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Get-paid call

Invoice chaser (accounts department).

For business customers with a switchboard: navigates the phone menu to reach accounts, then asks the questions an accounts clerk can actually answer — is the invoice approved, and which payment run is it in.

Goal

Find out where the invoice actually sits inside the customer's payment process — received, approved, scheduled — and get a specific payment date or the specific thing blocking it. A clerk can't pay from their desk, so the win here is information, not a payment.

Triggers

  • An overdue invoice for a business customer whose number answers with a phone menu rather than a person
  • The invoice chaser reaches an accounts desk instead of the customer directly

What the AI does

  • Listens to the whole phone menu before pressing anything, then presses the option for accounts
  • Keys in a customer or account number when the menu asks for one, taken from the Account number field on the Xero contact
  • Gives the AI + recording disclosure to whoever answers in accounts, and says which business it's calling on behalf of
  • Leads with the invoice number and amount, because that's how an accounts team searches
  • Establishes whether the invoice was received and approved, and which payment run it's in
  • Captures a fixable blocker in the clerk's own words — a missing PO number, the wrong entity, an approval sitting with someone
  • Converts a payment-run frequency ('we pay on the 15th and the 30th') into a specific next date

What the AI won't do

  • Guess at a menu option: if there's no clear accounts option, a second menu behind the first, or two options that both look right, it stops and hands the call back
  • Key in a PIN, password, card number or date of birth, even if an account number is on file
  • Ask an accounts clerk to pay, or offer them a pay-link — they have no authority to pay from their desk
  • Discuss the debt beyond this invoice's status: it has no idea who else is within earshot
  • Pressure a clerk about timing, or promise anything about your side (re-issuing, waiving a fee)

Tools available to the AI

lookup_customer_historycreate_message_for_ownersend_invoice_linkschedule_callbackflag_disputetransfer_to_staff

Tools are typed and bounded: the AI calls them, it doesn't define them. Each tool call is logged with an idempotency key, so retries never produce duplicates.

Success looks like

Your bigger customers stop being the ones that never get chased. Instead of 'left a message with reception', you get 'approved, in the run on the 30th' or 'on hold, needs a PO number' — the second of which you can usually fix in a minute.

Toggle

Dashboard → Workflows → Invoice chaser · phone-menu navigation. Turning it off means business numbers with a menu are handed to you instead of navigated. Where a menu asks for an account number, fill in Account number on the Xero contact and it's handled from then on.

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