stay in your bill-pay tool or bank, released by someone you authorize.
AI Accounts Payable Bills read, coded and queued. You just approve.
AI reads every supplier bill that lands in your inbox, captures the vendor, amounts and GST/HST, suggests the account, checks for duplicates and sends it to the right person to approve. Approved bills post to QuickBooks Online or Xero. Nothing is paid until a person says so.
Free · 20 minutes · You talk to Syed · Scoped before anything is built
How it runs
AP & Invoice Processing Running
Your books update
-
A bill arrives
Emailed to your AP inbox, forwarded, uploaded or snapped on a phone.
-
The AI reads and codes it
Vendor, invoice number, dates, lines, GST/HST and a suggested account, with a duplicate check.
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The right person approves
One message in Slack, Teams or email, routed by the vendor, job and amount rules you set.
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Your books update
The bill posts to QuickBooks Online or Xero with the PDF attached. Payment waits for a person.
See it work
Watch it handle one.
A scripted walk-through of a typical ap & invoice processing conversation — press play.
Simulated demo
Emailed bill to approved QuickBooks bill
Cedar Ridge Electric · AP inbox ap@ inbox · Tue 9:14 am
- Event
New email to ap@ from Lakeshore Electrical Supply · “Invoice 4471” · invoice_4471.pdf attached (2 pages)
- Reading the PDF… Both pages read · every field above your confidence threshold Azure Document Intelligence
- Fields captured
- Vendor
- Invoice #4471
- Issued Oct 2 · net 30
- 6 line items
- HST 13%
- GST/HST number
- Suggesting coding from past Lakeshore bills… Materials · Job 2231, Birchmount kitchen · coded the same way on 41 of 42 past bills QuickBooks Online
- Checking for duplicates and anything unusual… No match by invoice #, date or amount · lines add up to the total · bank details unchanged QuickBooks Online
- Draft bill · Lakeshore #4471 Needs approval
- Account
- Materials
- Job
- 2231 · Birchmount kitchen
- Tax
- HST 13% · input tax credit details present
- Due
- Nov 1 · net 30
- AI assistant
Lakeshore #4471 is coded to Materials for job 2231, like their last 41 bills. No duplicate found. Approve to post it to QuickBooks? Payment stays with you.
- Dana · owner, in Slack
Looks right. Approve.
- Creating the bill in QuickBooks… Bill created · PDF attached · approved by Dana at 9:16 am · unpaid, due Nov 1 QuickBooks Online
- Event
Added to Friday’s bill-pay list · nothing is paid until Dana releases it
Emailed PDF to an approved QuickBooks bill in 1 min 52 s. Payment stays with you.
Set this up for my business What it replaces
Off your plate.
- Opening every PDF and typing it into your books line by line
- Guessing which account a bill belongs to, then fixing it at month-end
- Chasing the owner for approvals by text and sticky note
- Paying the same invoice twice because it arrived twice
How it works
Step by step.
- 01
We map how bills move today
Where bills arrive, who codes and approves them, and how they get paid. A few months of past bills teach the AI your vendors, accounts, jobs and tax treatment.
- 02
Every bill is read and checked
The AI captures the vendor, invoice number, dates, lines, GST/HST and the supplier’s tax number, then suggests an account from how you’ve coded that vendor before. It checks for duplicates and anything unusual, and shows its confidence on each field.
- 03
Approvals go to the right person
You set who approves which vendors, jobs or amounts. Approvers see the PDF, the coding and any flags in one message, then approve, edit or reject in a tap.
- 04
Approved bills post; payments stay with you
Approved bills appear in QuickBooks Online or Xero with the PDF attached and a note of who approved them and when. Payment runs, cheques and e-transfers stay in your hands, released by someone you authorize.
- 05
Outgoing invoices, the same way
Finished jobs, timesheets and “please bill this” emails become draft invoices with your items and tax codes. Someone on your team reviews each one before it goes out.
Works with the tools you already use
- QuickBooks Online
- Xero
- Gmail / Google Workspace
- Outlook / Microsoft 365
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
- Google Drive
- SharePoint / OneDrive
- Jobber
- Your existing bill-pay tool
Connected through official APIs where available. Names and logos are trademarks of their owners; no affiliation implied.
Guardrails
You stay in control.
Bank-detail changes get a phone call
A request to change a supplier’s banking details is a common fraud. It’s flagged and held until someone confirms it by phone, on a number already on file, never the one in the email.
Records your accountant can stand behind
Each bill keeps its original file, its coding and who approved it, stored in your systems for as long as the CRA expects, generally six years. Bills missing input tax credit details are flagged. Your accountant still files.
Financial data stays private
Bills stay in your inbox, drive and accounting system. We use AI providers that don’t train on your data, document where everything lives and design around PIPEDA in Canada.
Where it fits
Where it fits best.
Trades & Home Services Wholesaler and subcontractor bills coded to the right job, so job costs are current before month-end. See trades plays Professional Services Software, contractor and disbursement bills approved by the right partner, with client-billable costs flagged for the next invoice. See professional plays Health, Dental & Med Spa Lab, supply and equipment bills routed to the practice manager. Bills that name a patient are handled under your PHIPA or HIPAA obligations. See clinics plays
In practice
What it looks like.
A ten-person electrical contractor
The office manager handles about 120 supplier bills a month from three wholesalers and a few subcontractors, plus about 50 customer invoices. Each bill takes about 6 minutes to open, key, code and attach; reviewing an AI draft takes about 1.
About 3–4 hours a week back for the office manager (estimate)
The math
- Bills: ~28 a week × ~5 min saved (≈6 min to enter vs ≈1 min to review) ≈ 140 min/week ≈ 2.3 h/week
- Approvals and duplicate checks: ~10 a week chased by text or call × ~6 min ≈ 60 min/week ≈ 1.0 h/week
- Outgoing invoices: ~12 a week × ~4 min of re-keying ≈ 48 min/week ≈ 0.8 h/week
- Total ≈ 4.1 h/week
- Less 20% for overlap and ramp-up ≈ 3.3 h/week
Estimates use typical volumes and include a 20% allowance for overlap and ramp-up. Your audit measures the real numbers.
Why it matters
The AP inbox nobody wants to own
Bills arrive from everywhere: supplier emails, portal downloads, a photo from the truck, a paper invoice left on the counter. Someone opens each one, types it into the books, guesses the account and then chases the owner to approve it. It’s a few minutes here and there, and it lands on whoever is already busiest.
When it slips, the cost isn’t only time. A bill gets paid late, or twice. Job costs are stale when you need them, and month-end means recoding entries and hunting for a supplier’s tax number.
What changes with AI accounts payable
Bills go to one AP inbox. Each is read, coded from your own history, checked against what’s already in your books and sent to the right approver, with the PDF and the reasoning in a single message. The approver approves, edits or asks a question. Approved bills post on their own, and your bookkeeper reviews instead of retyping.
The same approach works on the other side of the ledger. Finished jobs and timesheets become draft invoices with your items and tax codes, and QuickBooks invoicing sends them with a payment link once someone approves. Receipts and card spend fit naturally with AI bookkeeping, so the whole month stays current, not just the bills.
Where we start
We start with your highest-volume vendors and one simple approval rule. For the first couple of weeks the AI runs alongside your current process, so you can compare its coding with your own before anything posts. Once they match, it takes over the routine bills and you keep the exceptions. Payments never move without you.
How we roll it out
Audit. Build. Run.
Every engagement is scoped on a call. You’ll know the cost before anything is built.
- 01
Audit
- AP map: where bills arrive, who codes and approves them, and where they stall
- Review of three months of bills: vendors, accounts, tax treatment and duplicates
- Approval rules draft: who approves what, by vendor, job and amount
- 02
Build
- AP inbox, uploads and phone capture connected
- Extraction, coding and duplicate checks tuned on your past bills
- Approvals in Slack, Teams or email, posting to QuickBooks Online or Xero
- 03
Run & Optimize
- Monthly review of corrections: what was recoded and why
- Vendor and coding rules updated as suppliers and jobs change
- Plain-English report: bills processed, flagged, approved and time to approval
FAQ
Questions owners ask about AP & Invoice Processing
Last updated October 7, 2026
Will the AI ever pay a bill on its own?
No. It reads, codes and routes bills for approval, and posts approved bills to your books. Payments are released by a person on your team, in the bill-pay tool or bank you already use.
How reliable is the invoice data extraction?
Clear PDFs from regular vendors are usually read cleanly, and coding improves as the AI learns your history. Every field carries a confidence level; anything below your threshold, from a blurry photo to a first-time vendor, goes to a person instead of posting.
How does it catch duplicate bills?
Before a bill posts, it’s compared with open and paid bills by vendor, invoice number, date and amount, including a resent PDF with a new file name. Possible duplicates are held side by side, and a person decides.
How does it handle GST/HST on supplier bills?
It captures the tax and the supplier’s GST/HST number, applies your existing tax codes, and flags bills missing what the CRA expects for input tax credits. US sales tax is recorded as billed, and your accountant still files your returns.
Will my bookkeeper have to change how they enter bills?
Not much. Bills land in QuickBooks Online or Xero the way they’d enter them, with the PDF attached and the approval noted. Their job shifts from typing to reviewing, and their corrections feed back into the coding rules.
What does AP automation cost to run?
It depends on bill volume, how many approval rules and companies you have, and whether outgoing invoicing is included. We scope it on a short call and give you a fixed build price and a clear monthly running cost before anything is built.
Pairs well with
Often built alongside.
Let’s map AP & Invoice Processing to your workflow.
Bring your call volume, your tools and the part that annoys you most. In 20 minutes you’ll know what it would take — and whether it’s worth doing.
Free · 20 minutes · You talk to Syed · Prefer email? muhammad@sadaat.ca