How do you build a back office AI agent for a small business?
Short answer
Give an AI model a short list of jobs, connect it to the systems those jobs touch (email, calendar, accounting, CRM, files), write down what it may do alone and what needs your approval, enforce those rules in the software that connects it, and log everything it does. Start with one workflow, like chasing unpaid invoices, and add more once it's reliable.
What a back office agent is
It's software that takes a request, in plain English or from a trigger like a new email, decides which steps to take, and uses your systems to take them. The difference from a chatbot is that it acts: it looks up an invoice, drafts a reminder, moves a meeting or files a document.
The pieces
| Piece | What it does | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Channels | Where requests come in | Phone, email, Slack or Teams, a web form, a schedule |
| The model | Understands the request and plans the steps | Claude, GPT or Gemini, through a provider like Amazon Bedrock |
| Connections | The systems it can read and change | Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, QuickBooks, HubSpot, Jobber, your database |
| Rules | What it can do alone and what needs approval | Read anything; send email only after you approve; never issue refunds |
| Business context | What it knows about you | Your services, prices, hours, people and templates |
| Logs | A record of every action | Who asked, what it did, what changed |
Workflows worth starting with
- Unpaid invoices. Each week it lists open invoices from QuickBooks, drafts reminders in your voice, and sends them once you approve.
- Inbox triage. It reads the shared inbox, files receipts and bills, drafts replies to routine questions and flags the rest.
- Scheduling. It finds open times on the right calendar, books meetings and sends confirmations.
- Client lookups. Ask "what did we quote the Garcia project?" and it pulls the answer from your CRM or files.
- Month-end summary. It pulls the numbers you check every month into one report: revenue, open invoices, new clients, overdue work.
The rules matter more than the model
Most problems come from an agent doing something nobody approved. For each workflow, write down what it can do on its own, what needs a person, and what it must never do. Then enforce those rules in the software that connects the agent to your systems, not only in the instructions you give the model, so a misunderstood request can't turn into a payment or a deleted record.
Keeping it safe
- Give each connection only the access its workflow needs, read-only where possible
- Keep passwords and API keys in a vault, never in the instructions
- Log every action and review a sample every week
- Use a model provider that doesn't train on your data
- Keep an off switch that falls back to taking a message
Build it yourself or have it run for you
You can assemble an agent from a model provider and integration tools if someone on your team can look after it. Connections break when vendors change their software, and rules drift as the business changes, so plan for upkeep. Midwater's back office assistant is this, set up on your systems with your rules, monitored, and changed when your business changes.
Published
Common questions
- Does it need access to everything?
- No. Connect only what each workflow needs, and start read-only where you can.
- What happens when it gets something wrong?
- Actions that matter wait for your approval, everything is logged, and anything it can't handle comes to you.
- Is my data used to train the model?
- Not with providers like Amazon Bedrock, which don't use what you send the model, or what it sends back, to train it. Ask any vendor before you connect your data.
Use cases behind this answer
Ask your company anything
Ask by phone, text or chat and get an answer from your email, files, CRM and accounting. Each person sees only what they're allowed to see.
Purchase approvals by text
Purchase requests go to the right approver by amount and department, the approver replies YES by text, and the PO is created and logged.
Documents by email, read, filed and routed
Email any invoice, contract, form or receipt to your agent. It pulls out the details, enters them where they belong, files it, and tells the right person.
More from the blog
- What's the best way to automate your proposal process?
- How do you automate client intake?
- How do you automate invoicing from your team's time and job records?
- How do you automate the invoices, receipts and forms coming into your inbox?
- How much does an AI receptionist cost?
- Should I use an answering service or an AI receptionist?
What job would you hand to an agent?
Book a free 15-minute call. Tell us the job that eats your week and we'll tell you how an agent would handle it and what it would cost.