AI Solution

AI Email & Approval Workflows
for Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane businesses.

AI that reads your emails, classifies them by intent, routes them to the right person, and triggers approval workflows. Inboxes cleared. Approvals faster. No more manual sorting.

Connected to Gmail, Microsoft 365, Xero, CRM, and your business tools. Humans handle exceptions. AI handles volume.

The Problem

Your team spends hours sorting emails and chasing approvals

Every business runs on email. Enquiries, invoices, support requests, supplier quotes, internal approvals, status updates. All landing in shared inboxes that someone has to read, sort, and act on. That someone is usually your most experienced staff, doing work that is important but entirely repetitive.

And approvals? They are worse. A request goes to a manager by email. The manager is in meetings until 3pm. The request sits. Someone chases. Another email. The thing that needed a 30-second decision took five days because the routing and visibility were broken.

AI email and approval workflows fix both problems. The AI reads, classifies, routes, and actions emails in seconds. Approvals hit the right person immediately, with a summary and recommendation. Low-risk items auto-approve per policy. Your team handles exceptions and decisions, not triage and chasing.

AI email triage system classifying and routing business emails automatically
How it runs

An AI email & approval workflows project, end to end

Three stages. No surprises. Your live operations stay untouched until cutover — delivered personally by the founder.

  1. Week 0

    AI Email & Approval Audit

    15-minute scoping call. We map your current process, the documents/data the AI will work with, and the systems the AI output must land in. Fixed-price quote inside 48 hours.

  2. Weeks 1–N

    Build & Parallel-Run

    AI system built and parallel-run against your live operations for two weeks. Every extraction, decision and integration validated before production. Human-in-the-loop where confidence is lower.

  3. Cutover

    Go-Live & Handover

    Production cutover on a planned window. Team training, monitoring active, 30 days post-launch support. Documentation, prompts and source code handed over in full.

Founder profile

Kasun Wijayamanna

Founder · Perth, WA · Started HELLO PEOPLE in 2008

18+ Years running HELLO PEOPLE

Founded in 2008. Two decades of technology-driven business transformation across Australia.

100+ Projects delivered

Startups to government agencies across mining, healthcare, legal, education and more.

HDR Researcher · Curtin University

Postgraduate research in Artificial Intelligence and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).

MBA Oil & Gas

Deep technical expertise combined with strong business and financial acumen.

Perth Based in WA

Serving businesses across Western Australia and nationally.

AU+TH International experience

Professional background in Bangkok, Thailand before migrating to Perth.

PHF Paul Harris Fellow · Rotary

Former President of Rotary Club of Booragoon. Over a decade of community service.

Read the full bio — research, career, community involvement and how HELLO PEOPLE runs projects.

See full founder page
Sound Familiar?

The email and approval problems that bring businesses to us

If your team is spending more time managing email than doing their actual job, you have a workflow problem, not a people problem.

The Inbox Is Drowning Your Team

Your shared inbox gets 150 emails a day. Enquiries, invoices, support requests, supplier quotes, internal approvals. All arriving in the same place. Staff spend the first hour of every day sorting, reading, and forwarding. Half the morning gone before any real work starts.

Approvals Stall in Someone's Inbox

A purchase request sits in a manager's inbox for three days because it arrived between 40 other emails. The project waits. The supplier waits. Nobody knows where the approval is. When someone finally chases it, the answer is "I did not see it."

Staff Manually Routing Every Email

Someone reads each email, decides who should handle it, and forwards it to the right person. It is triage by human. Slow, inconsistent, and completely dependent on knowledge that lives in one or two people's heads.

Urgent Emails Buried Under Noise

A critical client complaint arrives at 2pm and sits unread until the next morning because it landed between a newsletter, three supplier confirmations, and a meeting invitation. Priority emails get the same treatment as junk.

Approval Rules Are Inconsistent

Small purchases go to one manager. Big ones go to the director. But the thresholds are vague, the rules live in a policy document nobody has read since 2021, and different staff interpret them differently. Some approvals get skipped entirely.

No Visibility on Where Things Are

An approval was requested four days ago. Is it approved? Pending? Lost? Nobody knows without sending a follow-up email, which creates another email that needs routing. The process has no dashboard, no status tracking, no accountability.

What We Build

AI email and approval automation, by type

Five automation types that cover most email and approval workflows. Most businesses start with triage and add approval routing.

AI Email Triage & Classification

AI that reads every incoming email, understands the content, and classifies it: support request, invoice, new enquiry, internal request, complaint, quote, or whatever categories matter to your business. Not keyword matching. Actual understanding of what the email is about.

"I need to change my Thursday appointment" is classified as a booking modification even though it does not contain the word "reschedule." The AI gets intent, not just words.

AI-Assisted Approval Workflows

Approval requests routed intelligently based on content, value, risk, and your business policies. The AI reads the request, checks it against your approval rules, and sends it to the right approver, with a summary and recommendation.

A $500 office supply order? Auto-approved and logged. A $15,000 contractor engagement? Routed to the operations director with the AI's policy assessment. A request that matches two approval categories? Flagged for the right person with an explanation of why.

AI Email Summarisation & Auto-Response

For emails that follow patterns (booking confirmations, standard enquiries, order acknowledgements), the AI drafts a response, optionally sends it automatically, or queues it for one-click human approval.

"What are your opening hours?" "Do you deliver to Brisbane?" "Can I get a copy of my invoice?" The AI answers from your business data immediately. The customer gets a response in seconds instead of hours.

Email-to-Workflow Automation

Emails that trigger business actions, not just routing. An invoice email arrives. The AI extracts the attachment, reads it, pulls out vendor, amount, and line items, and creates a record in Xero or MYOB. No human touches it unless the AI is uncertain.

A support email arrives. The AI classifies the issue, creates a ticket in Zendesk or Freshdesk, assigns priority, and notifies the team. A new enquiry? Lead created in HubSpot or Salesforce with the email content as context.

Policy-Based Approval Compliance

The AI checks every approval against your documented policies. Spending limits, delegation authorities, segregation of duties, mandatory approvers for specific categories. All enforced automatically.

When an approval violates policy (wrong approver, exceeded delegation, missing documentation), the AI flags it before it gets processed. No more relying on people to remember the rules.

AI email triage system classifying incoming emails by type and routing to the correct team
AI approval workflow routing a purchase request with policy assessment and risk score
AI summarising an incoming email and drafting an auto-response for human review
Email triggering automated workflows: invoice processing, ticket creation, lead capture
AI compliance engine checking approval requests against documented business policies
Capabilities catalogue

AI email & approval workflow services we deliver

Every capability below has been delivered for a real Australian business — from a single shared-inbox triage to a full multi-step approval engine with policy enforcement. If your scenario is not listed, ask — we build bespoke.

Inbox triage & routing AI

  • Shared mailbox classification by intent (sales / support / accounts / urgent)
  • Auto-tagging and label assignment in Gmail / Outlook
  • Multi-mailbox routing across teams and offices
  • Urgency and priority scoring on inbound emails
  • Spam, phishing and junk pre-filter integration
  • Sender / domain-based VIP routing rules
  • Quiet-hours and after-hours queue handling

Auto-response & summary AI

  • AI-drafted replies for FAQ-style enquiries
  • One-click send for human-approved auto-replies
  • Thread summarisation for long email chains
  • Daily inbox digest for managers
  • Sentiment-aware response tone adjustment
  • Multi-language reply drafting
  • Brand-voice consistency across auto-responses

Multi-step approval automation

  • Purchase request → manager → director routing
  • Value-based and category-based approval thresholds
  • Parallel and sequential approval flows
  • Out-of-office redirect and on-call escalation
  • Teams / Slack approval cards with one-click action
  • Auto-escalation when SLA is breached
  • Approval audit trail with policy mapping

Email-to-record extraction

  • Order / RFQ extraction into ERP or job system
  • Insurance claim extraction into claims platform
  • Quote and proposal extraction into CRM deals
  • Booking / appointment extraction into scheduling tools
  • Lead enquiry extraction into HubSpot / Salesforce
  • Attachment processing (PDF, image) on inbound emails
  • Duplicate detection across email-sourced records

Email + CRM/ERP integration

  • HubSpot / Salesforce / Pipedrive activity logging from email
  • Xero / MYOB invoice creation from inbound email
  • ServiceM8 / Simpro / Tradify job creation from email enquiry
  • Zendesk / Freshdesk ticket creation from support email
  • SharePoint / Drive attachment archiving on email events
  • Teams / Slack notification on critical email triggers
  • Custom webhook + ERP push from email events

Compliance review AI

  • Policy-based approval validation on every request
  • Delegation-of-authority enforcement
  • Segregation-of-duties checks across approvers
  • Sensitive / PII content detection inside email body
  • Mandatory documentation completeness checks
  • Full audit log of every classification and decision
  • Compliance dashboard and exception reporting
Xero integration and automation system
Case Study

Xero integration that cut invoice turnaround from 2 days to 2 hours

We integrated Xero with a mobile workforce platform. Automated invoicing, job costing and time tracking. Data entry dropped by 90%.

Read the full case study
90% Less data entry
2 days → 2 hrs Invoice turnaround
100% Job cost visibility
Key Capabilities

What makes HELLO PEOPLE email workflow automation different

Not basic email rules. AI that reads content, understands intent, and takes action across your systems.

Natural Language Understanding

The AI reads email content like a person, understanding intent, urgency, and context. Not keyword matching. Actual comprehension of what the sender is asking for.

System Connected

Emails trigger actions in Xero, MYOB, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, Teams, SharePoint, and your custom systems. Data flows from inbox to system without manual steps.

Escalation & Timeout Rules

Approvals that are not actioned within your timeframe escalate automatically. Out-of-office redirects. Urgent items get immediate notification.

Full Audit Trail

Every email classified, every approval routed, every action taken. All logged. Who, what, when, and why. Dashboard for compliance and operations visibility.

Human-in-the-Loop

Low-confidence classifications go to a human for review. Complex approvals get AI recommendations but require human sign-off. Your team stays in control of anything that needs judgement.

Secure & Compliant

Enterprise-grade security. Email content processed in your environment. No data leaves your systems. Compliant with Australian privacy requirements.

Business Impact

What changes when email and approvals run on AI

Team freed from manual email sorting with AI triage handling classification automatically

Stop your team sorting emails for a living

Your admin or operations staff spend 1-2 hours a day reading, sorting, and forwarding emails. That is 250-500 hours a year on email triage alone, for a single person.

AI triage handles the sorting in seconds. Emails arrive, get classified, and route to the right person or trigger the right workflow. Your team opens their inbox and finds only the emails that actually need their attention.

One logistics company reclaimed 15 hours a week across four staff by automating email classification and routing. That is not a marginal improvement. That is nearly half a full-time role freed up from email management.

Approval workflow showing request routed instantly to the right approver with AI summary

Approvals in hours, not days

Manual approval workflows average 3-5 business days. Not because the decision is hard. The request sits in someone's inbox waiting to be seen. The bottleneck is routing and visibility, not decision-making.

AI-routed approvals reach the right person immediately, with a summary and recommendation. The approver clicks approve or reject from their phone. Low-risk items are auto-approved per policy. Average approval time drops to under 4 hours.

No more chasing. No more "did you see my email?" Status is visible in a dashboard. Overdue approvals escalate automatically. Your finance and procurement teams love this.

AI email routing with consistent classification accuracy compared to manual sorting

Emails go to the right place, every time

Manual email routing depends on whoever is sorting the inbox that day. Different people classify differently. Emails go to the wrong team. Action gets delayed. Customers wait longer than they should.

AI classifies consistently. The same type of email gets the same classification and routing every time, whether it arrives at 9am Monday or 4pm Friday. No variation based on who is working.

Mis-routed emails drop to near zero. Your team stops getting emails that are not for them. Customers get faster responses because their emails reach the right person the first time.

Dashboard showing real-time status of all email workflows and pending approvals

See where every email and approval stands

Right now, tracking the status of an approval means sending another email. "Did you see my request?" "Has the quote been approved?" "Where is the PO?" Every status check generates more email.

With AI workflow automation, every item has a status: received, classified, routed, pending approval, approved, actioned. Visible in a dashboard. Searchable. Filterable. No chasing required.

Operations managers can see approval bottlenecks in real time. Finance can see pending approvals by value. Compliance can see policy adherence rates. The process is transparent end to end.

Who It's For

AI email and approval automation by department

Any team drowning in email or waiting on approvals benefits. These are the most common starting points.

01

Accounts Payable

Invoice emails triaged, attachments extracted, data pulled into Xero or MYOB, approval routed by value and category. 15 minutes of manual work per invoice becomes 30 seconds.

02

Customer Service

Support emails classified by issue type and urgency, routed to the right team, tickets created in Zendesk or Freshdesk automatically. Simple queries get AI-drafted responses for one-click send.

03

Procurement

Purchase requests routed to the correct approver based on value, category, and budget. Policy compliance checked before routing. Approved POs created in your procurement system.

04

HR & Leave Requests

Leave requests, expense claims, and policy sign-offs routed to the correct manager. AI checks leave balances, policy eligibility, and team coverage before routing.

05

Sales Enquiries

New enquiry emails classified, key details extracted (service needed, budget, timeline), and leads created in HubSpot or Salesforce. Hot leads trigger immediate alerts to the sales team.

06

Compliance & Contract

Contract requests, compliance submissions, and regulatory correspondence automatically classified and routed to the right reviewer with AI-flagged items requiring attention.

How We Build It

From inbox chaos to automated workflow in 6 steps

A structured approach to automating your email triage and approval processes.

Email & Approval Audit

We review your current email volumes, categories, routing patterns, and approval workflows. We identify the high-volume, repetitive patterns that AI can handle and the exceptions that need humans.

Classification & Rules Design

We define the email categories, approval routing logic, escalation rules, and policy checks. Mapped to your organisational structure, delegation authorities, and business rules.

Build & Connect

We build the AI email triage and approval workflows, connect them to Gmail, Outlook, Teams, Xero, CRM, and your other systems. Each classification and routing path tested individually.

Validate with Real Emails

We test against your real email volume. Classification accuracy, routing correctness, approval flow timing, and edge case handling. Your team reviews the AI's decisions before we go live.

Deploy & Monitor

Go live with full monitoring. Classification accuracy, processing volumes, approval turnaround times, and escalation rates. All tracked from day one. First-week review to catch and fix any patterns the AI missed.

Optimise & Expand

We analyse classification data monthly, improve accuracy, add new email categories, and extend approval workflows. As your team trusts the system, more low-risk items move to auto-processing.

Works With Your Systems

Connects to your email, CRM, accounting, and helpdesk

The workflow plugs into your existing tools. No migration. No platform change.

Gmail & Microsoft 365

Connects to your email platform. Reads incoming emails in real time. Works with shared mailboxes, distribution lists, and individual accounts.

CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho

Email-sourced leads created in your CRM with full context. Sales enquiries classified, scored, and routed straight to your pipeline.

Accounting: Xero, MYOB

Invoice emails processed end-to-end. Attachment extracted, data read, approval routed, and record created in your accounting system.

Helpdesk: Zendesk, Freshdesk

Support emails auto-classified and ticketed. Priority assigned. Team notified. Simple queries resolved with AI-drafted responses.

Teams & Slack

Approval notifications in Teams or Slack. Approve/reject with one click. Escalation alerts and status updates delivered where your team already works.

Custom APIs & Webhooks

Connect to any system with an API. Custom business software, ERP, project management, document storage. If it has an API, the workflow can reach it.

Our shared inbox was getting 200 emails a day. Two people spent the first two hours of every morning sorting them. The AI handles it all now. Invoices go to accounts, support goes to the team, enquiries go to sales. Our staff actually start their day doing real work.

General Manager Perth professional services firm · 40+ staff
Why us

Why HELLO PEOPLE

  • We build, not just advise

    You get working software, not a slide deck of recommendations. Everything we design gets built, tested and handed over — not left as a strategy artifact.

  • Fixed-price quoting

    You know the cost before we start. No hourly surprises, no scope creep — we scope it, quote it, ship it.

  • Built for Australian business

    Perth-based team who understand Xero, MYOB, ServiceM8, simPRO, Cliniko, Deputy — the tools your business actually runs on.

  • Senior team, direct access

    You email Kasun, you get Kasun. No account managers, no offshore handoff — straight from scope to ship.

  • Full code ownership

    When it is done, you own every line of code, every credential, every artefact. No lock-in, no license fees, no black-box dependencies.

FAQs

Common questions about AI email and approval workflows

How does AI email triage differ from email rules and filters?

Email rules match keywords and senders: "if subject contains INVOICE, move to Accounts." AI triage reads the email content and understands intent. An email that says "please find attached our payment schedule for Q3" gets classified as an invoice even though it does not contain the word "invoice." The AI handles the cases that rules miss.

Can it work with our existing email (Gmail / Microsoft 365)?

Yes. We connect to Gmail, Microsoft 365, and Exchange via API. Works with shared mailboxes, distribution groups, and individual accounts. Your team keeps using their email as normal. The AI works behind the scenes.

How accurate is the email classification?

For well-defined categories, typically 90-95% accuracy. Emails that fall below the confidence threshold are flagged for human review rather than misclassified. Accuracy improves over time as the AI learns from corrections. We monitor accuracy weekly during the first month.

Can it handle approval workflows with multiple steps?

Yes. Multi-step approvals, parallel approvals, conditional routing, and sequential sign-offs. A contract might need legal review, then budget approval, then director sign-off. Each step routed automatically when the previous one completes.

How much does AI email and approval automation cost?

We provide a fixed-price quote after scoping. A focused email triage and routing system sits at the lower end of project size. A comprehensive solution with approval workflows, auto-responses, system integrations and compliance checking is larger. Ongoing costs are scoped during the build.

How long does it take to set up?

A focused email triage system takes 3 to 6 weeks. A comprehensive email + approval workflow takes 6 to 10 weeks. We deploy incrementally. Email classification goes live first, then approval routing, then auto-responses.

Is our email data secure?

Yes. Email processing happens in a secure Australian-hosted environment. We do not store email content beyond what is needed for processing. All data handling complies with Australian privacy legislation. Role-based access controls on all admin tools.

Do you support it after launch?

Yes. Ongoing monitoring, classification accuracy reviews, and workflow optimisation. We improve the system based on real usage: adding new categories, refining routing rules, and tuning auto-response quality. Monthly reports on email volumes, classification accuracy, and approval turnaround times.

Tell Us About Your Email & Approval Challenges

How many emails hit your shared inbox daily? Which approvals take too long? What systems do you use? We will scope a practical automation plan.

Prefer a quick chat? Call 0425 531 127. We answer the phone in Perth.