Five workflows, connected systems, and clear boundaries for agents and people. An illustration with made-up data.
Illustrative system using made-up data. It names no client and reports no customer results.
Workflow architecture
Five agents, one for each workflow.
Each agent has one job, one set of permissions and one owner. The workflows are the ones an audit found worth deploying.
- 01
Invoice exception agent
Invoice exceptions
Finds the purchase order and the goods receipt, compares the lines, gathers evidence from the ERP and the vendor thread, checks purchasing policy, and proposes the adjustment.
People A controller approves adjustments, with the evidence in front of them.
- 02
Reconciliation agent
Reconciliation
Matches transactions across systems, groups the breaks, and explains each one from the records that caused it.
People Accountants decide how to resolve a break and post the correcting entries.
- 03
Close coordination agent
Close coordination
Tracks what the close is waiting for, chases the owner of each open item, and shows what is ready and what is not.
People The controller decides what closes and what carries over.
- 04
Collections agent
Collections and cash application
Applies incoming payments to open invoices, flags the ones it cannot match, and prepares each collection contact with the account history.
People People own every customer relationship and every dispute.
- 05
Reporting agent
Reporting and variance analysis
Assembles the period's figures from the source systems and drafts the explanation of each material variance, with its supporting records.
People Finance leaders own the numbers and the commentary that goes out.
Matching a payment to an invoice by its reference, applying a tax rule, checking a total against the order, and posting an entry that has been approved.
Run by: conventional automation
Reading a vendor's email, working out why an invoice does not match its order, deciding which records matter, and explaining a variance.
Run by: an agent, inside controls
Approving an adjustment above the limit, agreeing a payment plan with a customer, releasing a payment, and signing off an account.
Run by: a person
Systems involved
It works in the software finance already uses.
Nothing is migrated. The agents read and write only where their permissions say they may.
- ERP
- Slack or Teams
- Banking systems
- Expense software
- Shared drives
- Spreadsheets
Controls
The controls in force.
Every consequential action passes through these before it happens.
- Read and write access set for each system and each action, with no access to release payments
- Approval limits by role, so each adjustment goes to someone allowed to approve it
- A policy check before every action, recorded with its result
- A confidence threshold for each type of action, and escalation below it
- Evidence attached to every proposal, drawn from the records themselves
- A complete audit record that auditors can read
- Recovery for every write, so a wrong entry can be found and reversed
- A named owner for each agent and each workflow
Levels of Agency
Where each workflow started, and where it stands.
Authority is granted one workflow at a time, and only when the evidence supports it.
| Workflow | Started at | Stands at | Ceiling |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invoice exceptions | |||
| Reconciliation | |||
| Close coordination | |||
| Collections and cash application | |||
| Reporting and variance analysis |
In this illustration, the middle column shows where a system might stand after some months of operation. It is not a report on a real deployment. Some workflows stay well below the top level on purpose.
Results
How results are reported.
A real deployment page fills in each of these, with its baseline and the period it covers.
- Cycle time for an invoice exception
- Time from arrival to resolution, against the baseline the audit recorded.
- Not shown
- Exception rate
- The share of runs that met something the agent could not settle within its rules.
- Not shown
- Human intervention rate
- The share of runs where a person had to step in, and the reasons why.
- Not shown
- Confidence calibration
- Whether high confidence goes with correct outcomes.
- Not shown
- Policy violations
- How many there were, and how each was resolved.
- Not shown
- Effort recovered
- Hours no longer spent gathering evidence in reconciliation and in the close.
- Not shown
- Cost per completed workflow
- What a finished run costs, including model use and review time.
- Not shown
No values are shown. This is an illustration, and any figure on it would be invented.
Inspect it
What the agent sees, step by step.
Every deployment can be opened up. These are the nine views, in the order a run passes through them.
Illustration with made-up data. No real invoice, vendor or person is involved.
- 01
Input
What triggered the workflow?
An invoice arrives in the accounts payable inbox and is read.
- 02
Context
What information did the agent receive?
The invoice, the vendor's record, the open purchase order and the goods receipt.
- 03
Evidence
Which records support its decision?
Each finding is listed with the record it came from, so a controller can check it in the source system.
- 04
Policy
What is the agent allowed to do?
The purchasing rules that apply, each with its result: pass, needs approval or fail.
- 05
Confidence
How certain is the system?
A stated confidence, set against the threshold for this type of action.
- 06
Decision
What action did the system select, and what trace is available?
The action chosen, with the inputs, evidence and checks that led to it. The trace shows the record of the work. It does not expose a model's private reasoning.
- 07
Approval
Does a human need to authorize it?
Below the threshold, the agent does not act. It asks the controller and attaches the evidence.
- 08
Action
What changed in the underlying system?
The adjustment is posted in the ERP, inside the agent's permissions.
- 09
Audit
What happened, when, and under which policy?
Every step, and who or what took it, is written to a record that auditors can read.