Ermetis
What it reads from All samples

A sample built on fictional content. Holcombe Mechanical is not a real company and this reflects no real engagement.

A vendor invoice arrives. Watch it get matched to its job and posted.

Holcombe Mechanical is a fictional $16M commercial mechanical contractor. Its vendor invoices arrive as PDFs in an Outlook inbox, its purchase orders live on SharePoint, and its books run in QuickBooks with job costing. The paperwork line reads each invoice, matches it against the order and the receiving record, checks the math against the company’s own rules, and queues anything unusual to the controller. Each step below is the screen a real person would be looking at.

What it is worth

The value in this workflow is how many times a person has to handle an invoice, and how many days pass between the invoice arriving and getting posted. We would measure both on your own accounts payable. The diagnosis measured quoting and not this one, so we do not put a number on it.

9:14Bexley accepted the Store 118 proposal, and Holcombe released the equipment order to Mansfield Supply on PO-5521. Four weeks later, the invoice lands in the AP inbox. The paperwork line watches this inbox from inside Holcombe’s Microsoft 365 tenant: it read the PDF, found the PO, and started the match. Nobody keyed anything.

HAAP review · INV-88312 +
‹ › ↻🔒holcombemech.sharepoint.com/sites/ap/review/INV-88312
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Holcombe AP

Mansfield Supply · invoice 88312 · job BEX-118

Exceptionone line needs the controller · matched 9:14
Invoice lineAmountMatched against, click to open
(2) 15-ton packaged rooftop units, gas/electric$38,900
Delivered to the Store 118 site, September 24 
Freight$380
Invoice total$39,280PO total $38,900

Checks · plain code, run when the invoice was read

✓ PassedThe extraction: vendor, invoice number, date, PO, and job read from the PDF, and the line math recomputed. Not a model’s opinion.
✓ PassedThe three-way match on the equipment: the PO, the receiving note on the job, and the invoice agree on units and price.
✓ PassedNot a duplicate: no posted invoice from this vendor with this number or this amount against this job.
⚑ FlagThe freight line is not on the PO. Quote Q-8841 said freight included, and PO-5521 carries no freight line. The $380 goes to Terry’s queue with the quote language attached; it does not post on its own.

9:14Two minutes after the email, the match is done on Holcombe’s own SharePoint. The equipment line agrees with the order and the receiving record, so it needs nobody. The freight line disagrees with the quote, so it waits for a person. Click any record to see the comparison.

HAAP batch · this week +
‹ › ↻🔒holcombemech.sharepoint.com/sites/ap/batch
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Holcombe AP

This week’s batch · 14 invoices

CheckedTerry Hobbs · Thursday 4:31
EXCEPTION · DECIDEDTerry read the freight flag, agreed with the quote language, and approved the invoice at $38,900 with the $380 freight line returned to Mansfield for credit. His decision, and the quote language it rests on, are recorded with the invoice.
12 INVOICES · NO TOUCHESMatched their orders and receiving records, passed every check, and went straight to the batch. Duval Controls, Whitten Crane’s three night picks on Store 118, and ten more. Nobody opened them.
1 INVOICE · HELDA first-time vendor with no PO reference. The line does not guess at new vendors; it is in Terry’s queue with the extracted details filled in.
VendorInvoiceJobAmountStatus
Mansfield Supply88312BEX-118$38,900Checked · exception decided
Whitten Crane7208BEX-118$3,120Checked · no touches
Duval Controls20441LAW-204$1,912Checked · no touches
Ten more, all checked$21,684 
Batch total, thirteen invoices$65,616 
Every line carries its job code, so job costing in QuickBooks stays true, and the invoice prices feed the same vendor intake path the quote drafter reads. When Mansfield’s unit cost moves, estimating sees it in the next draft, not at the post-job review.
✓ Batch exported. Terry posted it in QuickBooks at 4:40; every line landed against its job. The batch, the exception decision, and the held invoice are logged.
QuickBooks Desktop keeps the books and has no cloud connection, so the line prepares the checked batch and Terry posts it. The checking is where the hours were going; the posting takes minutes.

4:31Terry’s week of invoice work is now this screen: one real decision, one held vendor, and a checked batch. The system matched and checked; the person decided. That order never reverses.

Under the hood· what ran, and where everything lives · drawn by Ermetis, not an app─  ▢  ✕
WHERE IT PULLS FROM SharePointpurchase orders · matching rules BuildOpsjobs · receiving notes · via its API Posted historyfor the duplicate check HOLCOMBE’S MICROSOFT 365 TENANT Outlook · invoices arriveshared inbox watched, PDFs read The paperwork lineextracts with Holcombe’s permissions Plain-code checksmatch · math · duplicates · rules Exceptions queue to Terrywith the records attached The checked batchevery line carrying its job code Terry postsin QuickBooks, from the export Vendor intake pathprices feed the quote drafter the invoice prices go back into the memory

What runs it

The paperwork line is an agent configured in Holcombe’s own Microsoft 365 tenant. It reads the AP inbox, the purchase orders, and the BuildOps job records under the permissions Holcombe already set. Nothing about this workflow leaves their environment.
The model extracts; code checks. Language models read the PDFs, whatever each vendor’s layout looks like. The match, the math, the duplicate check, and the thresholds run as plain code, so a check either passes or a person looks at it.

The honest mechanism

QuickBooks Desktop has no cloud connection, so the line does not pretend to post. It prepares the checked batch, and Terry posts it in minutes. If the books ever move to a system with an open connection, the same line posts directly.

What gets recorded

Every invoice, match result, exception decision, and batch is logged, with who decided and when. The invoice prices feed the vendor intake path, so estimating works from what things actually cost now.

 This is the whole machine. The documents arrive where they always did, one agent inside the tenant, checks that are code, one queue for the exceptions, and a person posting a batch that has already been checked.

What this took, in this fictional world

Fourteen invoices came in during the demo week. Twelve posted with no touches at all, one got a single decision from Terry, and one was held because a first-time vendor deserves a person. Before the system, every one of the fourteen was opened, keyed, and chased by hand, and posting ran more than a week behind.

The same workflow, elsewhere

At a distributor, this is supplier invoices matched against purchase orders and receipts, which is where much of the industry’s back office spends its time. At a professional-services firm, it is subcontractor and expert invoices matched to engagements and budgets. The pattern is the same: read, matched against the company’s own records, exceptions to a person.