DESCRIPTION
The project started at a medium-sized accounting office that manages the financial and administrative tasks of several dozen businesses on a daily basis. One of the most critical areas of operation was the processing of incoming invoices, which involved a huge amount of manual work: clients sent invoices via email, upload interfaces, or different systems, and the accountants downloaded, renamed, recorded, verified, and then forwarded them to the internal accounting processes. The company's management recognised that due to the growing client base and increasingly intense administration, it was essential to develop a system that could take over a large part of the invoice processing. DetSystems has developed an intelligent, automated solution based on n8n agents, which has completely transformed the office's operations and elevated efficiency to a new level.
PROBLEM
The biggest challenge for the accounting office was that the arrival of invoices was extremely fragmented, and the accountants spent a significant amount of time manually collecting and organising them. The format, naming, and quality of files from different clients varied, which further slowed down the processes. It often happened that an invoice arrived multiple times, or conversely: it went unnoticed by one of the accountants because it got lost among hundreds of other documents. These potential errors not only burdened the office's operations but also caused daily stress for the employees, who worked under constant time pressure.
For the company, it was particularly problematic that a large portion of the accounting team's time was consumed by administrative activities rather than professional tasks. Instead of focusing on real accounting tasks and professional checks, employees spent a majority of their time reviewing emails, downloading files, renaming documents, or transferring data between systems. It became increasingly clear to management that manual operations could not be sustained in the long term, as the load had increased exponentially compared to the team's size. The business wanted not only to increase efficiency but also to minimise potential errors, while establishing stable and scalable operations.
SOLUTION
DetSystems has developed an n8n agent system that has fully automated the most critical stages of invoice processing and administration. The solution was able to receive incoming invoices from various channels, whether they were email attachments, customer portals, or cloud storage. The agents automatically downloaded, analysed, and assigned every document to the appropriate client. The AI-based recognition layer allowed the system to accurately identify the invoice even if its name was inaccurate or incomplete.
During the development, we established a process where the data from the invoices were automatically extracted, and the system validated whether the document complied with accounting rules, and if necessary, sent a notification to the responsible accountant. The system was also able to organise the invoices into the appropriate internal folders, prepare them for accounting, and if needed, carry out further administrative processes, such as the approval workflow or updating partner data.
One of its greatest advantages was that the system ran continuously and processed every new document within a few seconds. The agents worked in the background without human supervision and only alerted the accountants if they found an issue that required a real professional decision. Thus, the team's time was no longer occupied by manual data sorting and document management but rather focused on substantive accounting tasks.
RESULT
The project's results were visibly noticeable even in the first week. Incoming invoices were processed almost in real-time, and the accountants no longer faced the constant pressure of checking emails and collecting documents. The error rate significantly decreased because the agents handled every document consistently and correctly, which minimised the situations where invoices went missing or were sent to the wrong place.
The accounting office's operation became scalable: taking on multiple new clients did not involve additional strain, as the system automatically tracked the flow of incoming documents. According to staff feedback, the daily stress level drastically decreased, and the team was able to spend much more time on professional checks, analytics, and client communication. From a management perspective, one of the most important results was that the office's operation became more predictable, and the fluctuations caused by the influx of invoices at the end of the month or before deadlines disappeared.
The project demonstrated that n8n agent systems not only simplify administrative processes but are also capable of turning entire accounting workflows into stable, error-free, and real-time operations. For the accounting office, this not only meant increased efficiency but also a new level of operational quality that provides a competitive advantage in the long term.
