ERP & Custom-System AI Agents · Canada

AI Agents That Work Inside Your ERP and the Systems Around It

FlowNorth.ai builds AI agents for larger Canadian businesses that read orders, invoices and requests and enter them in your ERP for a person to approve, running in your cloud account or on your own servers and connecting up to about 10 systems, including industry software, custom APIs and databases.

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Who Is This For?

Larger Canadian businesses whose everyday work runs through several systems at once.

Distributors, wholesalers and manufacturers whose staff re-key purchase orders, packing slips or supplier invoices into an ERP.
Operations that run an ERP plus several other systems: a CRM, a pricing or contract database, a document store, a shipping or job system.
Companies with custom, legacy or on-premises software that has no ready-made Zapier, Make or n8n connector.
Teams that need control over what an agent can change: approvals, an audit trail and a staging review before anything touches live records.

What Does an ERP Order-Intake Agent Do, Step by Step?

Here is a typical order-intake agent. Invoice and request agents follow the same pattern with different inputs.

Watches an inbox or folder

A shared mailbox like orders@, a SharePoint or Google Drive folder, or a web form. Each new item starts a run.

Reads the document

Email bodies, PDF attachments, scanned forms and spreadsheets. It pulls out the fields you care about: customer, PO number, line items, quantities, ship date.

Checks it against your records

Matches the customer and part numbers to your ERP, catches duplicates, and flags any price or quantity that looks off.

Drafts the entry

Builds the sales order, bill or record in your ERP as a draft. Nothing posts yet.

A person approves

Your coordinator sees the draft with a link to the source document, then approves, edits or rejects it.

Posts and logs

Posts the approved entry, sends a confirmation if you want one, and writes every step to the audit log.

Which ERP Jobs Can an Agent Take Over?

Work that arrives often, in messy formats, and has a clear right answer that a person can check quickly.

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Order and request intake into your ERP

Purchase orders, service requests and change orders arrive by email, PDF or spreadsheet. The agent reads each one and creates a draft sales order, work order or record in your ERP for a person to approve.

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Document processing that feeds your ERP

Supplier invoices, packing slips, POs, application forms and other PDFs are read, checked against your records and filed, with the key fields entered in your ERP where they belong.

Which Systems Can One Project Connect?

Up to about 10 in one project. The written scope lists every connection, what the agent may read in it, and what it may change.

Your ERP

Draft sales orders, bills and records, created through the ERP's API or its import format. Nothing posts until a person approves it.

Industry and custom software

Job, dispatch, pricing, quoting or inventory systems, including ones built in-house, reached through their own API.

Databases and on-premises servers

Databases and servers inside your network, reached with read-only access where possible, through a workflow server that runs on your side. n8n can be self-hosted for this.

Email, files, accounting and CRM

Outlook and SharePoint in Microsoft 365, Gmail and Drive in Google Workspace, QuickBooks for bills and invoices, HubSpot for contacts and deals.

Workflow and AI

n8n or Make.com to run the steps. Claude or OpenAI to read and decide, or a private model if your data must stay in Canada.

Using an ERP or industry system not listed here? If it has an API or accepts imports, an agent can usually create draft records in it. We check what your system allows before we quote.

What Could an ERP Agent Look Like in Practice?

This is an example of an agent we could scope. It is an illustration, not a client case study.

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Example: a building-supply distributor

A distributor that receives dozens of purchase orders a day as PDFs could have an agent read each one, match the SKUs to its catalogue, create a draft sales order in its ERP and flag any line where the price differs from the customer's contract price. A coordinator approves the batch instead of typing it.

Systems in this example: the orders@ mailbox, the ERP, the customer contract price list and the approval step.

How Do Approvals, Audit Logs and Staging Work?

Every ERP agent is set up with these before it touches live records.

Approvals

Orders and records start as drafts. A person approves, edits or rejects each one before it posts, and anything that moves money waits for a person.

Audit log

Every run is logged: what the agent read, which values it chose and why, and who approved the result.

Staging review

You try the agent on a copy of your setup or on sample data before it touches live data.

Least-privilege access

The agent gets its own service account in each system, with only the permissions its job needs. Never a staff member's login.

What's Included, and How Is It Priced?

One written scope covers every system, every approval and the handover.

Included

✓ Free 30-minute call: bring a few examples of the orders, invoices or emails your team re-keys.
✓ Written scope: the job, the inputs, every system connected, who approves what, and one fixed price.
✓ The build: connections to each system, the agent's instructions, and testing on real examples from your business.
✓ Staging review: you try it on a copy of your setup before it touches live data.
✓ Approvals and audit logging: set up to your rules from day one.
✓ Handover: documentation, a walkthrough for your team and 2 weeks of support after launch.

Price

One fixed price

in writing, before work starts

Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute call. After it, you get a written scope and one fixed price before any work starts.

Hosting or hardware is extra, sized in the scope.

Model usage is a separate running cost that depends on how many documents the agent reads. We estimate it from your volume in the scope.

What Won't We Hand to an Agent?

Some jobs should stay with a person, or aren't worth automating yet.

Paying bills or moving money. The agent can prepare the payment; a person releases it.
Signing or accepting contracts, or changing contract terms.
Credit decisions, pricing exceptions and write-offs.
HR decisions such as hiring, discipline or payroll changes.
A process that doesn't work by hand yet. If three people do the job three different ways, we help you settle on one first.
Jobs that come up twice a month. The build won't pay for itself, and a checklist is cheaper.

Questions About ERP Agents

Straight answers to what buyers ask us most.

Does the agent work with our ERP? +

If your ERP has an API or accepts imports, an agent can usually create draft orders or records in it. We confirm what your system allows on the free 30-minute call, before we write the scope.

Can it connect to software that runs on our own servers? +

Usually, yes. The options are the system's own API, a scheduled import or export file, or a read-only connection to its database, run from a workflow server inside your network so the data doesn't have to leave the building. Your IT team approves each connection before we build it.

How many systems can one project connect? +

Up to about 10, such as the ERP, a CRM, a shared mailbox, a document store, a pricing database and an approval step. Each connection adds discovery, testing and security review, so every one is listed in the written scope.

Can the agent read scanned or handwritten documents? +

It reads typed PDFs and clear scans well. Handwriting and poor scans are less reliable, so we add a confidence check: anything the agent can't read clearly goes to a person instead of being guessed.

What happens when the agent gets an order wrong? +

Orders are created as drafts and a person approves them, so a mistake is caught before it posts. The audit log shows what the agent read and why it chose each value, and we use those cases to improve its instructions.

Do our customers have to change how they send orders? +

No. The agent reads orders the way they arrive today, whether that's an email body, a PDF attachment or a spreadsheet.

Which ERP Job Would You Hand Over First?

Book a free 30-minute call. Bring a few examples of the orders, invoices or emails your team re-keys, and a list of the systems they touch. We'll tell you honestly whether an agent is worth building.