LinkTrade spends about 90% less admin time on orders and invoices.

LinkTrade is a Singapore packaging supplier. Its staff now send orders, invoice changes, signed delivery orders and supplier receipts in a WhatsApp chat, and chatavocado updates their records and the paperwork that follows.

"What took 30 to 40 minutes now takes under a minute."

Preparing each invoice in Excel

Each order started in an Excel template. Someone looked up the customer and their prices, typed in the items and generated the invoice. LinkTrade describes pricing mistakes as one of the problems with that process.

"We were actually using Excel... plug it in and then generate the invoice."

Delivery orders, signed copies and supplier receipts were handled by hand too. The team then updated its Google Sheet and QuickBooks, its accounting software, separately. Each new customer and each extra order meant more admin, so the work grew with the business.

What AI does for LinkTrade

LinkTrade wanted to keep using Google Drive, its Google Sheet and QuickBooks, and stop typing the same details into each of them. Its customers, products, prices, invoices and expenses are now kept as records in chatavocado, and those tools are updated from there.

The team sends the details in a WhatsApp chat. chatavocado shows a summary and saves nothing until someone on the team replies yes. It handles five jobs:

1. New orders. It checks the customer, each product and that customer's price list, then shows the team a summary to check. Once someone replies yes, it creates the invoice and delivery order, files the PDFs in Google Drive, and adds the invoice to the Google Sheet and QuickBooks.
2. Invoice changes. It updates the lines and totals and makes both PDFs again. A cancelled invoice comes off the Google Sheet but stays in the records.
3. Signed delivery orders. Staff send a photo, and chatavocado matches it to the right invoice. Only after the team replies yes does it email the signed copy and the invoice to the customer and file a copy in Google Drive.
4. Supplier receipts. It reads the receipt, including foreign currency, asks which expense account and bank account to use, checks for duplicates, and posts it to QuickBooks.
5. Customers, products and prices. The team adds or changes them from the chat. They can't be deleted from the chat.

LinkTrade says the process became easier for the finance team to use.

Where the team stays in charge

• Only the team's approved WhatsApp numbers can use it.
• An order line with no price for that customer isn't saved, and a similar product is never swapped in.
• A signed delivery order has to match its invoice number, customer and printed date before the customer is emailed.
• The team picks the expense account, and duplicate receipts are caught before anything is posted.
• It only says an invoice is saved, emailed or in QuickBooks when the record shows it.

Example chats from LinkTrade's team

These chats use LinkTrade's real message formats. A member of the team writes on the left, and chatavocado replies on the right.