Finance

Automated Invoice Processing for Acme Corp

Acme Corporation

Make Airtable Google Sheets
Project Date: September 2024
Implementation: 2 weeks

The Challenge

Acme Corp was drowning in paper invoices. Their finance team spent over 20 hours weekly manually entering invoice data into spreadsheets, leading to a 15% error rate and delayed payments that damaged vendor relationships.

Our Solution

We built a complete automation solution: emails with invoice attachments are automatically parsed using AI, data is extracted and validated, then synced to Airtable for approval workflow. Approved invoices automatically update the accounting system.

The Results

80% time reduction, 99.5% accuracy, ROI achieved in 6 weeks

The automation reduced invoice processing time from 20 hours to 4 hours per week. Error rate dropped from 15% to 0.5%. The client achieved full ROI within 6 weeks of implementation.

80%

time saved

97%

error reduction

6

roi weeks

16

hours saved weekly

"

BrownMind transformed our finance operations. What used to take our team days now happens automatically. The ROI was immediate and substantial.

— Acme Corporation

Full Story

The Challenge

Acme Corporation, a mid-sized financial services company, was struggling with their invoice processing workflow. Their finance team of 5 people spent over 20 hours per week manually processing invoices from 200+ vendors.

"We were drowning in paperwork. Every invoice required manual data entry, validation, and approval routing. Errors were common and vendor relationships were suffering due to payment delays."
— Sarah Chen, Finance Director

Key Pain Points

  • Manual data entry from PDF invoices into spreadsheets
  • 15% error rate in data transcription
  • Average processing time of 6 minutes per invoice
  • No visibility into approval bottlenecks
  • Vendors complaining about late payments

Our Solution

We designed and implemented an end-to-end automated invoice processing pipeline using Make (formerly Integromat), Airtable, and Google Sheets.

Architecture Overview

The solution consists of three main components:

  1. Email Ingestion — Invoices arriving via email are automatically detected and parsed
  2. AI Data Extraction — Document AI extracts key fields (vendor, amount, due date, line items)
  3. Approval Workflow — Automated routing based on amount thresholds and department

Technical Implementation

The Make scenario monitors the finance inbox for new emails with PDF attachments. When detected:

  • PDFs are sent to a document parsing API
  • Extracted data is validated against vendor master data in Airtable
  • Clean records are created with automatic GL coding
  • Approval requests are routed via Slack based on configurable rules
  • Approved invoices sync to the accounting system via API

The Results

After 2 weeks of implementation and testing, Acme saw immediate improvements:

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ROI Analysis

  • Implementation cost: $8,000 (one-time)
  • Monthly savings: $3,200 (labor + error correction)
  • Payback period: 6 weeks
  • Annual ROI: 380%

Client Testimonial

"BrownMind transformed our finance operations completely. What used to take our team days now happens automatically in the background. The ROI was immediate and substantial — we recouped our investment in just 6 weeks. More importantly, our team can now focus on strategic work instead of data entry."
— Sarah Chen, Finance Director, Acme Corporation

Tools & Technologies Used

  • Make — Workflow automation and orchestration
  • Airtable — Vendor database and approval tracking
  • Google Sheets — Reporting and analytics
  • Document AI — Invoice data extraction
  • Slack — Approval notifications
  • REST APIs — Accounting system integration

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