Traditional OCR tools extract data and stop there. They hand the information back to you and expect you to finish the job: to check completeness, chase missing context and decide whether a transaction is ready. OCR is practically a commodity these days.
Everyone offers the same thing, without ever giving firms what they need to actually eliminate friction. This shows up as experienced, highly-skilled team members doing mundane manual work, like chasing missing documents, instead of driving clients forward.
And here’s something else that’s true: spot solutions don’t work. Firms need efficiency and automation across the entire workflow — automation that goes beyond PDF extraction.
Firms need an intelligence layer in their tech that soaks up the burden of chasing, sorting and detective work. Get that, and both cognitive load and emotional stress will reduce.
Time to tighten up that workflow
Introducing William AI, an AI bookkeeping agent that proactively searches client emails for missing receipts and invoices, before extracting and publishing them ready for review and payment.
Sounds simple in theory, right? But think about what this means for the bigger picture at accounting and bookkeeping firms. We’re talking about unlocking true auto-pilot mode for data entry. This is custom-built bookkeeping intelligence that you can trust.
But William didn’t just appear out of nowhere. William AI is the evolution of a thread we’ve been pulling for the past few years — bringing payments and bookkeeping together in one place, and eliminating all forms of chasing and manual reconciliation at the source.
Over time, William will integrate with more parts of Apron, reducing friction at every touch point in every transaction, without you or your clients ever losing control or clarity.
For example, William can also sort payable bills from all other bookkeeping documents in seconds, so you can see at a glance what’s owed, and what just needs filing.
First on the chopping block: missing documents
Missing documents are a ‘hair on fire’ problem for accountants and bookkeepers. They’re responsible for much of the micro-time-wasting that we see all the time, and are a symptom of workflows riddled with gaps.
Apron minimises document chasing in the first place by bringing data capture, expenses, and payments together in one place.
We know from our own research that firms that use Apron Card see receipts collected 20x faster versus manual chasing. From the moment money is spent, to the moment the transaction is reconciled, workflows stay tight, transparent, and together in Apron.
It’s a system that reliably saves accountants and bookkeepers 5–10 hours per week. That’s time they can take as a whole and put towards serving more clients. It’s a simple shift that turns efficiency into tangible outcomes — better relationships with existing clients, or taking on new ones — without additional overheads.
And now it gets better with William AI
William works like an extra employee, proactively searching client email inboxes for invoices and receipts, speeding up the bookkeeping workflow.
Exactly what William does in a nutshell:
Your clients connect their email inbox.
William searches that inbox for the document it needs for an unreconciled transaction that we pull from the general ledger in Xero or QuickBooks.
William then extracts the data and publishes the document for review and payment.
It does this by referencing historical entries in your ledger, ensuring the highest degree of accuracy.
William continuously learns from your corrections.
All emails remain private, and no human at Apron can see their contents.
But, we know that trusting AI with client finances is a big ask. It’s why we’ve built and trained William to show its reasoning, and exercise caution.
When William makes a decision to publish, it will always provide transparent reasoning. William checks all incoming documents for completeness and references previous entries.
Depending on confidence levels, William makes a decision to publish or — just like a real team member — ask for help by flagging a transaction for human review.
William is just getting started
Over time, you’ll be able to give William more context. For example, you’ll be able to provide guidance on how to use your chart of accounts. Guidance on coding specific transactions. Course correcting its mistakes. William will remember, and apply its learnings to future decisions.
All of this without you needing to do anything more complicated than type feedback and instructions for WIlliam to read.
William is the name, smarter workflows are the game
William is more than a feature. This is a shift in how bookkeeping workflows operate. Apron already minimises document chasing by bringing capture and payments together.
William turns mundane manual work into an edge case; the exception, not the rule.
And when mundanity disappears, you don’t just save time, you unlock the capacity to better serve your existing clients, and bring on new ones.
This is thoughtful, full-workflow automation in service of accountants, bookkeepers and their clients.
Interested in having William work for your firm? Join the waitlist for early access.
Before you go
Throughout this month, we’re also rolling out updates to expenses, and paying bills in Apron.
Apron Wallet — Alongside pay by bank and pay by card, Apron Wallet gives you yet another option for funding your payments. It gives you the flexibility to top up your Apron account in advance and run payroll or pay bills from that balance if you prefer that to authorising each payment as you make it.
Bill pay on mobile — Does what it says on the tin. If you have the Apron mobile app, you’ll be able to pay bills from your phone, allowing you to take care of business when you’re out and about.
AI bill sorting — William does more than chase and search for documents in client inboxes. William also sorts payable bills from the rest of your bookkeeping documents, so you can see at a glance what’s owed, and what just needs filing.
Apron Card approvals — An additional layer of control for your business spend. Create multiple approval workflows for different teams. Separate approvers based on amounts. Flag out of policy transactions for further review.
Reimbursements — We’re giving you more control over how you manage reimbursements. You’ll have the option to set up approval workflows for reimbursements, so that every request is approved before it becomes payable.
Mileage — You can now request a reimbursement for mileage. Simply enter the start and end point of your journey, and we’ll calculate the distance and apply the correct rate. Great for employees on the go.
Our intention with updating this part of the app is to make your workflow more scannable, helping you move on to more value-adding work faster.
Remember, you can keep up with all of the latest Apron updates by following us on LinkedIn.