Case study
How a promo manufacturer streamlined AR and collected overdue invoices
An AI AR Collections Specialist with local-area calling, multi-channel outreach, and zero outside collections agencies.
20 hours
of AR manager time reclaimed every month
Day 1
past due outreach, down from day 30+
3 channels
of consistent outreach, up from email-only
Overview
A U.S. East Coast manufacturer of custom promotional umbrellas and ponchos serves major sports teams, banks, and corporate clients with orders that typically run between $2,000 and $6,000 a piece. The business operates on mostly Net 30 terms, with advance payment required for higher-risk one-time orders. Despite a healthy customer base, roughly 10% of invoices were running 90+ days overdue, and the entire AR collections motion was sitting on one person who was spending about an hour a day, or 20 hours a month, manually sending payment reminders and chasing customers.
The company partnered with Squirrels.ai to deploy an AI AR Collections Specialist that handles the full outreach cycle across email, SMS, and phone. The system pulls overdue invoice data either from Excel uploads or directly from QuickBooks, runs a coordinated multi-channel reminder sequence, and uses a dedicated phone number matched to the company’s local area code to improve answer rates. The AR manager now reviews a clean dashboard of who has paid, who has promised to pay, and who is disputing, instead of personally working every overdue account. For the first time, overdue invoices are being engaged from day one past due, not day 30.
Client at a glance
Industry
Manufacturing and printing (custom umbrellas and ponchos for sports teams, banks, and corporate clients)
Overdue volume
~20 customers per month overdue, with invoices ranging from $2,000 to $6,000
Location
U.S. East Coast
AR team
One AR Collections Manager handling the entire process manually
Customer base
B2B accounts including sports teams, financial institutions, and corporate buyers
Payment terms
Mostly Net 30, with advance payment for higher-risk one-time orders
Use case deployed
AI AR Collections Specialist with multi-channel outreach and local-area caller ID
The challenge
The collections function was working in the sense that bills eventually got paid, but the operating model had real cost in both time and missed early-recovery opportunity.
One person, 20 hours a month, doing it all by hand
The AR Collections Manager was personally emailing every overdue customer with a copy of their invoice and a note, then trying to follow up by phone where time allowed. That work consumed about an hour every day, roughly 20 hours a month, and that was just the people getting touched at all. With one person managing the entire process, there was no realistic way to scale up outreach without sacrificing other responsibilities.
Missing the early-collections window
Because the team only had bandwidth for the worst cases, outreach typically did not begin until invoices were already 30+ days past due. By that point, the easy recoveries had cooled off, customers had moved on to their next priority, and the collections conversation became significantly harder. The 1 to 30 day window, when a friendly nudge would have closed many of these out, was going untouched entirely.
Manual emails that did not land
The standard process of attaching the invoice and a short note produced very low response rates. Customers were not reading the emails, or they were getting filtered, or they were simply being deprioritized. There was no SMS channel, calling was inconsistent, and the manager had no way to know what was actually working without spending hours digging through her own sent folder.
High invoice values amplified the cost
With individual invoices running from $2,000 to as much as $6,000, even a handful of slow-paying accounts each month meant tens of thousands of dollars sitting in aged receivables. The company was reluctant to involve outside collections agencies, both because of the cost and because of the customer relationships at stake, so the only option was to make the in-house motion work better.
Additional constraints
- Customer relationships mattered. The tone of outreach had to stay professional and customer-friendly, not commercial debt-collection harsh.
- Payment terms varied (Net 30 standard, advance payment for higher-risk orders), so the system needed to handle different outreach rules per customer.
- Data could live in QuickBooks or in Excel; the company needed both options without committing to a heavy integration project up front.
- Outbound calls needed local-area presence to improve pick-up rates and avoid being mistaken for spam.
The solution
Squirrels.ai deployed an AI AR Collections Specialist configured around the manufacturer’s actual workflow, with a customer-friendly tone and the channel mix the team had never been able to operate manually.
Mission setup tuned to the business
The AR manager loaded the agent’s knowledge base with company-specific FAQs, common customer questions, and approved messaging. The agent now answers routine questions like “what payment methods do you accept?” and “can I get the invoice resent?” directly, instead of routing everything back to the manager.
- Customer-friendly tone: scripts were tuned to match the company’s existing customer relationships, professional but never harsh, since these are repeat buyers the business wants to keep.
- Configurable templates: email, SMS, and call scripts can be tweaked centrally and the agent uses the new versions immediately.
- Dynamic FAQ knowledge base: the manager updates the FAQ document any time payment terms or policies change, and the agent picks up the changes without engineering involvement.
Multi-channel outreach with local-area caller ID
- Coordinated email, SMS, and phone sequence: the agent runs a configurable cadence across all three channels, automatically spacing touches over days so customers are not overwhelmed.
- Local-area caller ID: Squirrels.ai provisioned a dedicated phone number matching the company’s local area code, so customers see a recognizable number on caller ID and answer rates climb.
- Auto-stop on response: the moment a customer pays, promises to pay, or raises a dispute, all further outreach stops automatically. No more accidental over-reminders.
- Early window coverage: outreach can now begin on day one past due, not day 30, because the agent has the capacity the manager never did.
Flexible data path: Excel today, QuickBooks tomorrow
- Excel uploads from day one: the team uses a simple Excel template with customer details, invoice amounts, payment links, and notes. The agent launches the campaign from the file.
- QuickBooks integration path: for ongoing automation, Squirrels.ai supports a QuickBooks integration that pulls overdue invoice data directly, removing the manual upload step entirely.
- No painful migration: the team did not have to wait for an integration to start getting value. Excel uploads kicked off the pilot; the QuickBooks connection was layered in afterward.
Dry-run testing before going live
- The AR manager previewed sample emails, SMS messages, and phone-call scripts as the customer would experience them, before the campaign launched.
- Live test calls let her hear the agent answer typical customer questions, so she could fine-tune tone and content before any real customer was contacted.
- This dramatically reduced launch risk and built confidence that the agent would represent the company well on every channel.
Analytics dashboard built around action
- Real-time status on every customer: paid, promised to pay, disputed, or no response.
- Filter views let the manager focus only on customers who need her personal attention.
- Channel-level analytics show which mix of email, SMS, and call is driving the best response rates.
- Full conversation logs available on demand for any account that needs a deeper review.
Results and impact
The collections motion went from a single-person, email-only, day-30-and-later operation to a multi-channel, automated, day-one-past-due system, and the AR manager got 20 hours of her month back.
What changed in the business
- An entire hour a day came back. The AR manager no longer spends her mornings emailing invoices and chasing customers. That time now goes into higher-value finance work the company was already underweight on.
- Overdue accounts get touched on day one. The early-collections window, which used to be skipped entirely, is now worked end to end. Customers who would have drifted to 60 or 90 days past due are catching the friendly day-one reminder instead.
- Local-area caller ID lifted answer rates. A dedicated phone number matched to the company’s local area code means customers see a familiar number on their screen, not an unknown out-of-state line.
- Outreach went multi-channel. Customers who ignored email are catching the SMS, customers who ignored both are catching the call. The agent meets each customer on the channel that works for them.
- Customer relationships stayed intact. The tone is friendly, the cadence stops the moment a customer responds, and there is no outside collections agency involved. Repeat buyers are still repeat buyers.
- No agency, no commission. The company never had to hand accounts off to an external collections firm and absorb the associated cost and reputation risk.
- Data path matched reality. Excel got the pilot running quickly; the QuickBooks integration removed the manual upload step once everyone was confident in the system.
Why Squirrels.ai
Squirrels.ai deploys AI agents that handle calls, emails, and texts at scale, trained on a company’s own scripts, FAQs, and SOPs. For this manufacturer, the platform delivered:
- An AI AR Collections Specialist that replaced 20 hours a month of manual reminder work for a single AR manager.
- Multi-channel outreach across email, SMS, and phone with a customer-friendly tone tuned to repeat-buyer relationships.
- Local-area caller ID so outbound calls show a familiar number instead of being mistaken for spam.
- Excel uploads on day one with a QuickBooks integration path for full automation when ready.
- Dry-run testing of every message before going live, plus a real-time analytics dashboard for ongoing oversight.
- No outside collections agency involvement, protecting both margin and long-standing customer relationships.