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AI AutomationRetail / E-Commerce·Delivered in 3 weeks

75% reduction in invoice processing time for a London retailer

A London retailer was spending 15 hours a week handling supplier invoices manually. We built an AI pipeline that reads, validates, and posts them straight to Xero — with no human involvement.

75%
Time reduction
£0
Error cost
10 hrs
Saved weekly
1 month
To full ROI

The Challenge

The business was receiving 80–120 supplier invoices per week across PDF attachments and forwarded emails. Each one had to be opened, data extracted manually, checked against purchase orders, and entered into Xero. Two members of staff were spending a combined 15 hours a week on this task — time that could have been spent on sales or customer service.

What We Built

We built a fully automated pipeline: invoices land in a dedicated inbox, an AI model extracts all relevant fields (vendor, amount, VAT, due date, line items), validates them against HMRC rules and flags duplicates, then posts them directly to Xero's accounts payable. The finance team receives a daily summary email with any flagged exceptions — everything else runs without them.

The Outcome

Within the first month, the business reclaimed over 10 hours of staff time per week. The error rate on invoice entry dropped from 4.2% to effectively zero. The team now only touches invoices flagged as exceptions — roughly 3–4 per week.

Highlights

  • Reads PDF and email invoices automatically
  • Validates against HMRC rules and flags anomalies
  • Posts to Xero with zero manual input
  • Daily exception report to finance team

Tools used

PythonOpenAI APIXero APIGmail APIGoogle Cloud

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