It runs whether anyone is in or not
Work arrives at every hour and in no particular order. The background never closes, so nothing waits for Monday to be looked at.
Triggered by the work itselfAn email lands, a file drops, a record changes. Nobody presses run.
Overnight and over weekendsThe queue is empty on Monday because it was never allowed to build.
Volume is not the hard partFour hundred documents cost the same attention as four.
Success
invoice-0847.pdf
Trigger
Inbox trigger
A supplier invoice lands at 02:14.
invoice-0847.pdf
Running
Read
ReadRead the document
Any format, read on its meaning.
✓12 lines found
✓Supplier recognised
Idle
Check
CheckCheck against BC
Order, receipt and the contract price.
Messy input is the normal case
Rule-based automation assumes a clean, predictable file. Real back offices do not get one, which is why most of this work never got automated.
No template to matchA layout it has never seen is read on its meaning, not its coordinates.
A supplier changing their formatDoes not break anything, and does not need a ticket raised.
Photographs, scans and forwardsIncluding the one taken on a phone in a warehouse.
PDFSupplier invoice✓12 lines
Scanned, stamped, signed
Signed in the corner, folded before it was scanned.
XLSXTheir order sheet✓41 lines
Their columns, not your template
In their order, with two merged header rows.
JPGFrom the floor✓Note 8841
Taken on a phone, at an angle
On a pallet, under the dock lights, slightly blurred.
It knows what it cannot settle
The point is not that it never stops. The point is that when it stops it says so, to the right person, with the work already done up to that line.
A confidence on every fieldNot a single score for the document, a score for each thing it read.
Held back, not guessedBelow your threshold it waits. It does not post its best attempt.
Handed over wholeThe exception arrives with everything gathered, not as a task to start again.
Human in the loopWaiting · 05:02The cost centre on INV-2026-0847 is not readable on the scan. Everything else matched the order and the receipt.
M
Marloes de VriesFinance lead
Add feedback for the agent…
It learns from the answer
You can see what it did all night
Background work that nobody can inspect is background work nobody trusts. Every run is on the record, whether it went through or not.
01Every run, listedWhat came in, what it did, how sure it was, and how long it took.
02Volume and exception ratesHow much ran clean this week against last, per process.
03Retries that are visibleA system that was down is a line in the log, not a silent gap.
04Alerts you setTold when a queue builds or a rate slips, before somebody notices downstream.
412documents, 22:00 to 07:00
22:0002:0007:00
381posted clean
27held for a person
4retried after SAP
