Back-office automation is software that does the repeatable office work behind sales and delivery: entering orders, processing invoices and purchase orders, reconciling, reporting and answering staff questions. With AI, a system can read the documents your people read (emailed POs, PDF invoices, spreadsheets), check them against your ERP and post the result, sending only the exceptions to a person. Your team keeps the approvals and the judgment calls.
What back-office automation covers.
Every mid-market company has people whose day is mostly retyping. A customer emails a purchase order and someone keys it into the ERP. A vendor sends an invoice as a PDF and someone matches it to a PO and a receipt, line by line. On Friday afternoon someone exports three systems into a spreadsheet so the Monday meeting has numbers. Back-office automation hands those jobs to a system, with a person approving what matters.
Business process automation is not new. Rules-based tools (scripts and RPA) follow fixed steps on fixed screens, and they break when a vendor changes a form. The difference AI makes is document processing automation: a system can read an invoice or an order that looks different from every sender, which is most of what a back office handles. The rules stay yours. What posts on its own, what waits for an approver and what gets flagged are decisions your team makes once and can change any time.
Back-office work moves two levers. Some of it takes cost out, like recovering money that leaked. Most of it gives time back, like documents that no longer need retyping. Every play in this guide carries one of those two tags: COST or TIME.
The retyping map.
These are the documents a mid-market company re-keys most often. For each one: where it arrives, where it gets typed, who owns it and the topic in this guide that covers it. Use it as a checklist against your own back office.
| Document | Arrives in | Typed into | Owner | Covered in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer PO | Email, often as a PDF | An ERP sales order | Customer service | Sales order entry automation |
| Vendor invoice | The AP inbox | Accounts payable | AP clerk or controller | Invoice processing automation |
| Delivery ticket or timesheet | Paper, photos, a field app | A customer invoice | Billing | Revenue leakage |
| Email request | A shared inbox or a phone note | A work order | Dispatch or the service desk | Dispatch automation |
| Spreadsheet export | The ERP, the CRM, spreadsheets | The weekly report | Finance or the COO | Automated reporting |
Invoice and PO processing.
Invoices are where data entry automation pays back first, because the volume is high and the work is the same every time. The document arrives by email. The system captures it, reads it and extracts the record: vendor, lines, quantities, prices and terms. It matches the record against the open PO and the goods receipt, then routes it.
- Posted where the rules allow. A clean invoice that matches its PO and receipt posts as a real bill in your ledger.
- Held where they do not. A price variance or a missing receipt waits for the named approver who owns that decision.
- Logged either way. Every document, match and approval is on the record.
This works with QuickBooks, NetSuite or another ERP, because the system posts into the ledger you already keep. The play for this is P06 Never touch a PO or invoice again. The full walk-through, from capture to posting and what to measure, is in invoice processing automation.
Replace every input with your own. The figure excludes systems, errors, late fees and missed early-pay discounts, which the method in cost to process an invoice adds back.
Sales order entry.
Customer purchase orders are the same problem in the other direction. They arrive by email, as PDFs or in the body of a message, each in the customer's own format. The system reads each order, maps the customer's part numbers to yours, checks price and stock against the ERP and the customer's terms, and enters the sales order. Anything that does not match, a price the customer disputes or an item on backorder, routes to customer service with the details attached. P06 Never touch a PO or invoice again covers orders as well as invoices.
Revenue leakage and billing errors.
Between a quote and cash in the bank, money slips out through small gaps. Work gets done and never billed. A price increase never reaches the price list. Freight or a surcharge is left off the invoice. A vendor promises a credit that never arrives, or gets paid twice. None of it is large on its own. Together it is revenue you already earned.
To look for leaks in your own records, compare delivery tickets and timesheets against invoices, invoices against contract prices, payments against invoices, and promised credits against credits received. A system can read every record in each of those pairs and flag the mismatches, then draft the recovery chase for each one and track it to credit. A named person on your team sends every chase. The play for this is P05 Find the money you are leaking.
Weekly reporting and early warnings.
Automated reporting has two halves. The first is the scheduled pack: the weekly numbers pulled from the ERP, the CRM and the spreadsheets, assembled the same way every week and delivered before the meeting. The second matters more. An early warning watches the numbers that hurt when they move (margin by customer, days of cash, accounts going quiet) and alerts the owner when one moves outside its normal range.
The rule for an alert worth reading: it names the number, the threshold it crossed and the move to make, or it does not fire. The play for this is P10 Get told before it becomes a problem.
Answers from your own documents.
Every company has a person everyone asks: where the SOP lives, which vendor takes returns, how the biggest customer wants its paperwork. When that person is on vacation, work waits. A knowledge system built from your own SOPs, manuals, past tickets and email answers those questions in Slack or Teams, and cites the document and its date with every answer.
Two rules make it safe to roll out. It never shows anyone a document they could not already open. And when it cannot find a source, it says so. The play for this is P12 Your company's second brain.
Dispatch and scheduling.
For trades and regional fleets, dispatch is its own back office: assigning jobs, routing technicians and trucks, and keeping customers updated when the schedule moves. When nothing in our library fits a workflow, the custom path starts with Custom Discovery at $10,000, and a Custom Build and Custom Subscription are priced from what it finds. See the custom path and prices.
Software, RPA, an ERP module or a service.
There are four common ways to automate back-office work. They differ less in what they can read than in who does the work around them.
| Option | Who configures it | Who handles exceptions | Who updates it | How it is priced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document software | Your team, with vendor setup help | Your team | The vendor updates the product; your team updates the rules | Per seat or per document |
| RPA scripts | A developer or a contractor | Your team | Whoever wrote the script, when a screen changes | A build fee, then maintenance |
| An ERP module | Your ERP partner or IT | Your team | The ERP vendor, on its release schedule | A module license and setup |
| A managed service | The provider | Your team approves; the provider runs the rest | The provider, as models and systems change | A fixed monthly price |
StrikeArc is the fourth kind. The StrikeArc PowerPlays Library subscription is $7,500 a month, including one play installed per quarter, run for you with results reported in dollars. A one-time install of an existing play is $20,000 per play, installed and handed over.
What stays with your people.
- Approvals above the threshold you set.
- Disputes with vendors and customers.
- Anything that fails a match, until someone decides.
- Changes to the rules themselves.
Every gate is a named human. Agents draft everything; they approve nothing.
How to pick the first back-office workflow.
Start with the document your team retypes most. Count how many arrive in a month, time the work end to end, and note what a mistake costs. Then score it against the other candidates on the five tests: volume, cost of delay, cost of errors, system access and a named owner. The method is in which business processes to automate first. Distributors can start with AI use cases in distribution, and the revenue side of the same order is covered in sales automation.
The back-office plays in the StrikeArc PowerPlays Library carry the COST or TIME tag and install in the inbox and ERP you already have. We run them for you, and keep them running after launch. See every play, see the custom path and prices, or read about running AI after launch.
The play for orders and invoices
The plays for leaks, alerts and answers
- P05Find the money you are leakingCOST
- P10Get told before it becomes a problemCOST
- P12Your company's second brainTIME
The topics in this guide.
Questions owners ask.
What is back-office automation?
Software and AI handling the repeatable office work behind sales and delivery: order entry, invoices, reconciliations and reporting. People keep the approvals and the exceptions.
Do we need to replace our ERP to automate order entry or invoices?
No. The approach in this guide installs into the systems you already run: the inbox the documents arrive in and the ERP or accounting system they end up in.
What is the difference between RPA and AI for back-office work?
RPA follows fixed steps on fixed screens. AI can read documents and email whose layout varies from sender to sender. Many setups use both.
Which back-office process should we automate first?
Score your candidates on volume, cost of delay, cost of errors, system access and ownership, and start with the one that scores highest on all five.
How do we work out what manual invoice processing costs us?
Count the invoices, time the work end to end, apply a loaded hourly cost, then add systems, errors, late fees and missed early-pay discounts. The step-by-step method is in the cost-per-invoice article.