Purchase orders arrived as PDFs in three inboxes. Now AI reads them, checks stock and drafts invoices in Xero for a person to approve.
01 The problem
Northwind’s customers sent purchase orders as PDF attachments to three different inboxes. Two coordinators retyped every order into the warehouse system, checked stock by hand and built the invoice in Xero. On a busy week that was 41 hours of copy and paste, and about one order in fifty had a typo that cost a re-delivery.
Before Relay
Hours of order admin per week
02 What we built
One shared intake address now collects every order. An AI step reads the PDF, pulls out the customer, items and quantities, and matches them against live stock. Anything it isn’t sure about is flagged for a person instead of guessed. Clean orders become a draft invoice in Xero and a pick list in the warehouse system. The coordinators review and approve in one click from Slack, so a human still signs off on every order.
A purchase order lands in the shared inbox
AI reads the PDF and checks live stock
A draft invoice waits for approval in Slack
Built with
n8n
OpenAI
Gmail
Slack
n8n, OpenAI, Gmail, Xero and Slack. Live in three weeks, with monitoring and fixes covered by the monthly plan.
3 weeks
from kickoff to live
03 The result
less order admin
Order admin dropped from 41 hours a week to 6. Typing errors have all but disappeared, and the two coordinators now spend their time on supplier issues and customer calls instead of data entry.
Hours of order admin per week
back every week
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