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The one deployment

The only customer story we can tell you is our own.

This is our family's manufacturing business, where every line in the house was built, broken, and rebuilt before it was offered to anyone. One company, told in full, including the parts that are still not finished.

How it earned trust

Reproduce the history, or do nothing.

An automation is handed the company's own history and asked to produce the answer the company already arrived at.

How each automation earned the right to run in this company An automation is handed the company's own history and asked to produce the answer the company already arrived at. If it cannot, it is blocked from running at all and produces nothing. If it can, its work arrives as drafts, a named person approves each item, every action is written to an audit trail checked daily, and every backtest re-runs nightly. NO MATCH MATCHES The company's historyreal months, not a sample Asked for the answerthe company already reached The awkward months includedadvances, loan installments THE TESTDoes it match?the company's own answer BLOCKEDProduces nothing at allno warning-and-continue path STEP 1Runs as draftswaiting for a person STEP 2A person approvesapproval is per item STEP 3On the audit trailchecked daily for tampering STEP 4Re-checked nightlya failure raises an alert

Pick a scenario, or any box.

Scroll the diagram sideways to see the whole path.

Before the story

Why there is one of these and not twenty.

We have one deployment that is deep enough to describe honestly, so you get one. Everything below is checkable against the rest of this site.

The business

What it is, in plain terms.

WhoOur own family's manufacturing business. We do not name it here: it is a private company that did not sign up to be marketing material, and its permission to be a reference is not something we are going to imply.
PayrollThe payroll engine was tested against the company's own payroll records, a run of more than eleven years of consecutive monthly approvals, before it went live; clock-in to payslip runs through the platform.
SitesAttendance and guard patrol are used at our own site. We publish no volume numbers for them.
How it ran beforePaper registers, WhatsApp threads, and one trusted accountant's head.
RelationshipIt is the founder's family business, which means it is both a real, complex company and an obviously friendly one. Treat the access as unusual and the results as real, not the other way round.
The problem

Three things nobody had time to check.

A signature is not proof

A guard signs a logbook to say the rounds were walked. Trust-me was the entire control.

Month-end was a reconstruction

The salary sheet was rebuilt each month from paper and somebody's memory. Every rebuild is a chance to get a worker's pay wrong.

Overcharges were simply paid

A vendor raises a price or bills the wrong quantity. The invoice gets paid and the margin quietly goes.

The record

None of it was believed because it demoed well.

PayrollThe engine had to reproduce real months from the company's payroll record, a run of more than eleven years of consecutive approvals, every month since 2018 pre-audited by an outside firm, before anyone was paid by it.
The detail

Not a sample month. The awkward ones with advances, loan installments and cross-midnight shifts included.

Everything else53 automations are backtested against real history from this company, with 0 currently failing. 86 skills run in production. 266 approvals have been handled end to end.
Failing blocks itA skill whose backtest has not just passed produces nothing at all.
The detail

There is no warning-and-continue path, because a broken automation that stops is an inconvenience and one that keeps going with a bad number is a payment to claw back.

Re-checked nightlyEvery backtest re-runs nightly against its set, and a failure raises an alert rather than waiting to be noticed.
The detail

A test that passed in March is a statement about March.

The safeguards get broken on purposeEach protection is deliberately removed to confirm the tests notice. That exercise caught two safety checks in our own work that looked covered and were not, because a different check was quietly refusing first and hiding them.
A person still approvesNothing is paid, posted or sent because the software decided it was right. Approval is per item where money is involved, and closed accounting periods are refused regardless of who approves.

The six controls, and how each one is enforced, are set out in full on how we prove it.

What it does today

An ordinary day in that company.

ShiftWorkers scan a gate code

Overtime, deficit hours, rest days and cross-midnight shifts are calculated rather than argued about.

PatrolGuards scan the checkpoints as they walk

A rushed round is visible instead of invisible.

InvoicesRead as they arrive

Anything that does not tie is flagged before the payment goes out.

ApprovalsDrafts with the evidence attached

A named person approves or rejects each one.

Month endA review rather than a rebuild

Payslips go out over WhatsApp and the bank-transfer file exports in one click.

The detail

Workers scan a gate code to start and end a shift. Overtime, deficit hours, rest days and cross-midnight shifts are calculated rather than argued about. Leave is requested over WhatsApp and approved in a tap, with balances that accrue and gazetted holidays detected automatically.

Guards scan the checkpoints as they walk. Three checkpoints scanned in three minutes gets flagged, and a photographed QR code does not work, so a rushed round is visible instead of invisible. Incident reports arrive with photos, over WhatsApp, where the supervisors already are.

Through the day, invoices and statements are read as they arrive, compared to what the company paid last time, and anything that does not tie is flagged before the payment goes out. Approval requests arrive as drafts with the evidence attached, and a named person approves or rejects each one. Every action, approval and rejection is written to an audit trail that is checked daily for tampering, with its own record kept off the database it describes.

At month end the salary sheet is a review rather than a rebuild. Payslips go out over WhatsApp and the bank-transfer file exports in one click.

The same monthly verification report that every client gets, what the AI did, what was backtested, what it caught, and the approval rate, is produced for this company too. It is the same report because it is the same system.

Being straight with you

What it still does not do

Six things that are true about this deployment and would be left out of a normal case study. You would find them out in month two anyway, and it is better you hear them while you are still deciding.

It does not act on its own.

Everything that pays, posts or sends is a draft waiting for a person. That is a deliberate limit, not a phase we are growing out of, but it does mean the time saved is the preparation time, not the deciding time.

It does not write to the accounting system.

The books are read, not edited. Corrections are drafted for a person to make in the software. If you were expecting an AI that closes your month by itself, this is not that.

The tests prove reproduction, not judgment.

Matching years of past payroll shows the mechanics are right. It says nothing about whether the automation would make a good call on something genuinely new, which is exactly why a person still approves.

Not every skill has a test.

Where a task is a written procedure rather than a calculation, there is nothing to reproduce and nothing to backtest. 53 of the 86 are backtested. We say which is which rather than implying all 86 are verified.

Something failed silently for six weeks.

A component of our own system stopped working and nothing was watching the one signal that would have caught it on day one. The nightly re-check and the alerting exist because of that, not in anticipation of it.

It is one company, and a friendly one.

It is real, complex and running daily, which is more than a pilot. It is still a single deployment with unusually good access, and it is not a substitute for the twenty references a larger vendor can give you. If that is what your process needs, we are the wrong size.

What this means for you

What carries over, and what does not.

Carries over: the method

An automation must reproduce your own past results before it is allowed to run. It is the same gate on your books, your bookings, and your payroll, built from your records rather than ours.

Carries over: the working software

Attendance, patrol and payroll, the invoice checking, and the approval queue are running code that a business depends on today, not a specification.

Does not carry over: the numbers

A payroll record of more than eleven years of consecutive monthly approvals is a fact about one company. It is evidence that the engine works, not a forecast of what it will save you. We are not going to turn it into a percentage and put your name on it.

Does not carry over: the access

We could take that company apart and rebuild it because it is ours. In your business we get what you choose to share, on your terms, which is slower and correct.

Ask us to do the same thing on your numbers.

Bring a month you have already closed. We will run it and show you where we match what you did and where we do not. That conversation costs nothing.

Talk to us → See what we do, by need