AI Agents for Plex
Accounts Receivable
Customers of a manufacturer do not refuse to pay. They pay short, with a reason code you did not agree to, and the money is gone before finance sees it.
- At a manufacturer the receivables problem is deductions rather than collections. Customers pay short with their own reason code and the money is gone before finance sees it.
- Every deduction type is checkable against a record Plex already holds. They go unchallenged because each check means pulling records by hand, and a quarter brings more claims than a team can check that way.
- In an illustrative population of 214 claims, not a customer figure, 103 worth 200,000 are contradicted, duplicated or unreferenced. A write off threshold set by the cost of checking guarantees none of them is challenged.
- The supported claims are the more valuable half of the report. A deduction your own records support is a process failure you are paying for repeatedly.
- Report credit exposure by recoverability. Invoiced debt, finished goods, work in progress and customer specific material are four different risks under one credit limit.
AI agents for Plex accounts receivable check every customer deduction against the shipping, quality and pricing records behind it, prepare the cash application for the unambiguous part of a remittance while holding the shorts, and report credit exposure by how recoverable each component is. ChatFin returns a supported or unsupported verdict with evidence attached and writes off nothing.
Every deduction means pulling a shipping, quality or pricing record by hand, a quarter brings more of them than a team can check that way, so a threshold gets set and everything below it is written off unexamined. That threshold is priced on the cost of checking rather than on the value at stake, and in the illustrative population worked through below it leaves 200,000 of contradicted, duplicated and unreferenced claims unchallenged.
At a manufacturer the AR problem is deductions, not collections
Customers of a manufacturer do not usually refuse to pay. They pay short, with a reason code you did not agree to, and the money is gone before anyone in finance sees it. That is a different problem from collections and it needs a different process.
| Deduction type | What it claims | Where the evidence is |
|---|---|---|
| Short shipment | Fewer units than the packing list says | Your shipping record and the carrier proof of delivery |
| Quality rejection | Material out of specification | Your quality record and their incoming inspection |
| Late delivery penalty | A contractual charge | The contract and the delivery date |
| Price discrepancy | Invoiced above the agreed price | The rate card or contract price |
| Unauthorised return | Goods sent back | The return authorisation, if one exists |
| Promotional or rebate claim | An agreed allowance | The agreement, often not in finance's hands |
Every one of those is checkable against a record Plex already holds. They go unchallenged because answering each one means pulling the record by hand, and a quarter brings more of them than a team can work that way.
ChatFin matches each deduction to the shipping, quality and pricing record behind it and returns a supported or unsupported verdict with the evidence attached. Whether to challenge is a commercial decision.
An illustrative deduction population, 214 claims
Take an illustrative quarter, not a customer figure, with 214 deductions worth 386,000. The team writes off anything under a threshold because checking costs more than the claim. The agent checks all of them.
| Verdict | Claims | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supported by our own records | 96 | 141,000 | Valid. Write off and fix the cause |
| Contradicted by our records | 61 | 118,000 | Recoverable, with evidence attached |
| Duplicate of an earlier claim | 23 | 44,000 | Recoverable, and easy to demonstrate |
| No supporting reference at all | 19 | 38,000 | Ask. Often withdrawn when queried |
| Cannot be determined from our data | 15 | 45,000 | Honest gap, escalate or accept |
One hundred and three claims worth 200,000 are contradicted, duplicated or unreferenced. None of them was ever going to be challenged under a threshold policy, because the threshold was set by the cost of checking rather than by the value at stake.
Cash application against a remittance with claim numbers
A manufacturer's remittance rarely lists invoices cleanly. It lists invoices, minus claims, referenced by the customer's own claim numbering.
Apply the invoices first, hold the deductions
Clearing the gross lines and holding the shorts is better than holding the whole receipt. Most of a remittance is unambiguous.
Give every deduction a claim identity
Their reference, your invoice, the amount and the date. Without an identity a deduction cannot be tracked, challenged or found again.
Match against the operational record automatically
Shipping, quality and pricing. This is the step that never happens manually at volume.
Age deductions separately from invoices
An open deduction is not an overdue invoice. Mixing them makes the ageing meaningless and hides both.
ChatFin prepares the application of what the remittance supports, gives each deduction an identity, and ages deductions on their own. The Plex Connect REST API reads AR invoices and AR deposits but publishes no call that applies a deposit, so a named person approves the prepared application and it is entered in Plex. It writes off nothing.
Credit exposure when the order book is the risk
At a manufacturer the exposure runs past what has been invoiced, to material committed and work already scheduled against a customer whose credit position has changed.
Turning a deduction population into an operations report
The finance value of a deduction review is recovery. The larger value is that the supported claims are an unfiltered record of what your operation got wrong, priced by the customer.
| Supported claim pattern | What it actually says | Who should see it |
|---|---|---|
| Short shipments concentrated on one line | A picking or packing problem | Warehouse |
| Quality rejections on one part number | A process capability problem | Quality and manufacturing engineering |
| Late delivery penalties on one customer | A scheduling or capacity problem | Planning |
| Price discrepancies after a renewal | The rate card was never updated | Commercial and master data |
| Returns with no authorisation | A customer service process gap | Customer service |
Presented as a finance report this is a write off analysis. Presented by cause, with the claims attached, it is the only view of quality and delivery performance that is measured by the customer rather than by an internal metric.
ChatFin produces the deduction population grouped by cause and owner alongside the recovery list, because only one of those two reports prevents next quarter's claims.
Collections, once deductions are out of the way
Ordinary collections is the smaller half of the job here, and it works better once the deduction noise is separated out.
ChatFin builds the call list from observed payment behaviour and suppresses anything covered by an open deduction or an unapplied credit. It contacts nobody.
Where this underperforms on Plex
Three, all of them about what is recorded rather than what is calculated.
ChatFin reports what share of deductions it could reach a verdict on before it reports a recovery figure. A high recovery rate on a small determinable population is not the same as a solved process.
Deeper in Plex receivables
Three use cases sit under this hub, in build and shown rather than linked.
Worked on this page
AR inbox automation · Open AR analysis · Bank payment to open invoice matching
Covered as sections here
Cash application · Deductions and chargebacks · Remittance processing · Credit exposure · Collections support · Customer claims
Questions manufacturing receivables teams ask first
Why do customer deductions go unchallenged?
Because checking one costs more than most claims are worth, so a write off threshold gets set and everything below it is accepted unexamined. The threshold is priced on the cost of checking, not the value at stake. In an illustrative quarter of 214 claims worth 386,000, not a customer figure, 103 claims worth 200,000 are contradicted by the company's own records, duplicated, or carry no supporting reference at all. ChatFin checks all of them against the shipping, quality and pricing record.
What is the most useful output of a deduction review?
The supported claims, not the recoverable ones. A deduction your own records support is a real failure in shipping, quality or pricing that you are paying for every quarter, and the pattern across them points at the operation causing it. Recovering a contradicted claim is worth doing once. Fixing the process behind a supported one stops the claims arriving.
How should credit exposure be measured at a manufacturer?
By recoverability rather than by value. Invoiced debt, finished goods held for a customer, work in progress on the floor and customer specific material already purchased are four different risks, and a single credit limit treats them as one. Partly built inventory against a specific order is the least recoverable position of all, and it rarely appears in a credit check.
Every deduction checked against the record behind it.
ChatFin matches every customer deduction to the shipping, quality and pricing record behind it and returns a supported or unsupported verdict with the evidence attached.
It prepares the application of what a remittance supports, gives every deduction a trackable identity, ages deductions separately from invoices, and writes off nothing.
Bring one quarter of deductions.
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Bring one quarter of deductions.
We will check every one through ChatFin against your own shipping and quality records, and show you the split between supported, contradicted and unreferenced.