AGENT-RUN BACK OFFICE — DOCUMENT CAPTURE
Paperwork arrives by email, text and hand, and goes missing.
A job’s paperwork is scattered by default: the order sits in a portal, the sign-off is a photograph on somebody’s phone, the receipt is in a van. Nobody is doing anything wrong. But the invoice cannot go out until a person goes and finds all of it.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment
WHO THIS IS FOR
Businesses where the paperwork for a single job lands in an inbox, a customer portal, a phone camera and somebody's pocket.
THE PROBLEM
So somebody spends the first hour of every billing run reassembling a job that finished a fortnight ago, out of memory and a group chat. What gets missed is never caught later, because nobody knows it existed: paperwork that never surfaced looks exactly like paperwork that was never created.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
Documents
Inbound 7731 · bill of lading filed
63 FILED TODAY FROM PORTALS, THE ORDERS INBOX AND THE DOCK’S TEXT LINE · 4:00 PM
Bill of lading BL-55120
Photographed at dock 4 and texted in at 2:14 pm. Read, filed against the inbound it belongs to, with the figures pulled out.
- Filed against
- Inbound 7731 · a housewares importer
- Matched by
- BOL and PO numbers
- PO number
- PO 88213
- Carrier · trailer
- A truckload carrier · trailer 5312
- Pallets · cartons
- 22 · 1,056
- Weight
- 8,355 kg
- Seal
- 738?904, fourth digit unclearCheck
- Exception noted
- “2 ctns crushed plt 14”, handwrittenCheck
- Signed for
- Receiver, dock 4 · 2:09 pm
Dock text line
- Dock 4 · text
Photo: BOL for 7731. 2 cartons crushed on pallet 14.
- Intake agent
Filed against inbound 7731. The seal’s fourth digit is unclear, so Sam will check it with you before the dock closes.
FILED · 2 FIELDS ON SAM’S CHECK LIST
Missing at 4:00 pm
Outbound 6610 · signed proof of delivery
Delivered yesterday, per the carrier’s tracking; not in the inbox or the carrier’s portal yet
MissingInbound 7725 · packing list
The advance notice came through the customer’s portal; the packing list never did
MissingOutbound 6612 · routing confirmation
This customer’s portal forbids automated access, so Sam checks it by hand
By hand
3 MISSING · CHECKED AGAIN AT 7:00 AM
Every document is stored under your own account. One it cannot read, or cannot match to a job with confidence, goes to a person with the reason.
What you get.
- Documents pulled from the portals and inboxes they genuinely land in, not a folder somebody has to maintain.
- Each one read and attached to the job it belongs to, with the figures on it extracted.
- A daily list of what is missing, while it is still a paperwork problem and not an invoice problem.
- Your people sending a photograph to the number they already use, with no app to install and no login to remember.
How it works.
Priced against the scope, after a Diagnostic that is small on purpose. The shape of the work we can tell you now.
- THE SHAPE
- Ongoing. The agents run daily, and you see both what they filed and what they could not.
- WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU
- Accounts on the portals your customers oblige you to use, and the number your team already sends photos to.
- WHAT YOU KEEP
- Every document, filed and exportable, in storage that sits under your own account.
What this does not include.
Published because you should know before the call, not after the invoice.
- Portals whose terms forbid automated access. We check before we build, one portal at a time.
- Holding your documents anywhere but infrastructure in your own account.
QUESTIONS
Our customers make us use their portal. Can an agent get in there?
Usually, because the current generation of agents signs in and works the screen without needing an interface built for them — which is exactly why this became possible this year. But we read that portal's terms first, and if automated access is prohibited we will tell you and leave it manual.
What happens to a document it cannot read?
It goes on the daily exception list with the reason, and a person handles it. An agent that guesses at a smudged receipt is worse than one that admits it cannot read it.
MORE UNDER AGENT-RUN BACK OFFICE
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