AutoAR - a simple web app that drafts emails to customers with overdue invoices

Show the Community!
1

autoar

What is AutoAR?

AutoAR - or Auto Accounts Receivable - tries to solve a frustrating problem bookkeepers and small business owners have; they can spend up to a day each week writing emails to customers requesting payments that are overdue and getting no responses. AutoAR aims to make this process faster by leveraging data from your accounting software to draft an email on your behalf, all via a simple web app built with Streamlit.

How does it work?

It’s a simple 3-step process:

  1. Sign in to your Xero and Gmail account
    • Xero is accounting software that many small businesses in the UK use; other similar solutions include Quickbooks and Sage. Xero access is used to pull data on customers with overdue invoices.
    • Gmail access is used to create a draft in your account; interviews with bookkeepers and accountants in the UK and US revealed that automated emails from third-party email addresses are usually overlooked, so I thought having the email come from your own account is more likely to lead to a response! Note: for Gmail access, please message me. The application will be going through the process of Google verification if there’s interest but for now usage is restricted to users allowlisted by me.
  2. Review the invoice data from Xero
  3. Select which customers you want to draft emails to. Once you’ve selected a customer, their data will be repeated in a section underneath with some additional information. You can then click the ‘Generate email’ button to have a draft written for you - it might take a minute!

What’s next?

The initial idea is simple but hopefully still useful to people in its current state. That being said, there are a few features that I’d like to implement in the future to make the app even more helpful:

  • New features
    1. Ability to respond to existing threads with contact & follow up rather than drafting new emails each time
    2. Using previous emails to influence writing style
    3. Show invoice details where available i.e., line items
    4. Support for mixed currencies
  • Improved current features
    1. Integrations with more providers (QBO, Sage, Excel, Outlook)
    2. Custom UI

Any feedback or suggestions is much appreciated - thank you & enjoy! :grin:

4 Likes
Anyone creating business-facing apps with Streamlit?
2

Wow! Looks great. As an accountant, this would be a problem solver!

1 Like
3

Glad you like it @nkwachiabel! If there is anything that could make it more useful for you, let me know :smiling_face:

4

Looks great, please share the source code

5

Welcome to the community @Bacoknight :balloon:

Thanks for sharing your app, love the practical use case!

1 Like
6

Thanks for the support everyone! I’ve been working on AutoAR over the Winter break and have added a couple of updates:

  • AutoAR will follow an existing thread of conversation with a contact to generate a more relatable response. Of course, this requires signing into your Gmail account to track the latest messages!
  • It also uses the latest GPT model so the email drafts will be more compelling and tailored to you than before.
7

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.