Operations agents
AI Operations Agents That Handle Orders, Documents and Data Entry
We build AI agents that take routine back-office work off Canadian operations and admin teams. They read orders, invoices and requests from email, enter them in your ERP, accounting system or CRM, prepare quotes and send scheduled reports. A person approves anything that matters, and every step is logged.
What does an operations agent do, step by step?
Here is a typical order-intake agent. Invoice, quote and report agents follow the same pattern with different inputs.
Watches an inbox or folder
A shared mailbox like orders@, a SharePoint or Google Drive folder, or a web form. Each new item starts a run.
Reads the document
Email bodies, PDF attachments, scanned forms and spreadsheets. It pulls out the fields you care about: customer, PO number, line items, quantities, ship date.
Checks it against your records
Matches the customer and part numbers to your system, catches duplicates, and flags any price or quantity that looks off.
Prepares the entry
Builds the sales order, bill or CRM record as a draft, or fills in your quote template.
Asks a person to approve
Your coordinator sees the draft with a link to the source document, then approves, edits or rejects it.
Finishes and logs
Posts the approved entry, sends a confirmation if you want one, and writes every step to the activity log.
Which jobs can an operations agent take over?
Work that arrives often, in messy formats, and has a clear right answer that a person can check quickly.
Order and request intake
Purchase orders, service requests and change orders from email, typed into your ERP, accounting system or job board as drafts.
Document processing
Supplier invoices, packing slips, POs, application forms and PDFs read, checked and filed, with the key fields entered where they belong.
Quote preparation
An RFQ comes in. The agent pulls the scope, applies your price list and rules, and hands your estimator a first draft to finish.
Data entry between apps
Closed deals in HubSpot become customers in QuickBooks. Completed jobs become invoices. Nobody copies and pastes between screens.
Scheduled reports
Open orders, overdue invoices or this week's pipeline, pulled from your systems and emailed in plain language at the same time every week.
Inbox triage and drafted replies
A shared inbox sorted by type and urgency, routed to the right person, with a suggested reply waiting for anyone who wants it.
What could an operations agent look like in your industry?
These are examples of agents we could scope for different industries. They are illustrations, not client case studies.
Example: a building-supply distributor
A distributor that receives dozens of purchase orders a day as PDFs could have an agent read each one, match the SKUs to its catalogue, create a draft sales order in its ERP and flag any line where the price differs from the customer's contract price. A coordinator approves the batch instead of typing it.
Example: a property management company
A property manager could have an agent read maintenance requests from the shared inbox, work out the building and the type of problem, create the work order, and draft a reply to the tenant with the next step. Urgent requests, like a leak, go straight to the on-call person.
Example: an engineering or consulting firm
A firm could have an agent read incoming RFQs, summarize the scope and deadlines, check them against standard rates, and prepare a first-draft proposal for a partner to review and price.
Example: a small manufacturer
A manufacturer could have an agent build a Monday-morning report from QuickBooks and its production spreadsheet: open orders, late shipments and overdue invoices, emailed to the owner before the first meeting.
Which systems can it connect to?
Operations agents work inside the tools you already use. Nobody on your team needs to learn a new app.
Using an ERP or industry system not listed here? If it has an API or accepts imports, an agent can usually create draft records in it. We check what your system allows before we quote.
What's included, and what does it cost?
Included with every operations agent
- Free audit and free prototype: a 30-minute call, then a working prototype on your sample documents in 5 business days, before you commit.
- Written scope: the job, the inputs, the systems, who approves what, and one fixed price.
- The build: connections to your tools, the agent's instructions, and testing on real examples from your business.
- Staging review: you try it on a copy of your setup before it touches live data.
- Approvals and logging: set up to your rules from day one.
- Handover: documentation, a walkthrough for your team and 2 weeks of support after launch.
Price
A first operations agent is from $995, fixed before work starts. A single workflow between two apps is from $499. Optional monthly support is from $99/month.
Model usage is a separate running cost that depends on how many documents the agent reads. We estimate it from your volume in the scope.
Before you commit, I'll build you a working prototype in 5 business days, free, with no obligation.
After you approve the price, the production agent is typically live in about 2 weeks.
What won't we hand to an operations agent?
Some jobs should stay with a person, or aren't worth automating yet.
- Paying bills or moving money. The agent can prepare the payment; a person releases it.
- Signing or accepting contracts, or changing contract terms.
- Credit decisions, pricing exceptions and write-offs.
- HR decisions such as hiring, discipline or payroll changes.
- A process that doesn't work by hand yet. If three people do the job three different ways, we help you settle on one first.
- Jobs that come up twice a month. The build won't pay for itself, and a checklist is cheaper.
Questions about operations agents
Can an operations agent read scanned or handwritten documents?
It reads typed PDFs and clear scans well. Handwriting and poor scans are less reliable, so we add a confidence check: anything the agent can't read clearly goes to a person instead of being guessed.
Does the agent work with our ERP?
If your ERP has an API or accepts imports, an agent can usually create draft orders or records in it. We confirm what your system allows on the audit call, before we quote.
What happens when the agent gets an order wrong?
Orders are created as drafts and a person approves them, so a mistake is caught before it posts. The activity log shows what the agent read and why it chose each value, and we use those cases to improve its instructions.
Do our customers have to change how they send orders?
No. The agent reads orders the way they arrive today, whether that's an email body, a PDF attachment or a spreadsheet.
How much time will an operations agent save us?
It depends on your volume and how messy the documents are. On the audit call we estimate it from your own numbers, and if an agent would cost more than the time it saves, we'll say so.
Which back-office job would you hand over first?
Book a free 30-minute agent audit. Bring a few examples of the orders, invoices or emails your team re-keys. If there's a good first agent, I'll build a working prototype in 5 business days, free.
Get a Free Working Prototype