Accounts receivable looks like a finance job and works like a support desk. Most of the week goes on email: a customer asks for a copy of an invoice, another says the PO number is wrong, a third promises to pay on Friday, a fourth says half the delivery was damaged and they will not pay until it is sorted. Each answer is already in a system somewhere. Someone has to find it, write it down and follow up. That is the part an agent does well, as long as the commercial decisions stay with your credit team.
§ 01Where an agent takes the work
- Invoice questions. Copy requests, "what is this charge", "which PO is this against", "what is our balance". The agent reads the email, finds the invoice and the account in your ledger, and answers with the document attached.
- Payment reminders. The agent sends reminders on the schedule you set, per customer group, and reads the thread first. A customer who replied, paid or raised a dispute does not get the next reminder.
- Promises to pay. When a customer says they will pay on a date, the agent logs it against the account, checks on the day whether the money arrived, and follows up once if it did not.
- Dispute intake. When a customer objects, the agent collects the facts: which invoice, which lines, what they say is wrong, any proof of delivery or photos. It puts them in one record and routes it to the person who owns the account. It does not argue the case.
- Cash matching. The agent reads remittance emails and bank lines and matches payments to open invoices, including part payments. What it cannot match goes to a person with the likely candidates listed.
- Account statements. Month-end statements and "please confirm our balance" requests are generated and sent with the open items listed.
The pattern is the same as on the accounts payable side: read from your systems, prepare the answer or the action, and hand anything unusual to a person. It is also the same pattern as customer support, because a large share of AR work is customer service with an invoice attached.
§ 02Where your credit team stays in charge
- Deciding disputes. Whether to credit, re-invoice or hold firm depends on the relationship and the facts, and both sit with a person.
- Payment plans and settlements. Agreeing to split a balance or accept less than the full amount is a commercial decision. The agent can prepare the history and the numbers. It does not agree terms.
- Credit holds and account stops. Stopping supply to a customer has consequences beyond finance. The agent flags accounts that cross your thresholds and a person decides.
- Escalation to legal or a collection agency. Never automatic.
- Write-offs. Prepared by the agent, approved by a person.
§ 03What actually goes wrong
Reading the emails is rarely the problem. These are the things that cause trouble in practice.
- Reminders that ignore the thread. A reminder sent to a customer who replied an hour ago is the fastest way to make the project unpopular. The agent has to read the conversation, not just the aging report.
- Customer contacts that are out of date. The person who approves payment has often moved on. The agent should log bounces and "I no longer handle this" replies and ask a person to update the contact.
- Remittances that do not match the bank. A customer pays three invoices in one transfer and lists two of them. Matching has to allow for this and send the remainder to a person instead of guessing.
- Tone. B2B collections is a relationship business. Write the reminder templates with the credit team, keep them short, and have the agent stick to them.
- Disputes hidden in ordinary replies. "We will pay once the missing pallet arrives" is a dispute, not a promise to pay. Classifying these correctly is the main thing to test before go-live.
§ 04Start read-only, then earn write access
The first version reads the inbox and the ledger, drafts the answers and reminders, and sends nothing. Someone on the credit team approves the queue each morning. Track one number: how often the person changes the draft. When that number is low and stable, let the agent send the routine categories itself, invoice copies and first reminders, and keep approval on everything else. The approval step itself is described in our approval queue pattern.
§ 05Cost and timing
A single agent covering one part of the process costs 3,000 to 5,000 USD and takes 2 to 3 weeks. A coordinated set covering invoice questions, reminders, dispute intake and cash matching costs 15,000 to 50,000 USD over 6 to 12 weeks. The price moves with the number of systems and how clean the customer and invoice data is, not with how many invoices you send. The full breakdown is in our cost guide.
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If your team spends its week chasing payments by email, a 30 minute discovery call will show which part is worth automating first and which should stay with a person. Engagement models and prices are on our Hire page.