Invoice automation, from work delivered to cash collected

Someone in administration keeps a spreadsheet of what has been delivered. On the last Friday of the month they open the accounting tool, retype each line from the CRM or the project board, then send fourteen invoices by email.

Two of them carry the wrong amount, because the scope changed in a chat nobody wrote down. Four clients never reply. The person who should be chasing them is the same one who bills, so chasing loses.

Nothing here is broken enough to fix, which is exactly why it survives for years.

The trigger is the work, not the calendar. When a job, a milestone or a month closes in your project tool, n8n or Make picks it up and assembles the invoice from the deal, with the agreed rates already in it.

• The draft gets checked before it leaves. An AI model reads the lines against the signed scope and the last approved change, then flags whatever does not match.
• Your billing tool issues it. QuickBooks, Xero or Holded creates the real invoice, with its numbering and its tax treatment untouched.
• The payment link travels with it. Stripe takes the card or the transfer, and the invoice is marked paid without anyone opening a bank statement.
• Reminders escalate on their own. A soft note before the due date, firmer ones after, on email or on WhatsApp. They stop the moment the money arrives.

Everything runs in your accounts. We build inside the billing tool you already pay for, and we say so early when that tool cannot be automated.

Anything unusual stops and waits. A credit note, a disputed line, a client who renegotiates after receiving the invoice: those land in a review queue with the context attached, ready to approve in one tap.

The first month runs with every invoice reviewed before it goes out. Once the numbers match what your team would have typed, review drops to exceptions only. That call is yours.

A law firm going through the same stretch is written up in the Brinkley case.

A billing system this size is usually live four to five weeks after the first call. Building it takes less. Most of the time goes into agreeing what a correct invoice looks like in your company.

A working version enters a controlled environment early, with test data, and your team tightens it from there. The whole method sits in the process section.

The first step is the AI and operations audit. Ninety minutes on how you bill today, a ranked plan two working days later, and its fee comes off your first project.

For the build we ask for read access to your billing tool plus ten real invoices, the messier the better. The rest we work out together.

Billing touches sales and delivery, so the plan says what else moves. When the process behind the invoice is the real problem, process and SOP design goes first. The build itself sits under automation and AI systems.