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For finance teams

Your finance team should spend its time on judgement, not admin.

Kowalah puts Claude to work on the admin that fills finance teams' weeks: supplier invoices, approvals, chasing and reporting. A person still approves everything that leaves the building. We start with one process and prove the time saved before moving to the next.

Book a finance process review

The problem

Where the week goes

Skilled people spend hours copying numbers between systems, keying invoices and chasing approvals before any analysis can start. That's the part Claude can do. The judgement stays with your team.

49%
of accounts payable leaders say the time it takes to approve invoices and payments is their biggest challenge Source: Ardent Partners, The State of ePayables 2025
8.2 days
on average to process a single supplier invoice Source: Ardent Partners, The State of ePayables 2025
6.4 days
median time to close the monthly books, across 2,300 organisations Source: APQC benchmarking, reported in CFO.com (2018)

Work out your number

Invoices a month × minutes each ÷ 60 = hours a month your team spends keying and chasing

Run it for supplier and sales invoices separately. Then add the time spent chasing approvals.

One process, start to finish

Before and after: invoices with two approvals

The same process for supplier invoices and for sales invoices raised from a closed deal. Nothing is sent or paid without two people approving it.

Before

  1. Someone downloads the overdue and upcoming invoices from the accounting system.
  2. They work out who owns each supplier or deal, and email them the list.
  3. They chase approvals by email and Slack, then chase again.
  4. They copy the deal details into a draft invoice, or build the payment-run file by hand.
  5. Finance checks everything again before anything is sent or paid.

With Claude

  1. Claude picks up each closed deal or incoming invoice, drafts and codes it in the accounting system, and sends it to the right owner, the salesperson or the budget holder.
  2. The owner approves it. Claude chases at 4pm, and again at 8am the next day.
  3. Finance gives the second approval. Anything that doesn't match goes back for a fresh approval, or to the finance lead.
  4. Only then is the invoice sent or the payment made.

Where Claude helps

Three places finance teams start.

01

Supplier invoices and approvals

The problem Invoices arrive by email. Someone keys each one in, works out who should approve it and chases them all before the payment run.

What Claude does Reads each invoice and codes it (supplier, VAT, account code, description), matches it to the budget holder who owns the supplier, and builds the approval list: what's overdue and what's due in the next 10 days. Your team handles the exceptions and approves the payment run.

02

Sales invoicing, with two approvals

The problem Closed deals are copied by hand from the CRM into the accounting system, and one wrong invoice costs more than the time it saved.

What Claude does Drafts each invoice from the closed deal, gets the salesperson and then finance to approve it, chases the approvals and sends it only once both are in.

03

Management reporting and variance commentary

The problem Pulling data from each entity and spreadsheet before anyone can start the analysis, then writing a paragraph for every variance.

What Claude does Connects to the ledger (NetSuite, Xero, Microsoft 365), builds the entity view against budget or the prior year, flags the variances over your threshold and drafts the commentary for your team to edit and sign off.

Once those are working

  • Month-end close. With invoices, approvals and reporting on Claude, the close becomes review and sign-off rather than a rebuild.
  • Audit preparation. Claude gathers supporting documents, prepares the schedules auditors ask for and drafts answers to their queries for your team to check.
  • Expenses. Claude checks each claim against your policy, flags the exceptions and codes the rest for approval.
  • Tax. Claude prepares working papers and reconciliations for your tax team or advisers.

The Kowalah Way

How we do it

  • One process at a time. We map your finance processes, score each one for hours spent and how well Claude handles it, and start where the return is clearest.
  • Your team writes the skills. Whiteboard the process, record the walkthrough, and Claude turns it into a reusable skill. Agree the top five or six as a team, so you don't end up with ten versions of the same thing.
  • Controls first. Connectors only see what the user can already see. Claude starts read-only, and any write needs a person to approve it.
The first step runs in Claude: the Kowalah Plugin's process diagnostic, reading the process from your operating model.

Questions

What finance leaders ask first

Will Claude post entries or make payments on its own?

No. Claude starts read-only. It drafts invoices, codes and commentary, and a person approves every write. Sales invoices need two approvals before they are sent, and payment runs stay with your team.

Which finance systems does it work with?

Claude connects to accounting and ERP systems such as NetSuite and Xero, and to Microsoft 365, through connectors. A connector sees only what the person using it can already see.

Where should a finance team start?

With one process that takes measurable time every month, such as supplier invoices or sales invoicing. We measure the hours before and after, and move to the next process once the first one is proven.

Ready when you are

Pick one finance process. We'll show you what it looks like with Claude.

A 30-minute finance process review. Bring the process that costs your team the most time, and we'll walk through how it would run with Claude and the controls around it.

Book a finance process review

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