Creating and sending customer invoices with AI

How the bot works

Nine steps. Gathering the work, pricing it from your own tables, the duplicate check and the draft are ordinary code and cost almost nothing to run; the model is only asked to turn recorded work into a line somebody can read.

1. It starts from the work, not from a description of it. The job that was closed out, the timesheet somebody approved, the delivery record, the subscription period that ended, the expenses with receipts attached. A sentence about what happened is not a source.

2. It reads the agreement that governs the work. The contract or engagement letter: the rate, the minimum, the included hours, what is billable and what is not, whether a purchase order number has to be on the face of it, and when this customer is billed.

3. Every line names where it came from. This line is that job, that time entry, this row of your rate table, that clause of the contract. A reviewer can check a line without opening every other system, and a customer question has an answer.

4. It checks the work was not already billed. The same job, the same period, the same purchase order, the same expense submitted twice. A duplicate is held with both invoices named, because the bill a customer has already paid is the one you do not want to send again.

5. It stops on anything the agreement does not plainly cover. Work outside the scope, a rate nobody set, an expense with no receipt, hours past an included allowance, a change order nobody approved. These are held with the clause quoted, for a person to decide.

6. The invoice is built as a draft where your books live. In your accounting system, in draft, with your numbering, your tax codes as you configured them and the attachments the customer asks for. Your books stay the record; this prepares what goes in them.

7. It gets the bill-to right. The legal billing name rather than the one everybody says out loud, the right entity, the right contact, the purchase order on the face of the invoice, the portal that will reject it without a field filled in.

8. A person approves, and then it sends. The draft waits with the held lines and the duplicates on top. Somebody approves the invoice they read, and the approved version is what goes to the customer, by the route that customer requires. An unapproved draft is never sent.

9. It tells you what it would not bill. The work it held and why: no rate, no contract, outside scope, already billed, no receipt, a customer on stop. That list is the useful output in the first month, because it is work you did and have not been paid for.

What you configure

It can be configured to run in any business. This is what that actually means — the list of things that are yours, not ours.

Your sources of work

Which systems record the work that becomes a bill, which fields mean “finished”, and what is never billable no matter what it says.

Your contracts and rate tables

Where the rate for this customer and this work lives, which agreement wins, how escalations and minimums are read, and what happens when there is no agreement at all.

Your billing schedule

Who is billed on completion, who monthly, who on a milestone, who in advance — and what the cut-off is for each.

Your terms

Payment terms, deposits, retainage, late fees and early-payment discounts, as the contract states them. These are read, never chosen.

Your invoice format

Numbering, the line description style, what gets grouped and what is itemized, which attachments ride along, and what the customer's portal demands.

Your taxes and expenses

Which tax codes apply where, taken from your own setup; which expenses are billable, at what markup, and what documentation each one needs.

Your rounding and minimums

How time is rounded, the minimum charge, how travel is handled, and whether a short visit bills at all.

Your approvers

Who may approve an invoice, who has to look at one above a threshold you set, and which customers always need a named person.

Your release switches

Which customers and work types may be drafted automatically, which always wait for a person, and whether sending is on at all. Sending starts off.

Transparent, and configurable by you

The dark band below is what the system will not do. This is what you can see and change — and it is how we build everything, not something invented for this page.

You see what it did, and why

Every line shows the job, the time entry, the rate row and the clause behind it, every held line says which rule held it, and every invoice records who approved it before it went out. A bill can be audited against your own records rather than taken on trust.

Versioned prompts you can tune yourself

The rate logic, the duplicate rules, the held-line rules and the prompts behind writing a line description are yours to tune. A change is a reviewable diff, replayed against invoices you have already sent so you can see exactly what it would have billed differently, and rolled back the same way.

A human in the loop wherever judgment actually matters

Gathering the work, pricing it, checking for duplicates and preparing the draft are automatic. Deciding what a customer owes, approving an invoice, settling a disputed line and sending it are a person's — that boundary is a property of the system, not a promise about how carefully we'll use it.

Every run logged, along with what it cost

One row per invoice and one per held line: the work it read, every line with its source, the duplicates it caught, what was held and why, who approved it and when it was sent — plus token usage and cost for that run.

It can be configured to run in any business. The rates and the rules are yours: your contracts, your rate tables, your terms, your numbering, your approvers. The billing wiring on this page is one configuration of it, not the limit of it.

Works with your tools

This prepares invoices in the accounting system you already run. We're not selling you a billing platform, and your books stay the record of what you billed.

• QuickBooks Online
• Xero
• NetSuite
• Sage
• A field service or dispatch tool
• A PSA or professional services tool
• A time tracking or timesheet tool
• A spreadsheet of jobs
• Contracts in a shared folder
• A customer billing portal

Works well for

• Home service companies — Work is closed out on a phone at the last job of the day, and the invoice waits for somebody's evening.
• IT services and managed service providers — Recurring agreements, license counts and project hours all land on one bill, from three different systems.
• Consulting firms — Time and expenses turn into a bill that has to match an engagement letter nobody wants to reread.
• Law firms — Time and expenses land against a matter, and the engagement letter sets what each one is worth.
• Property management companies — Work orders across many properties bill to different owners, with different rules per agreement.

How a rollout works

Nothing is sent on day one. The first milestone is a billing run you have already done, assembled again from your own records, so you can compare it line by line with what you actually invoiced.

1. 01Discovery

   The quote call, then a working session. We go through the systems that hold the work, where rates and contracts live, how each customer is billed and on what schedule, your numbering and format, the attachments customers demand, who approves, and what must never be billed automatically. You get the field map, the rules and a written scope.

2. 02Dry run

   A real billing period, assembled against your real contracts. Nothing is drafted into your books and nothing is sent. You compare every line and read the held list — and the held list is where the work is, because the work nobody billed is invisible until something goes looking for it.

3. 03Assisted mode

   Live on one group of customers. The bot drafts into your accounting system, your billing person approves and sends, and nothing reaches a customer unread. Who decides what a customer owes does not change.

4. 04Optional limited automation

   Optional, and narrower than it sounds. A short list of customers and work types you name, drafted automatically on your schedule, still unsent until somebody approves, with every hard stop in force and the kill switch. Plenty of teams stop at step 03, and that's a good place to stop.

What we don't claim

• No numbers we haven't earned. No days-to-invoice figure, no revenue-recovered claim, no invoices-per-hour number. We have not billed for you. What a run takes and what it costs come out of the dry run, and they will be your numbers.
• No customer claims on this page. No names, no case studies, no logos.
• It is not your accounting system, and it is not your accountant. Your books stay the record of what you billed. This prepares drafts into them and reads what is already there; it does not close a period, produce a statement or give you an opinion on any of it.
• It cannot bill work nobody recorded. If the job was never closed out, the hours never entered and the delivery never confirmed, there is nothing to assemble. The held list will tell you that honestly, and fixing it is a change to how work gets recorded rather than something a model can do.
• The terms are yours, and we have no opinion on them. Deposits, payment terms, retainage, late fees, whether you bill in advance: every one of these is a real argument, and it is not one a vendor should settle for you. The bot reads what your contract says and bills it.

Questions people ask

Can AI create our customer invoices?

Yes, from records you already keep. An agent can take the closed job, the approved timesheet or the subscription period, price it from the contract and your own rate table, build the draft in your accounting system with the attachments and purchase order the customer needs, and hold it for somebody to approve. What it will not do is invent a line - work with no rate or no agreement is held rather than guessed at.

Where do the line items come from?

From the work, not from a description of the work. A free generator will take a sentence in plain English and produce a bill from it, which is exactly the thing that must not happen to a real invoice. Here each line traces to a job, a time entry, a row of your rate table and a clause of the agreement, and the trail is on the invoice record.

What stops it from billing the same job twice?

A duplicate check that runs before the draft is built: the same job, the same period, the same purchase order, the same expense. A match is held with both invoices named rather than quietly skipped, because the decision about which one is right belongs to a person.

Does it send the invoice?

Only if you turn that on, and only after somebody approves the exact draft. Sending starts off. When it is on, the approved invoice goes out by the route that customer requires - email, their portal, or a file your accounting system produces - and an unapproved draft is never sent.

Does it take payment?

No. No card, no bank details, no payment link of its own, no autopay. Money movement is not in this build and there is no setting that adds it. If your invoices carry a payment link your accounting system already generates, that link rides along unchanged.

What about terms, deposits and late fees?

They are yours, and they come off the contract. The bot reads the payment terms, the deposit, the retainage and the late-fee language and applies what is written - it does not choose terms, recommend terms or change them, and a contract that says nothing about one is a held line rather than a default.

Is this the same as chasing unpaid invoices?

No, and they are deliberately separate. This job ends when an approved invoice is sent. Chasing what is overdue is a different bot with a different boundary, applying payments when the money arrives is another one, and reading a customer's purchase order into an order is a third. Each one has its own page and its own hard stops.

Does it work out the tax?

It applies the tax codes already configured in your accounting system, the way your setup applies them. It makes no tax determination of its own, does not decide whether something is taxable in a jurisdiction, and holds the line if your setup does not answer the question. That is your accountant's call, and the design routes it there.

Is there a record of what was billed and who approved it?

Yes, per invoice and per held line: the work records it read, every line with its source, the duplicates it caught, what was held and which rule held it, who approved the draft, when it was sent and by which route - plus the token usage and cost for that run.