Case Study: Automating Accounts Receivable (AR) for a Manufacturing Business
How we reduced manual admin by 90% and improved payment speed
This case study demonstrates how automated workflows transformed Accounts Receivable (AR) operations for a growing manufacturing company handling dozens of customer invoices each week.
Key Results:
- • 90% reduction in manual AR email handling
- • Reply times improved from 24 hours → ~2 minutes
- • Payments collected 30% faster
- • Zero missed customer emails
Accounts Receivable Automation Demo
Here's a short example of the automation in action:
This is a simplified example of an Accounts Receivable (AR) automation workflow.
It can be fully customised and integrated with your existing tools — including Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, spreadsheets, CRMs, CMSs, and internal databases.
The Problem
The company's office manager was spending more than 12 hours each week manually reading and sorting AR emails, searching spreadsheets for invoice information, and typing repetitive replies. This slowed down processing and delayed payments.
The main challenges included:
- Manually reading and categorising every AR email
- Time-consuming spreadsheet lookups to verify invoice details
- Slow response times (often a full business day)
- Missed or inconsistent payment follow-ups
- Emails slipping through during busy periods
- Staff needing to chase invoice details manually
The Solution
We designed a complete AR automation system to handle the full workflow from intake to follow-up.
The automation includes:
- AI-powered classification of incoming AR emails
- Automatic extraction of invoice details (invoice number, amount, customer info)
- Real-time spreadsheet lookups to match emails with customer records
- Instant generation of personalised, professional replies
- Automated payment reminders on a fixed schedule
- Internal summaries showing exceptions and action items
- Automatic organisation of email threads and attachments
The system provides a fast, accurate AR process with minimal manual work required.
Results
The improvements were immediate and measurable:
- 90% reduction in manual admin time — from 12 hours to under 1 hour per week
- ~2-minute response times for all AR email enquiries
- 30% faster payments due to quicker communication
- Zero missed or overlooked emails
- Staff no longer chase invoice details manually
- Higher operational consistency and reliability
Before vs After
Before Automation
- 12+ hours per week spent on AR emails
- 24–48 hour reply times
- Manual spreadsheet lookups
- Inconsistent payment reminders
- Emails missed in busy periods
- Staff overwhelmed and overloaded
After Automation
- Less than 1 hour per week
- Consistent 2-minute reply times
- Automated invoice data retrieval
- Automated, reliable follow-ups
- Zero missed emails
- All information included automatically
Interested in automating your Accounts Receivable workflow?