Case Study: How We Built an AI-Powered Accounting System That Eliminates 20+ Hours of Manual Work Each Month

Every growing business faces the same challenge: data flows in faster than teams can process it. Our client, a rapidly scaling consultancy, reached out to AutomatePeak with a frustration we hear often:

“Our team is drowning in receipts, invoices, and financial documents. We need to automate this entire process—or we’ll never scale.”

Their ask was clear: Transform a chaotic, manual accounting workflow into an intelligent, self-running system.

Here’s exactly how we delivered.


The Challenge

Every month, the client’s inbox flooded with financial documents:

  • Customer receipts
  • Vendor invoices
  • Bank statements
  • Payment confirmations
  • Expense reports
  • Revenue notifications

Each one required multiple manual steps:

  1. Download and save the file
  2. Determine its category
  3. Extract text from PDFs or images
  4. Identify key transaction details
  5. Classify as income or expense
  6. Match to the correct accounting category
  7. Log everything into Google Sheets

This tedious process consumed hours of valuable time weekly, introduced human error, and created bottlenecks in financial reporting.

The client needed a better way.


The Solution: An Intelligent, Self-Operating Accounting System

AutomatePeak designed a multi-agent AI automation pipeline that handles the entire accounting workflow end-to-end, using Gmail, Google Drive, Google Sheets, and advanced AI classification models.

Here’s how it works.


Intelligent Email Monitoring

The workflow begins with a Gmail trigger that activates whenever new email arrives.

  • The system automatically detects attachments
  • Documents trigger the full automation
  • Non-relevant emails are ignored

Zero manual sorting required.


Seamless Document Processing

When a financial document is detected:

  1. It’s automatically saved to Google Drive
  2. Downloaded into the n8n workflow
  3. Text is extracted using AI-powered document parsing

The system handles any format—PDFs, images, scanned receipts, screenshots.


AI-Powered Transaction Detection

An OpenRouter AI agent analyzes the extracted content and answers:

  • Is this a financial transaction?
  • What type of document is this?
  • What details can be extracted? (amount, date, vendor, description)

Non-financial documents are filtered out automatically. Valid transactions move forward.


Smart Category Matching

The system syncs with the client’s Chart of Accounts in Google Sheets.

Using a combination of category aggregation and AI classification logic, the automation maps each transaction to the appropriate accounting category. This ensures consistency across all financial records.


Revenue vs. Expense Classification

A dedicated AI decision agent determines whether each transaction represents income (revenue, payment received) or an expense (vendor bill, purchase, subscription). Based on this classification, the transaction is routed to the correct processing agent.


Specialized AI Agents for Data Extraction

We built two purpose-trained AI agents:

Expense Processing Agent extracts and structures:

  • Vendor name
  • Expense category
  • Amount and currency
  • Tax/VAT details
  • Payment method
  • Transaction date
  • Additional notes

Income Processing Agent extracts and structures:

  • Revenue source
  • Income category
  • Amount received
  • Product or service sold
  • Transaction date
  • Customer notes

Each agent returns clean, structured JSON ready for spreadsheet integration.


Automated Logging to Google Sheets

Finally, expenses are appended to the Expense Transactions sheet and income is logged to the Income Transactions sheet. Every entry is formatted, categorized, and timestamped—automatically.


The Impact

20–30 Hours Saved Monthly

What once required hours of manual work each week now runs completely automatically, in real-time, without any human intervention.

99% Classification Accuracy

AI-driven categorization eliminates the inconsistencies and mistakes common in manual data entry.

Real-Time Financial Visibility

Because transactions are processed instantly, the client’s financial dashboards are always up-to-date.

What the Client Said

“This removed one of the most tedious parts of running our business. We don’t even think about expense tracking anymore. It just happens.”


Technology Stack

  • Gmail for email monitoring
  • Google Drive for document storage
  • Google Sheets for transaction logging
  • n8n as the automation engine
  • OpenRouter multi-agent AI for intelligent decision-making
  • Structured output parsing for clean data formatting

This is what modern accounting automation looks like—intelligent, reliable, and invisible.


Ready to Automate Your Business?

AutomatePeak builds custom AI and automation solutions for growing businesses:

  • AI chatbots and voice assistants
  • CRM and sales automation
  • Operations and workflow automation
  • Financial and accounting automation
  • Lead generation systems

If you’re ready to eliminate manual work and scale efficiently, we can help.

Book a free automation assessment and discover where automation can save you hours every week.