Subcontractor invoices checked against the work order before AP pays.

Landscape, janitorial and maintenance companies use subs for snow, tree work, irrigation, floor care, trade repairs and sites beyond their own crews' reach. Someone in operations or AP finds the work order behind each sub invoice, checks the rate, looks for the photos or sign-off and checks the sub's certificate. In a busy month, that check gets thin.

In the proof of concept, AI reads copies of sub invoices you have already paid or disputed, and the paperwork behind them. For each invoice it writes a match report: the work order it belongs to, each line against your agreement with that sub, the proof found, the insurance and license status on the service date, and what doesn't line up. Your reviewer, the operations manager who knows these subs best, holds each report against what your team actually decided.

You bill one way and pay another. Snow agreements often pay an hourly rate for each piece of equipment, and some set a minimum when a machine is called out and then sent home, while the customer may be billed by the site, the event or the season. A janitorial sub may bill a monthly figure per building plus its own extras. So the question is not whether the sub's arithmetic works. It is whether each line matches the rate in your agreement with that sub, for that service at that site, and whether a work order you issued sits behind it.

The proof has to agree with the bill. A sub's invoice should cite your work order number and the visit date, and the hours it bills should fit inside the check-in and check-out times recorded for that visit. Photos should show the site and the finished work. Trip charges, after-hours rates and markups on materials are where amounts drift from the agreement. A second invoice for a visit already paid is caught by work order number and date, even when the invoice number is new.

Insurance has to cover the date of service, not just today. A certificate that ran out before the visit doesn't cover that visit, whatever the renewal says. The cost of a gap shows up at your own audit. Great American's premium audit guidance, for one, says that a sub without proof of workers' compensation coverage at audit has its payroll added to yours, and that a sub whose general liability limits fall below yours gets classed as an employee. For snow work, SIMA, the snow and ice industry's trade group, tells contractors to make sure a policy carries no snow and ice removal exclusion. A certificate shows limits and dates, not exclusions, so the draft says which subs' policy pages you hold.

Some trades need a license or a bond as well. In Texas, irrigation work requires a TCEQ license under 30 TAC Chapter 344, and the agency's guidance for builders says to check that bids, invoices and warranties show the irrigator's name, license number, business address and phone number. On the cleaning side, DC's insurance regulator describes janitorial bonds as protecting clients if employees steal from the property where they work, and some cleaning contracts require one. The draft checks each sub against what your own customer's contract requires, not a generic list.

What your operations manager gets. One report per invoice, with each mismatch and each insurance, license or bond gap dated to the visit it affects. Your operations manager decides what AP pays; the report only explains why.

When your reviewer says yes, new sub invoices get the same check for about 30 days.

Each report goes to your operations manager, and no invoice is paid on a report alone. Your team still approves, disputes or short-pays every invoice in your own system and chases subs for missing certificates, while the reviewer keeps comparing reports with what your team would have decided.

The live run covers sub invoices only. Your customer billing is left as it is.