What's the fastest accounts payable automation win?

Approval routing. Most firms don't have an AP bottleneck at data entry, they have one at "who signs off on this $4,000 invoice." Spending Approval Workflow puts a threshold rule and a Slack approval in front of payment, logs the decision, and stops the same bill getting approved twice. That's usually a Starter build, one to two weeks, and it doesn't require you to change accounting systems.

Should we just buy Bill.com or Ramp instead of building?

Often yes, and we'll tell you on the call. If you're one entity, on QuickBooks or Xero, with standard vendor bills and standard net-30 invoicing, an off-the-shelf AP tool wins on price and on support. Building makes sense when your rules don't fit a product: multiple legal entities, invoices that must tie to project tasks, usage pulled from your own database, or a CRM-to-billing handoff no vendor covers.

What does invoice automation cost and how long does it take?

Everything is hours at $150, published on the pricing page. A single invoice trigger or a reminder cadence is Starter, $900 to $1,800 over one to two weeks. A full AR workflow with escalation, exceptions and reconciliation is Workflow, $2,400 to $6,000 over two to four weeks. Quote-to-cash across CRM, Stripe, and your ledger is Orchestration, $6,000 to $13,500 over four to eight weeks. Project minimum is $2,500.

Which accounting and billing systems do you work in?

QuickBooks, Xero, and Stripe are the ones we touch most, usually joined to Salesforce or HubSpot on the front end and Postgres when the numbers need somewhere to live. n8n is our default automation engine because self-hosting keeps financial data out of a third-party queue, but we'll build in Make or Zapier if that's what your team already maintains.

What happens when a payment doesn't match the invoice?

That's the case most automations skip, and it's the one that eats a bookkeeper's week. Partial Payment Reconciliation Handler opens a reconciliation task, updates the client balance, and leaves the invoice open rather than silently marking it paid. Bank Deposit Matching Helper does the same for deposits that arrive combined or without a reference. Unmatched items get flagged for a human instead of guessed at.

Finance Automation

Finance automation for the AP inbox and the AR chase

20 automations, $900 to $13,500 depending on scope. Every range is hours multiplied by our published $150/hour rate.

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Most finance automation projects start in the same place: someone's inbox. Vendor bills land as PDF attachments in ap@, a person opens each one, keys it into QuickBooks or Xero, and chases an approver in Slack who's on a plane. On the other side, invoices go out late because nobody's sure the work was delivered, and then nobody chases them because chasing feels rude. Cash gets stuck in both directions. The finance lead usually knows exactly where it's stuck and doesn't have the hours to go fix it.

If you're picking one thing off this list, pick Auto-Invoice from Closed-Won or Time Tracking → Invoice Draft. Getting the invoice out on the day the trigger fires, instead of the Friday after someone remembers, does more for your DSO than any dunning sequence will. After that, Invoice Reminder Sequencer and Collections Workflow handle the unglamorous part: a cadence that escalates on invoice age and payment history, so the follow-up isn't a decision anyone has to make on a Tuesday. Bank Deposit Matching Helper and Partial Payment Reconciliation Handler exist because real payments arrive short, combined, or with no invoice number at all, and somebody burns hours a month untangling that by hand. On the AP side, Spending Approval Workflow is the one people underrate: a threshold, a Slack approval, and a written record of who said yes, which is exactly what your accountant asks for in March.

Where we'll talk you out of a build: if you're a single-entity firm on QuickBooks with under a hundred bills a month, Bill.com or Ramp already does AP capture and approval routing better than anything we'd write, and it costs less than the build. Same with basic dunning, where Stripe's own retry and reminder settings cover more than people think. We say that on the call. The builds that earn their keep are the ones no vendor sells: Multi-Entity Billing Rules when one customer buys from three of your legal entities, Invoice-to-Project Reconciliation when every invoice line has to tie back to a Jira or Asana task, Usage-Based Billing Prep when your pricing metric lives in a product database no finance tool can reach.

None of this is theoretical for us. We run our own invoicing on software we built ourselves, billed through Stripe, and we've hit most of the edge cases on this page with our own money on the line: the partial payment, the disputed charge, the retainer that carries unused hours forward. That's why AR & AP Aging Snapshot is on the list at all. A weekly aging posted into a finance channel, with the overdue accounts named out loud, gets acted on. The same numbers in a PDF attached to an email do not.

Pricing is hours times $150, published so you can scope this before you ever talk to us. A single trigger like Write-Off Approval Workflow or W-9 / W-8BEN Collector is Starter work: $900 to $1,800, one to two weeks. A real AP or AR workflow with approval routing, retry handling for when QuickBooks times out, and an audit trail lands in Workflow, $2,400 to $6,000. Wiring quote to invoice to payment to Revenue Recognition Automation across CRM, Stripe, and QuickBooks is Orchestration, $6,000 to $13,500. Project minimum is $2,500. n8n is the default engine unless you already run Make or Zapier and want to stay there.

The finance & accounting plays.

Finance & Accounting
AR & AP Aging Snapshot
Weekly receivables and payables aging posted to your finance channel, with the overdue accounts and upcoming payment obligations called out by name rather than buried in a report nobody opens.
QuickBooks/Xero → Slack
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Auto-Invoice from Closed-Won
Generates a Stripe invoice on contract signature, pulling terms from CRM and contract.
Salesforce/HubSpot → Stripe or QuickBooks
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Bank Deposit Matching Helper
Matches deposits to invoices and flags unmatched for review.
Stripe payouts ↔ QuickBooks
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Budget Variance Alerts
Weekly alerts when departments are trending over budget.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Collections Workflow
Escalating sequence for past-due invoices, with handoff to a collections agency when thresholds hit.
QuickBooks/Stripe → Slack, email, CRM
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Dispute Management Workflow
Charge dispute event creates case, collects artifacts, assigns owner.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Invoice Reminder Sequencer
AI-driven reminder cadence based on invoice age, payment history, and relationship.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Invoice-to-Project Reconciliation
Ensures every invoice line ties to a project/task; opens reconciliation ticket if not.
QuickBooks/Stripe ↔ Jira/Asana/monday
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Month-End Close Checklist
Orchestrates the close: reconciliations, journal entries, approvals, and publish.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Multi-Entity Billing Rules
Routes invoices to correct legal entity for multi-subsidiary customers.
CRM → QuickBooks or NetSuite, multi-entity
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Partial Payment Reconciliation Handler
Payment less than invoice total creates reconciliation task and updates client balance.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Payment Received Project Unlock
Payment confirmation triggers 'resume work,' unfreezes PM project, posts internal greenlight.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Refund Workflow
Issued refund updates CRM, notifies support, updates entitlement system.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Revenue Recognition Automation
Schedules revenue recognition based on service delivery or subscription terms.
Stripe/QuickBooks → schedule + journal staging
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Spending Approval Workflow
Slack-based approvals for purchases over threshold with policy enforcement.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Stripe ↔ CRM Sync
Two-way sync of customers, invoices, payments, and subscription changes.
Stripe ↔ Salesforce or HubSpot
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Time Tracking → Invoice Draft
Weekly pull of approved time entries, mapped to billable line items, drafts invoice.
Harvest/Clockify/Toggl → QuickBooks or Stripe
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Usage-Based Billing Prep
Pulls usage metrics daily, validates anomalies, stages billing file.
Product database or warehouse → Stripe
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Finance & Accounting
W-9 / W-8BEN Collector
Auto-collects tax forms from new vendors before first payment.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Finance & Accounting
Write-Off Approval Workflow
Routes uncollectible invoice approval, logs reason, marks accordingly.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks

Starter items fall below our $2,500 project minimum, so they ship bundled with others. Orchestration and Platform builds are scoped on a call before any payment.

Questions

Before you book.

What's the fastest accounts payable automation win?: Approval routing. Most firms don't have an AP bottleneck at data entry, they have one at "who signs off on this $4,000 invoice." Spending Approval Workflow puts a threshold rule and a Slack approval in front of payment, logs the decision, and stops the same bill getting approved twice. That's usually a Starter build, one to two weeks, and it doesn't require you to change accounting systems.
Should we just buy Bill.com or Ramp instead of building?: Often yes, and we'll tell you on the call. If you're one entity, on QuickBooks or Xero, with standard vendor bills and standard net-30 invoicing, an off-the-shelf AP tool wins on price and on support. Building makes sense when your rules don't fit a product: multiple legal entities, invoices that must tie to project tasks, usage pulled from your own database, or a CRM-to-billing handoff no vendor covers.
What does invoice automation cost and how long does it take?: Everything is hours at $150, published on the pricing page. A single invoice trigger or a reminder cadence is Starter, $900 to $1,800 over one to two weeks. A full AR workflow with escalation, exceptions and reconciliation is Workflow, $2,400 to $6,000 over two to four weeks. Quote-to-cash across CRM, Stripe, and your ledger is Orchestration, $6,000 to $13,500 over four to eight weeks. Project minimum is $2,500.
Which accounting and billing systems do you work in?: QuickBooks, Xero, and Stripe are the ones we touch most, usually joined to Salesforce or HubSpot on the front end and Postgres when the numbers need somewhere to live. n8n is our default automation engine because self-hosting keeps financial data out of a third-party queue, but we'll build in Make or Zapier if that's what your team already maintains.
What happens when a payment doesn't match the invoice?: That's the case most automations skip, and it's the one that eats a bookkeeper's week. Partial Payment Reconciliation Handler opens a reconciliation task, updates the client balance, and leaves the invoice open rather than silently marking it paid. Bank Deposit Matching Helper does the same for deposits that arrive combined or without a reference. Unmatched items get flagged for a human instead of guessed at.

Go deeper

Other functions we automate.

Going deeper: Business process automation guide

Which of these is costing you most?

Tell us what your team is doing by hand and we'll tell you what it would take to stop, including the ones you'd be better off buying off the shelf.

Request a call

Finance automation for the AP inbox and the AR chase

The finance & accounting plays.

AR & AP Aging Snapshot

Auto-Invoice from Closed-Won

Bank Deposit Matching Helper

Budget Variance Alerts

Collections Workflow

Dispute Management Workflow

Invoice Reminder Sequencer

Invoice-to-Project Reconciliation

Month-End Close Checklist

Multi-Entity Billing Rules

Partial Payment Reconciliation Handler

Payment Received Project Unlock

Refund Workflow

Revenue Recognition Automation

Spending Approval Workflow

Stripe ↔ CRM Sync

Time Tracking → Invoice Draft

Usage-Based Billing Prep

W-9 / W-8BEN Collector

Write-Off Approval Workflow

Before you book.

Related reading from the blog.

Other functions we automate.

Which of these is costing you most?