Executive Summary
Most finance teams do not have a payments problem. They have a visibility problem. Invoices arrive by email in their hundreds, and by the time one surfaces it is already late, already paid, or already with a solicitor.
Accounts Payable Intelligence tracks every supplier invoice from the moment it lands in the inbox to the moment it is paid. It reads every email and attachment as it arrives, pulls out the invoice number, amount, due date, supplier, purchase order and job number, and sorts each bill by how soon it falls due, so the team works from a queue rather than an inbox.
It then checks the systems that each hold part of the truth — inbox, approval system, operational system and ledger — against each other every day, and raises anything unusual with the right person immediately. Live in the UK and India, deployed in weeks rather than quarters, and run as a managed service.
The Challenge
In most growing businesses, every supplier bill lands in one shared finance inbox. Volumes climb quietly. Two hundred emails over a weekend is not unusual for a business with an active supply chain.
They do not arrive in a tidy format. Some are attachments. Some sit inside a monthly statement with fourteen others. Some are halfway down a conversation thread that started about something else entirely.
The result is familiar. Suppliers get paid twice. Others are not paid until they escalate. Bills without a purchase order or job number stall for weeks with nobody owning them. And on any given morning, nobody can answer the simplest question in finance: what do we owe today.
The cost is rarely the invoice itself. It is the goodwill, the escalation, and the week your finance team spends opening emails.
The Radlabs Approach
Four things happen, from the moment a bill arrives. Nothing about the way your team already works has to change.
It reads everything that comes in
Every email into the finance inbox is read as it arrives, along with its attachments. Invoices buried inside statements or conversation threads are pulled out and treated as their own item.
It pulls out what matters
Invoice number, amount, due date, supplier, purchase order and job number. Each bill is then sorted by how soon it falls due, so the team works from a queue rather than an inbox.
It raises what needs attention
Anything unusual is flagged to the right person immediately, rather than waiting to be discovered — from a missing purchase order to a solicitor's letter that must reach the Finance Director the same day.
It checks your systems against each other
Your inbox, your approval system, your operational system and your ledger are compared daily. Every disagreement between them is shown in one place, with the discrepancy named.
Execution Timeline
We map how invoices actually flow
We map how invoices actually flow through your business, connect to your existing systems, and configure the rules that matter to you. Nothing about how your team works has to change.
A working queue and a working exception list
Your team sees a working queue and a working exception list from day one. We stay close through the first full cycle, tuning what gets flagged and to whom.
Operated for you, or handed over
We operate it as a monthly service: monitored, tuned and reported on. Or we hand it over fully documented. Your choice, and you can change your mind later.
The Impact
| Metric | Baseline | Post-Radlabs |
|---|---|---|
| Time spent processing invoices | Manual, whoever opened it | 80% less |
| Identified losses and leakage | Unknown | £40,000 a month found |
| Systems reconciled | Year end, if at all | 4 systems, daily |
| Invoices with no purchase order | Stall silently for weeks | Flagged on arrival |
| Bills already paid | Found after paying twice | Checked before payment |
| Legal and collection letters | Lost in the general queue | Straight to the Finance Director |
| What the business owes today | Nobody could answer | One view, updated daily |
£40,000 a month in identified losses and leakage
A UK property services contractor working across insurance, housing and commercial repairs, receiving over two hundred supplier emails on a busy weekend. Before, invoices were tracked by whoever opened them. Now every bill is accounted for from arrival to payment, and exceptions reach the right person the same day.
Four systems that never agreed, now checked every day
Most finance teams run at least three systems that each hold part of the truth. Bills arrive in one place, get approved in another, are recorded in a third, and paid from a fourth. Reconciling them properly is a job nobody has time for, so it happens at year end, if at all. This runs daily and automatically: anything approved but never recorded, recorded but never paid, or paid without ever being approved appears on a single view with the discrepancy named. Currently working with Xero, ApprovalMax and operational systems including Reflex, with other finance and accounting systems added as part of the setup.
The things that cost you money, found before they do
Invoices with no purchase order. Raised with the accounts payable team the moment they arrive, rather than stalling silently.
Invoices with no job number. The single most common reason a bill sits unapproved.
Bills you have already paid. Checked against your ledger before they are paid a second time.
Part payments. The remaining balance identified and tracked rather than forgotten.
Overdue bills. Surfaced with the reason they became overdue, drawn from the email trail.
Legal and collection letters. Identified by sender, whether supplier, solicitor or collection agency, and sent straight to the Finance Director rather than into the general queue.
Approval bottlenecks. Who a bill is sitting with, and how long it has been there.
Duplicate submissions. The same invoice sent twice by a supplier chasing payment.
Conclusion
This is built for you if any of it sounds familiar: you pay a high volume of suppliers and bills arrive mostly by email; your finance team spends more time finding invoices than checking them; you have been paid twice at least once and suspect it has happened more; a supplier has escalated over a bill you did not know about; month end is the only time your systems are reconciled against each other; or you cannot answer, today, what your business currently owes.
It works equally well for a business with one finance person and a business with fifteen. The volume changes. The problem does not.
Find out what a month is costing you. A 30-minute review, at no cost — tell us how invoices reach your business today and we will tell you where the money is most likely going, and whether this is worth doing at all.
sales@radlabs.tech · +91 690 126 1005 · Live in UK and India · Works with Xero, ApprovalMax and operational systems including Reflex · Deployed in weeks, not quarters · Runs as a managed service