Invoice entry for a building contractor, cut by 13 hours a month.
A Sydney building contractor was taking in around 80 supplier invoices a month, and the admin matched each one to a purchase order and typed it into Xero by hand. That came to about 17 hours a month. We built a system that reads each invoice and checks it against the order before preparing a Xero draft. The admin now spends about ten minutes each morning approving drafts and checking the few that need a person, which comes to about four hours a month.
The problem
The business took in around 80 supplier invoices a month, arriving as PDFs or photos in the accounts inbox. For each one the admin found the matching purchase order and typed the invoice into Xero line by line. We timed it with her at about 13 minutes an invoice, which comes to roughly 17 hours a month, or more than two working days.
At the admin's $30 an hour, that's around $510 a month of her time on data entry. There wasn't time to chase every mismatch either, so an invoice with the wrong amount or a missing PO number sometimes slipped through and only turned up at month-end.
What we built
A system that watches the accounts inbox. When an invoice arrives it reads the document, running photos through text recognition (OCR) first, and checks it against the purchase order already raised in Xero before preparing a draft bill. It also looks for a duplicate invoice number from the same supplier and flags any invoice whose bank details differ from the ones on file, which is the usual sign of invoice fraud. Nothing is posted until the admin approves it, and invoices over a set amount always get a closer look.
Every invoice is matched to its purchase order and checked for duplicates and changed bank details before it reaches Xero.
The admin clears a short list each morning, about 10 minutes.
- 01
It reads the invoice
Supplier, invoice number, amounts and line items come straight off the PDF, and photographed invoices go through OCR first.
- 02
It checks the order
The invoice is matched to its purchase order, and duplicates or changed bank details get flagged.
- 03
It drafts in Xero
If everything lines up, it creates a draft bill coded the way the accountant wants it.
- 04
The clean list
Each morning the admin scans the drafts and approves the clean ones, usually in 5 to 10 minutes.
- 05
The flagged list
Large invoices, new suppliers, mismatched amounts and changed bank details go on a separate short list for a closer look.
How we rolled it out
Built over about 5 weeks and live since January 2026.
- I
Timed the job
We timed the work with the admin as she did it, which is where the 13 minutes an invoice comes from.
- II
Tested on old invoices
Before connecting anything to Xero, we ran the reader over a batch of past invoices and checked every field it pulled out against what the admin had keyed.
- III
Ran it side by side
For the first weeks the admin kept keying as normal while the system prepared drafts, and we compared the two.
- IV
Went live with drafts only
Nothing reaches the books without approval.
- V
Handed over
The business owns the system and its accounts. Each quarter the admin runs a review in which the system re-checks the quarter's bills for mistakes. We look after the agent side, which includes watching for supplier template changes, stepping in on any monitoring alarm and a full check every two months.
Safeguards and costs
What needs a person
Every bill stays a draft until the admin approves it, and large invoices always get a closer look.
If something breaks
Anything it can't read or match goes to a person, and a failed run sends an email alert. The admin can pause it with one switch and key invoices by hand again, because everything is still in Xero, and it stops itself if errors or spend cross a set limit.
What it can reach
It reads the accounts inbox and writes to Xero, and it's set up to create draft bills only. Its keys live outside the workflow itself.
What it costs
Volume is the only thing that moves the bill, because each extra invoice costs a few cents to read. We agreed a monthly budget during the build: an alert goes out at 80% of it and a hard cap sits at 150%. Our support for the agent side is a separate monthly retainer.
What we had to figure out
About 1 in 8 invoices arrive as a photo
Some subcontractors send handwritten or photographed invoices, so we added a text-recognition step that reads them like any other invoice. A photo it can't read clearly goes to the admin.
One supplier changed their format without warning
A supplier updated their template mid-project and the reading broke for their invoices. Unreadable invoices now go to the admin straight away, and we watch for template changes as part of our support.
The admin's time moved to the invoices that need judgement
The aim was never to remove the admin. Her time now goes to the large and unusual invoices instead of the ones that only needed typing.
The result
The old process took about 17 hours a month. Ten minutes each morning and a short quarterly review now take about 4.
13 hours a month at $30 an hour, or about $3,800 a year after the running cost.
About 2% of invoices had a wrong amount or a missing PO number. Since go-live it's under 0.5%, because every invoice is checked against its order first.
Every tool it uses, including OCR and the Xero connection.
Live since January 2026. The before figures come from timings we took with the admin. Time after go-live is our estimate from the review routine above.
Doing admin is much more manageable now. There will always be a few invoices to review manually, but now they're the only ones I look at.
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