Your systems stay.The work between them goes.
Relai connects the accounting, payroll and field systems you already run, then takes over the copying and matching between them. Nothing reaches your books until a person approves it.
We never ask you to switch.
QuickBooks stays QuickBooks. Gusto stays Gusto. Switching systems costs a small business more time and money than almost anything else it can do, so we start by not doing it. What we take on is the handoff between them.
Work gets relayed · A person signs off · Nothing moves on its own
The software is fine. Someone is still retyping it.
Trade matters less than these three. If one sounds like your week, it is worth a call.
Hiring someone just for this doesn't add up
You know it needs doing. You also know it is not a full-time job, and it sits across three people's desks.
You type the same thing two and three times
The software is already there. What is not there is anything joining one program to the next, so a person does it.
You'd like someone to say if there is a better way
There are plenty of tools. What is missing is someone who picks the right ones and keeps them working.
What gets taken over depends on the trade.
Every business does a different set of things by hand each month. These are the four we take on.
Retail & Wholesale
Selling in more than one place
- Channel sales into the books
- A warning before stock runs out
- Money owed and money ordered in one view
Restaurants
POS and delivery settlements, daily
- Daily sales matched to the bank
- Tips and clock-ins carried to payroll
- Labor percentage in the morning
Custom Fabrication
Work orders as the unit
- Cost gathered per work order
- Material POs tied to the order
- Hours split where they belong
Construction
Money running per jobsite
- Spent and remaining, per jobsite
- Hours landing in jobsite cost
- A warning before a commitment is exceeded
Four steps, and no way around them.
The order is the rule. Nothing reaches your books without the second step.
PROPOSE
Relai reads the feeds and drafts each entry, classified, with the paperwork attached.
APPROVE
It stops. A person opens the queue, looks, and approves or corrects. Nothing moves on its own.
EXECUTE
Only what was approved is written to the accounting, payroll and field systems.
LOG
Who approved what, and when. Kept in a form you can go back to.
What plugs in, and what it buys you.
Eight kinds of system, one ledger at the end of it. You keep every one of them.
LEDGER
Everything lands here. One set of books, nothing duplicated.
PAYROLL & HR
Hours land in job cost. Tips, PTO and new hires stop being retyped.
SALES & POS
Daily sales matched to the deposit, per channel, before you ask.
BANK & CARD
Lines classified, receipts attached, duplicates caught before posting.
TIME
Clock-ins become payroll, and payroll becomes job cost.
FIELD
Photos, daily reports, equipment and vehicles tied to the job.
FILES & MAIL
An invoice arriving by email becomes a draft entry with the file attached.
WHERE YOU HEAR IT
The queue reaches you where you already are. Approve from your phone.
Most have an API or a bank-feed route; we confirm each one on the first call. What we connect first depends on what you run. If yours is not listed, ask. QuickBooks Desktop needs a different approach.
Where the second and third typing goes.
The filled dots are the steps a person has to do. Two are shown here, and six more are underneath.
Sales to books
The same numbers get typed twice: once out of the POS and once into the books.
- Export from each channel
- Line it up in a sheet
- Match to the deposit
- Type the entry
- Check it
- Approve
Hours to payroll to job cost
The same hours are entered three times before they reach a job.
- Approve timecards
- Export them
- Key into payroll
- Split into job cost
- Check it
- Approve
Card spend to receipts
The receipt already exists in three places. Nobody can find it in any of them.
- Read the statement
- Ask people for receipts
- Download and rename
- Attach to the line
- Code it
- Approve
Vendor bill to approval
The bill travels by hand through four places before it is a number.
- Spot it in the inbox
- Forward it on
- Chase the approval
- Key it in
- File the copy
- Approve
Stock to reorder
Stock lives in the POS and in a spreadsheet, and the two stopped agreeing months ago.
- Check each channel
- Count what is left
- Guess the reorder point
- Raise the PO
- Update the sheet
- Approve
A new hire's first day
One person's details get typed into five places, and one of them always gets missed.
- Enter them in payroll
- Create the email account
- Add to the group chat
- Hand over the phone or vehicle
- Chase the paperwork
- Approve
The monthly close
Every month the same week disappears, and the answer is only ready once it is too late to act on.
- Pull every statement
- Reconcile each account
- Tie payroll to the books
- Chase the exceptions
- Build the package
- Approve
Insurance and paperwork
An expired certificate is invisible until the audit, and then it costs you the premium.
- Find who expired
- Email the vendor
- Wait
- File the new certificate
- Update the tracker
- Approve
Our estimate: 17 to 31 hours a week today, about 2 hours a week with Relai, and 65 to 125 hours a month given back.
Our estimate. The eight ranges above, added up for a business of roughly 10 to 60 people, with the monthly close spread over four weeks and one new hire a month. At a loaded $25 an hour, the hours given back come to $1,600 to $3,100 a month, or 40 to 70 percent of one full-time person's month. That is the floor. The rest is on the top line. We measure your own numbers on the first call.
Saving hours has a ceiling. The top line does not.
Cutting back-office work saves one salary at most. Below are the places where the same data can raise revenue. None of them need a new system. They need someone to look.
Work done, never billed
Hours and materials landed on a job and no invoice ever went out behind them. Nobody notices until the job closes, and by then the customer has moved on.
What Relai sees Cost on a job with no billing behind it, flagged the week it happens.
Invoices that went out late
The work finished on Tuesday. The invoice went out three weeks later. That is three weeks of your money sitting in someone else's account.
What Relai sees When the work is marked complete, a draft invoice is created. Nobody has to remember.
Customers who went quiet
Someone bought every six weeks for two years. It has now been nine. Nobody noticed, because nobody watches the gap between orders. A text message would probably have brought the order in.
What Relai sees Each customer's own buying rhythm, and who is overdue against it. Costs nothing to send.
Quotes that took too long
The fastest credible quote wins a large share of the work. A quote that takes two weeks is usually a quote that lost.
What Relai sees Quotes start from last year's actual cost for the same work. If a quote gets no answer for a week, you get a reminder.
Items you lose money on
Delivery apps take 15 to 30 percent depending on the plan. Cards take about three. Add freight and returns and a dish that makes money in the dining room loses it on delivery. Almost nobody has done that arithmetic.
What Relai sees The real margin per item and per channel after fees, and which prices have room to go up.
The week you get back
For an owner-operator, saved hours are more than a cost saving. They are the hours you meant to spend on sales.
What Relai sees That time goes into quotes, follow-ups and hiring.
What you record every month comes back as money.
Credits and insurance audits fail for one reason: nobody kept the record at the time. Relai keeps it as it happens.
What your accountant finds ready
The monthly bookkeeping you hand to an accountant today comes to us: reconciliations, payroll journals, the close, 1099s and WIP. Your accountant spends their time on judgement and filing, and the bill reflects that. Audit opinions and tax filings stay with them, because those take a license.
Built once, then run monthly.
No two companies connect the same systems or code costs the same way, so there is no list price. We scope it after one conversation.
Build
One time. Connecting your systems, setting up the queue and the approval flow, your own cost and approval rules, and company email if it needs sorting out.
Monthly
Keeping the connections alive and reacting when a system changes, the nightly check, the monthly close package, and support on the queue.
Quoted per company
We look at what you run, how many people touch it, and how you code costs. Then we price it. A standard setup starts low; anything built to your own structure is billed for the time it takes.
Straight answers.
The four we get asked every time.
Do we have to change our accounting system?
No. Relai does not replace your ledger. Acumatica or QuickBooks Online stays exactly where it is; only the repetitive work between systems comes to us.
Does the AI touch our books on its own?
No. Everything that reaches the books goes through four steps: propose, a person approves, execute, log. Where the accounting system matched something automatically, we check it again and block the wrong ones.
Is this like Zapier?
No. Zapier moves data when a condition is met. Moving it is the easy part; deciding where it belongs is the hard part. Which jobsite and which line a receipt belongs to does not follow from a rule, and those decisions should not reach the books unchecked.
How do you split work with our accountant?
We are not an accounting firm. The monthly bookkeeping comes to us; judgement and filing stay with your accountant. Audit opinions and tax filings take a license.
Before you buy anything, let us count it.
Half an hour on a call and read-only access to the systems you already run. Within a few days of the call you get the five numbers below, worked out from your own figures. No charge, no obligation, and you keep the findings whether or not you work with us.
- What share of your card spend has no receipt attached, and what that adds up to
- Jobs carrying cost with no invoice behind them
- Repeat customers who are overdue against their own buying rhythm
- Which items lose money once the fees come out
- How many times the same figure is typed before it reaches your books
Tell us the accounting system and the payroll system when you write and the call goes faster. There is no form.