SERVICES — TIER 5 OF 6
Agent-Run Back Office. We run the desk. You clear the exceptions.
The paperwork behind every job — confirmations, proofs of delivery, receipts, the evidence behind a charge, invoices, settlement checks, filings — worked every day by agents that sign into the systems you already use, with a person reviewing anything that leaves the building. This is the one tier priced against what the work costs you now, not against our hours.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment
WHO THIS IS FOR
Owners who already know the desk work is costing them, and are weighing up hiring somebody, sending it offshore, or carrying on as they are.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
Back office
Thursday, 4:30 pm at the yard
DISPATCH SHEET, DRIVERS’ TEXT LINE, ELD AND QUICKBOOKS · 4:30 PM
Handled today
83
46 documents filed, 11 invoices drafted, 19 payments matched and 7 driver and truck files updated.
ALL AGENTS · 4:30 PM
Waiting for you
6
Needs youTwo drafts to approve, two short payments to decide, one renewal to book and one invoice held.
Got wrong in September
2
A fuel receipt filed to the wrong truck and a duplicate invoice draft. A person caught both before anything left.
SEPTEMBER ACCOUNT · SENT OCT 1
Done today
6:05 am
14 PODs and bills of lading from last night’s deliveries filed against their loads.
INTAKE AGENT
9:10 am
9 invoices for yesterday’s deliveries, read and sent by Dana.
BILLING · SENT BY A PERSON
2:05 pm
19 payments from the 2:00 export matched to their invoices. 2 came in short.
RECONCILIATION AGENT
3:05 pm
Load 4466 found missing its lumper receipt; its invoice held.
INTAKE AGENT · ON YOUR LIST
4:20 pm
11 invoices drafted from today’s deliveries, signed PODs attached.
BILLING AGENT · WAITING FOR YOU
Waiting for you
11 invoices to approve
11 of today’s 12 deliveries, each with its signed POD attached
Draft readyDetention on load 4471
4 h 40 min at the receiver against 2 h free, at $75 an hour · ELD times and the signed POD attached
$200
Draft readyShort payment on load 4398
$2,650 paid on a $2,800 invoice · the lumper line was deducted, though its receipt was attached
−$150
Your callShort payment on load 4412
A 3% quick-pay fee taken on a $3,100 invoice, with no quick-pay request on file
−$93
Your callLoad 4466 · lumper receipt missing
Found at 3:05 pm · ask the driver; the invoice is held until the receipt comes in
HeldTruck 12 · annual inspection
Due October 20, 19 days out · last year’s report is in its file
Due Oct 20
NOTHING GOES TO A BROKER OR A SHIPPER UNTIL A PERSON APPROVES IT
The agents file, draft, match and list what is missing. Anything a customer, a supplier or a regulator will read waits for a person.
What you actually get.
- The day's documents captured against the right job, without anyone re-keying them.
- Charges you are entitled to raised with the evidence attached, while it is still arguable.
- Invoices out the day the job closes, and payments checked back against what you billed.
- Filings and files kept current, with what is about to expire surfaced before it lapses.
- A monthly account of what the agents handled, what they escalated, and what they got wrong.
An agent works nights. That is not the same as saving you nights.
An agent does not sleep. That is worth something, but it is not worth twenty-four hours of wages — nobody on your team was working at three in the morning, so there were never twenty-four hours there to save.
What changes is when the work happens. Paperwork that arrives overnight is filed before you open. An invoice goes out the hour the job closes, not on Friday. Nothing waits in a pile for somebody to find a free half hour, because there is no pile.
So there are two savings and they are different sizes. The labour saving is the hours your people currently spend on this — that is the one you can count. The speed saving is that money arrives sooner and mistakes get caught while they are still cheap to fix, and in most businesses that one turns out to be worth more.
And it is not one clever robot. It is several agents doing different jobs — one watching for paperwork, one assembling invoices, one matching payments, one keeping records current — with a person clearing whatever they could not handle. We describe it that way because that is what turns up on the day.
How far it goes, and where it stops.
One assumption set for every row: each desk person loses 3 hours a day to repeatable work across a 260-day year, a system takes back 75% of it once the process is written down, and an hour costs $30 fully loaded. Change any of those and every row moves together.
VALUE RETURNED A YEAR, AGAINST PEOPLE ON THE DESK. THE LAST BAR IS THE CEILING.
That last row is the ceiling, and it is worth being blunt about it: eight full-time people's worth of capacity is a real number, but it arrives at around twenty-eight people on the desk — a business of perhaps a hundred staff. It is not what a twelve-person company should expect. Find the row that matches your own desk before you use anybody else's.
Now put your own numbers in.
The rows above are examples. This runs the same arithmetic on your desk, updates as you type, and asks you for nothing.
anyone who spends a real part of the week on it — the owner counts
Not their whole job — just the quoting, invoicing, chasing and filing.
fully loaded — wage plus everything on top of it
HOURS AN AGENT COULD CARRY, A YEAR
4,680
A MONTH
390 hrs
FULL-TIME EQUIVALENT
2.3
AT YOUR OWN RATE
$140,400
YOUR NUMBERS, NOT OUR CLAIM. UNTIL YOU CHANGE AN INPUT THE FIGURES ARE AN EXAMPLE. THE SHARE AN AGENT CARRIES IS AN INPUT YOU CAN ARGUE WITH, NOT A RESULT WE HAVE MEASURED FOR YOU.
Open the full audit → for the chart and what it deliberately does not count.
If the number above is worth chasing, twenty minutes settles whether a Diagnostic would find it.
Book a pilot callThe team you are actually hiring.
Not one clever robot. Several agents with different jobs, split by who they deal with — your paperwork, or your customers. Each one starts with the thing that goes wrong today, says what is different afterwards, and names what it always hands back to a person — because an agent described without its hand-off is the thing every vendor sells.
THE PART THAT MATTERSThese agents message you first. You should not have to remember to go and check whether a licence is close to expiring, whether a payment came up short, or where the week actually stands — being told, before you asked, is the thing you are buying.
BACK OF HOUSE — YOUR PAPERWORK
Intake Agent
Nobody can say where the paperwork is. It is in a glovebox, a text thread, a personal inbox and a pile on the counter — and the only way to find any of it is to ask the person who put it there.
WHAT CHANGES
Documents land against the right job on the day they arrive. Nothing has to be reconstructed from memory three weeks later, and nobody has to be the filing system.HOW
Watches the inboxes, portals and the number your people text photographs to. Pulls each document in, reads it, and files it against the job it belongs to.
HANDS OVER
Anything it cannot read, or cannot match to a job with confidence. It never guesses which job a receipt belongs to.Billing Agent
You invoice at month end, because month end is when somebody finally has an afternoon for it. Which means the work you finished on the 2nd waits four weeks before the clock on getting paid even starts.
WHAT CHANGES
The invoice is ready the day the job closes, with the evidence for every extra already attached. You are not financing your own customers while the paperwork catches up.HOW
Assembles the invoice from what was actually done, attaches the evidence for anything extra, and has it ready the day the job closes, not at month end.
HANDS OVER
Every invoice before it goes out, and any charge it cannot evidence — which it will not raise at all.Reconciliation Agent
Somebody paid you a bit less than the invoice and nobody noticed. By the time it surfaces — if it surfaces — it is old enough that arguing costs more than the money, so it gets written off.
WHAT CHANGES
You see every short payment and deduction in the week it lands, while it is still recoverable and while the person who authorised it still remembers the job.HOW
Matches each payment back to the invoice it was meant to settle, and flags short payments and deductions in the week they land.
HANDS OVER
Every gap it finds, to you, before anybody is contacted about it. Chasing money is a decision, not a task.Records Agent
You find out a licence lapsed the morning somebody cannot work — or the morning somebody official asks to see it. Either way you are finding out too late to have done anything about it.
WHAT CHANGES
You are told what is expiring, unprompted, with enough notice for it to be a renewal instead of an emergency — and there is one place that says what is current without anyone being asked.HOW
Keeps licences, certificates, insurance and staff records current, and surfaces what is expiring early enough to do something about it.
HANDS OVER
Anything approaching expiry, to a named person. It never clears anyone as qualified to do a job — that call belongs to someone accountable for it.Reporting Agent
Knowing where you stand costs somebody most of a morning exporting and pasting — and by the time the sheet is right it is describing a week that already finished.
WHAT CHANGES
Monday’s numbers arrive before you sit down — you stop going to get them. Where two systems disagree you are shown the disagreement, not a plausible average.HOW
Rebuilds the numbers you look at on a Monday from the systems that already hold them, so nobody exports four spreadsheets and pastes them together.
HANDS OVER
Any figure where two systems disagree. It surfaces the disagreement instead of averaging it into something plausible.
HANDS TO
A PERSON
FRONT OF HOUSE — YOUR CUSTOMERS
Outreach Agent
The customers you already earned go quiet, and nobody notices — because noticing is not anybody’s job. You paid to win them once and you are quietly losing them for free.
WHAT CHANGES
Follow-ups, review requests and check-ins actually go out, on time, to people who already know you — and stop permanently the moment anyone says stop.HOW
Follow-ups after a job, review requests, and getting back in touch with customers who have gone quiet. People who already know you, on the channel they already use.
HANDS OVER
Anyone who has not consented to be contacted, and anyone who asks to stop — immediately and permanently. This agent does not do cold campaigns, and we scope marketing separately because consent rules make it a different job.Voice Agent
BUILD & RUN →The phone rings while every single person is already mid-job. It rings out. That caller does not leave a message — they phone the next name on their list, and you never learn they called.
WHAT CHANGES
Calls get answered, asked your qualifying questions and booked into your real schedule — at seven in the evening and on a Saturday, not only when somebody happens to be free to pick up.HOW
Answers the calls that come in, works out what the caller wants, asks your qualifying questions and books the work into your real schedule.
HANDS OVER
Anything it cannot handle, to a person, carrying everything it has already gathered so the caller does not start again.Chat Agent
BUILD & RUN →Your website collects email addresses. An email address is not a booking — it is a task, sitting in somebody’s inbox, waiting for the enthusiasm that made someone type it to wear off.
WHAT CHANGES
The question gets a real answer and the booking is finished inside the conversation, while the person is still there and still wants it.HOW
Answers real questions on your site and messaging channels, and finishes the booking inside the conversation instead of collecting an email address.
HANDS OVER
A conversation that warrants a person, with the whole thread attached.Knowledge Agent
BUILD & RUN →The answer is in a binder, a PDF nobody can find, or in one person’s head — and that person is on holiday, in a meeting, or was the one who left in March.
WHAT CHANGES
Anyone can get the answer out of your own documents, with the source attached, so it can be checked, not taken on trust — and the business stops depending on who is in today.HOW
Answers questions from your own manuals, rates, contracts and past jobs, with a citation back to the document it came from.
HANDS OVER
Anything it has no grounded source for. It says it does not know instead of producing something plausible.
Nobody loses a job. You just stop adding seats.
We do not sell redundancies and we will not help you plan them. What changes is the desk work a growing business would otherwise have to keep hiring for.
Front desk and customer service
Answering the same questions, taking the same details, and telling people where their job has got to.
Billing and receivables
Assembling invoices from paperwork held in four places, then working out what was never paid.
Operations and scheduling
Typing the same job into a second system because the first one does not talk to it.
Records and compliance
Keeping files current and remembering renewals before they lapse.
Reporting
Rebuilding the same spreadsheet every Monday morning from the same four exports.
What this work costs you today.
Published rates for the three things people buy instead. We quote against this, so you can check the comparison instead of taking our word for it.
- OFFSHORE ADMIN SUPPORT
- $5–15
- an hour at 2026 published rates, or roughly $480–2,400 a month full time
- A LOCAL ASSISTANT
- $25–75
- an hour for the same work done in your own time zone and language
- ONE IN-HOUSE HIRE
- 1.25–1.45×
- salary once tax, benefits and overhead are counted — US labour data puts wages at only 70% of total compensation
- Quoted on the work after the pilot call, starting with a Diagnostic of the desk the agents would work. It agrees one number from your own records and baselines it before anything is built.
- The agents then go in one at a time, each run in shadow mode beside your team first and each paid half at the start, half on completion.
- Once they are live, Run & Improve keeps them working: a twelve-month agreement with sixty days' notice either way, with the hours they take back reported against your baseline.
What stays human.
An agent drafts and assembles. These decisions do not leave a person, and that boundary is not configurable.
- Anything a customer or a supplier will read. The agent drafts it; a person sends it.
- Any judgement about whether someone is qualified or certified to do a job. What is expiring gets surfaced, never cleared.
- Emergencies, injuries, and anything where being wrong is dangerous, not merely expensive.
- A claim we cannot evidence. An unsupported charge costs more in credibility than it collects.
- Whether to write something off. That is your money and your customer.
WHAT WE NEED ACCESS TO
- Read access to the systems that already hold your jobs and your documents.
- A working account on the portals your customers or suppliers oblige you to use — created by you, owned by you, revocable by you in a minute.
- One named person who can take an escalation the same day.
WHAT WE NEVER ASK FOR
- Your banking, payroll or card processing credentials. There is no version of this work that needs them.
- A portal whose terms forbid automated access. We read them per portal and we will tell you when the answer is no.
- Anywhere we cannot log what happened. If we cannot show you what the agent did, we do not put an agent there.
WHAT SITS UNDER THIS
What this does not include.
Published because you should know before the call, not after the invoice.
- Unattended decisions. Anything that reaches a customer, a supplier or a regulator is read by a person first.
- Your banking, payroll, or your customers' payment details. We never ask for those.
- Accepting work or agreeing a rate on your behalf.
- A promise that we replace somebody. Where the answer is that you need a hire, we will say so.
WHERE THIS APPLIES
The industries whose page names Agent-Run Back Office as one of the places we would start. Each one is written for that trade, with its own numbers.
Bring us one bad week.
Book a pilot call. Tell us where the week goes wrong, and we’ll tell you what an Operations Diagnostic would map and measure.
The first paid step has a clear scope and an end date, and the pilot after it is one workflow — not a platform, and not an open-ended retainer.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment