Case study · Acumatica · Accounts payable
Paper in. System out.
CN Rail freight bills, $4.4M of them in four weeks, were keyed into Acumatica by hand. From September 15, 2026, they went in as Bills on hold, minutes after CN's email.
For Acumatica companies with one high-volume, high-dollar vendor whose bills arrive by email and get keyed by a person.
The paper
CN Rail hauls Badger's sand out of two Wisconsin plants and bills every shipment. The bills arrive as batch PDFs by email, several invoices per file, single invoices from $627.73 to $706,753.10. For each one, AP keyed the branch, date, purchase receipt and per-car quantities into Acumatica, then reviewed and released it.
The vendor is messy on purpose. One shipment billed across many invoices. Two railroads' receipts on one shipment. Corrected re-issues that reuse the invoice number. Fuel surcharges that land cents off the receipt. 134 invoices in four weeks.
What happens now
A copy of every CN email lands in a Parallon mailbox. The automation splits the PDF, reads each invoice, finds the purchase receipt in Acumatica by shipment number, creates the AP Bill on hold with the receipt lines and the PDF attached, and checks the Bill's value against CN's invoice.
AP reviews and releases in Acumatica, exactly as before. At month end, every CN bill that has arrived is already in Acumatica, on hold, not waiting in someone's inbox. When the automation is unsure it does not guess: it stops, names the reason, and hands the invoice to a person in a daily summary.
What the parallel run proved
Four weeks beside AP, August 6 to September 4, 2026, writing nothing while AP still keyed. At the end, one table, one row per invoice, ours beside theirs: 90 would have been entered, and all 90 agree with what AP posted. One amount check in 91 disagreed: the $5.98 below.*
14 stopped for a person, 13 for one cause: receipts from two railroads on one shipment. AP gave the rule (use the CN receipt), and it has been built in since live entry began. 30 were set aside on purpose: 27 Corrected re-issues and 3 revenue movements. AP disputed two summary rows, both on the fuel surcharge, both right; the wording changed the same day.
One invoice
Invoice for $703,525.01 against $703,519.03 open on the receipt. The automation flagged the $5.98 on a Monday and applied nothing. AP's own note on the Bill, three days later: surcharge variance reviewed and accepted. Same conclusion, reached independently, with the exact dollar difference on the table first.
The tolerance is zero. Anything that does not tie goes to a person with both numbers, eight cents included. Since September 19, 2026 the check runs on the Bill itself, in both directions, so a receipt priced above what CN billed is caught too: that is the $51,333.70 above.
For your controller and your IT lead
Control.
Never releases, never pays. The integration user has no release rights on Badger's side, so segregation of duties holds whatever happens on ours. Badger can take the write access back at any time; Bills already on hold stay for AP to release or delete.
Your data.
CN email, Parallon mailbox, one server, Acumatica's REST API. Nothing else in the path. Forged CN emails are refused before the PDF is downloaded. Encrypted daily backups, kept 30 days, key never on the server. Nothing leaves your Acumatica except what we read to match.
If a summary does not arrive.
Three dead-man checks, on the reading pass, the daily summary and the backup. If the service goes quiet for 35 minutes, Parallon is alerted. We know before you do.
Acumatica.
2025 R2, contract-based REST API, one integration user with API scope, logged out after every run. Bills carry vendor, CN invoice number as vendor reference, date, branch, PO receipt lines with per-car quantities, and the PDF.
Re-issued invoice numbers.
A Corrected invoice reuses its number. A repeated number is never entered twice: the automation stops and hands it to a person with both sides, so Acumatica never sees a duplicate reference. It happened in the second live week.
Split shipments.
When CN bills one shipment across several invoices, Acumatica lets only one unreleased Bill hold the receipt at a time. Later Bills are entered on hold with their PDF and wait for their receipt lines.
Nothing to unwind.
The automation runs against Badger's own Acumatica and Badger's own mail rule. Switch the rule off and AP keys CN bills exactly as before; every Bill already entered stays where it is.
Where it stands
Live entry from September 15, 2026. The automation enters, AP releases.
Figures for the first two live weeks cover September 15 to 28, 2026. The full parallel-run report, row by row, is available on request.
* 91 amount checks: the 90 bills that would have been entered plus the one flagged. The 13 two-railroad stops and the 30 set aside never reached the amount check, so one disagreement is one in 91, not one in 134. Parallel-run figures read from the run database and Badger's Acumatica, read-only, September 8, 2026. Live-period figures from the delivery review issued to Badger on September 29, 2026. Badger Mining Corporation and CN Rail named with Badger's written permission, September 16, 2026.