Hiring is often the first answer when a growing business feels stretched. Before you add headcount, it’s worth fixing the process the new person will inherit, and seeing how much of the admin AI can take on first. That way the hire you make is worth more.
As a business grows, the finance admin grows with it. More supplier invoices, more statements to check, more customers to chase, and a month-end that eats into everyone’s week. The obvious answer is an accounts assistant.
Before you advertise, look at how much of the role follows the same steps every time. UK small business owners already spend around 11 hours a week on admin and finance (Amex and Small Business Saturday UK SME Business Barometer, July 2026). Much of that is checking, matching and chasing, which AI now handles well with a person approving the result.
The aim isn’t fewer people. It’s a finance function where people spend their time on judgement and cash, not typing.
What an accounts assistant role usually involves
1. Processing supplier invoices
2. Reconciling supplier statements
3. Credit control and chasing overdue invoices
4. Expense receipts and petty cash
5. Helping with month-end reports
1. Supplier invoices
An AI assistant can read invoices from PDFs, scans and phone photos and turn them into one tidy row each, ready to import into your accounts software, with anything it’s unsure about flagged. We’ve written a full guide: How to Stop Typing Invoices by Hand.
2. Supplier statement reconciliation
Upload the supplier’s statement and the matching export from your accounts software:
“Compare this supplier statement with our ledger export. List every invoice or credit that appears on one but not the other, and any amount that doesn’t match.”
Half an hour of ticking off lines becomes a short list of differences to look into.
3. Credit control that actually happens
Late payment is a real cost: the UK Government says it costs the economy £11bn a year and closes 38 businesses a day (30 July 2025). Upload your aged debtors report and ask for a polite first reminder, a firmer second and a final notice for each overdue customer, in your own tone. A person checks and sends, and chasing stops being the job that never gets done.
4. Receipts and expenses
Photograph the receipts and ask for a spreadsheet with date, supplier, amount, VAT and category, plus anything that looks like a duplicate.
5. The month-end pack
Upload the P&L and last month’s figures and ask for a one-page, plain-English summary of what changed and why it matters. We cover this in The Monday Morning Report.
What it saves: a typical example
Take a business with 120 supplier invoices a month (about 6 hours saved, as on our invoice setup page), 10 statements a month going from 30 minutes to 10 (about 3 hours), credit control going from 3 hours a week to 1 (about 9 hours), receipts going from 2 hours to 30 minutes (1.5 hours) and the month-end pack going from 8 hours to 3 (5 hours).
That’s around 24 hours a month, worth about £480 a month at £20 an hour, before counting the cash that comes in faster. This is a typical example, so swap in your own numbers.
Hire, automate, or both?
Often both. Automate the matching and chasing first, then hire for judgement: supplier negotiations, cash planning, keeping the books right. You may find a part-time hire is enough, or that you can hire at a more senior level.
Keep a person in charge of approving payments, anything sent to HMRC, and the final figures. Use a business account for your AI assistant and check its data settings before you share financial details.
Want it set up for you?
We’re not IT people. We’ve run finance, sales and operations teams and put AI to work in them, and we’ll talk to you in plain business terms. We can set this up, train your team and hand it over, or keep running it each month. See our fixed-price setups, including the invoice setup and the sales report setup. Take the 3-minute AI Readiness Check to see where you stand.
Growing pains like this are normal in a business that has grown quickly, and they’re fixable. Take the free Growing Pains Check to see where your business stands in three minutes, or book a free call about a Growing Pains Diagnostic: half a day with you and your business, then a written 90-day plan with the three changes that matter most.
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