Case 01 / Selected work / 2025

FinPilot
runs the books
so they don't have to.

An agentic AI system that runs five core finance workflows autonomously for NorthBridge Studios — a 65-person creative agency processing 300+ invoices monthly. Finance ops went from consuming 2 weeks a month to running in the background.

Client

NorthBridge Studios · Remote

Engagement

Agentic AI system

Timeline

8 weeks · Q1 2025

Status

Live — fully autonomous
finpilot / northbridge · finance dashboard
Autonomous

Finance pulse — this month

Agent last ran · 4m ago

Invoices processed

312

▲ auto-matched 94%

Avg collection

28d

▼ from 47 days

Close time

2 days

▼ from 9 days

Recon hours / wk

4h

▼ from 22 hrs

Cash flow forecast · 13-week rollingGenerated by agent · weekly

Annual labor saved

$180K/ year

Faster collections

$90K/ year

System payback

<5months

Agentic finance ops·Human approval gates·5 months ROI·$180K saved annually·Built for operators·Agentic finance ops·Human approval gates·5 months ROI·$180K saved annually·Built for operators·
01 / The brief

Three people.
Two weeks gone before the month was half over.

NorthBridge Studios had a 3-person finance team processing 300+ invoices monthly across multiple currencies. The problem wasn't talent — it was volume. Chasing late payments, reconciling bank statements, categorizing expenses, matching invoices to project budgets, producing cash flow reports. Two full weeks of every month, gone. No time left for actual financial strategy.

Before · The problem

Monthly close took 9 days — finance team buried until mid-month, every month.

Before · The problem

300+ invoices processed manually at $14 each. No matching, no memory.

Before · The problem

Late payments chased by hand. Average collection time: 47 days.

Before · The problem

22 hours a week reconciling Stripe, bank feeds, and payment platforms by copy-paste.

02 / The solution

Five workflows. One agent. Human gates for anything that matters.

FinPilot doesn't just automate tasks — it reasons through edge cases. When an invoice doesn't match a purchase order, it reads the related email thread, proposes a resolution, and asks the right person to confirm. The finance team approves; the agent executes.

Workflow 01

Invoice intake.

Reads incoming invoices from email and uploads, extracts line items, and matches against project budgets automatically.

Workflow 02

Transaction reconciliation.

Pulls from Stripe, bank APIs, and payment platforms. Matches transactions to invoices. Flags exceptions for human review.

Workflow 03

Payment follow-ups.

Drafts and sends overdue payment reminders on a configurable schedule. Escalates to a human only if the client pushes back.

Workflow 04

Cash flow forecasting.

Generates a rolling 13-week cash flow forecast using confirmed receivables, historical payment behavior, and scheduled payables.

Workflow 05

Budget monitoring.

Tracks actuals against project budgets in real time. Alerts project leads before overruns happen, not after.

03 / The results

Monthly close time

9 days

2 days

Invoice processing cost

$14 each

$2 each

Days to collect payment

47 days

28 days

Weekly reconciliation hours

22 hrs

4 hrs

$180Ksaved

Annual labor cost reduction from automated invoice processing, reconciliation, and follow-ups.

$90Krecovered

Faster collections from 47-day to 28-day average. Cash that was always owed, now arriving sooner.

<5months

Time to full payback. The system covered its own cost before the first quarter was out.

04 / How we built it

8 weeks. Real invoices from week three.

No sandbox. FinPilot processed live data from the first sprint. Edge cases found in production are better than ones found in a demo.

Wk 1–2 · Discovery

Mapped every finance touchpoint.

Shadowed the finance team for a week. Documented every tool, spreadsheet, and manual handoff. Scoped the five highest-ROI workflows.

Wk 3–4 · Skeleton

Invoice intake + reconciliation live.

First two workflows shipped and processing real data. Edge cases surfaced immediately — invoice format mismatches, FX rounding, duplicate detection.

Wk 5–6 · Core workflows

Follow-ups, forecasting, budget alerts.

Remaining three workflows deployed. Human approval gates wired to Slack for anything above materiality threshold.

Wk 7–8 · Hardening

5 months of history replayed.

Ran historical invoices through the system. Tuned confidence thresholds. Handed over runbook and training. Finance team running solo.

05 / The stack

Orchestration

n8n + custom agents

LLM

Claude via API

Integrations

Stripe, Xero, bank APIs

Approvals

Slack workflows

Data

Postgres, Drizzle ORM

Hosting

Self-hosted, client-owned

No vendor lock-inClient-owned infrastructureHuman-in-the-loop gatesAuditable decision logSOC 2 compatible