For Tom and Miles

The Nine Workflows.

Max cannot write to your systems today. Write access is off, and this document is what turns it on.

The nine workflows were agreed as a line each. This is the detail: for every one, what Max does, whose job it belongs to, what stays a human decision, and who approves.

Please mark it up and send it back. Once you confirm these, we build to exactly this.

How approvals work

Max proposes,
people approve.

  • Max never writes to your systems directly. Every change becomes a proposal — a queued item showing exactly what would happen.
  • A person reviews it and approves it. Only then does it execute.
  • Some changes need two approvals, in order. Your vendor-bill rule needs two people above $15,000. The second approval doesn't open until the first is done.
  • The same person can't fill both. If Josh raised the PO, he doesn't also count as the second approver.
  • The dollar amount comes from your systems, not from Max. Max can't describe a bill as small to shorten its own approval chain.
  • If an amount can't be confirmed, it takes the longer chain, never the shorter one.
  • Nothing approves itself. Every approval is a person.
  • Every decision is recorded — who, what, when.

Your thresholds and buckets are settings, not something welded in. That's why we keep asking you to confirm them rather than choosing for you.

Your systems

Five systems.

Max connects to five systems. The other three in the proposal are platform foundation — no workflow uses them.

SystemMax readsMax writes
FishbowlCustomers, open sales orders, open POs, partsSales orders, vendor bills
QuickBooksCustomers, four reports, vendor billsCustomers, bills, bill dates, invoices
ClaritySoftAccounts, contacts, opportunitiesContacts
SmartsheetThe scorecardScorecard rows
Microsoft 365The invoices inboxDrafts, and sending once approved

Three limits worth knowing

  • No route to payroll or employee data. Not for anyone.
  • Fishbowl can't be invoiced from. Invoicing is QuickBooks.
  • The sync runs one way. Fishbowl pushes to QuickBooks overnight. QuickBooks never pushes back.

SharePoint, Avalara, QPro and the freight portal are not connected. Where a workflow needs something from those, a person supplies it.

Finance and bills

Workflows one to five.

1

Vendor bill intake and triage

Bills arrive by email. Max reads them, sorts them, and drafts the entry.

Whose job
Vanessa — A/P
Systems
Microsoft 365 · Fishbowl · QuickBooks
Volume
25–35 bills a week, Mondays and Thursdays

What Max does

  • Reads the bill arriving at invoices@qmaxindustries.com
  • Pulls out vendor, amount, date and PO number
  • Routes it your way — PO-linked to Fishbowl, everything else to QuickBooks
  • Says which approval bucket it falls in
  • Drafts the entry as a proposal

What stays yours

Vanessa commits every entry. Max never enters a bill.

Who approves

From your Bill Approval form, R0, 5/23/2025

Bill typeWho approves
Utilities, services — not tied to an orderNobody. Vanessa enters directly.
Order or stock, under $15,000Goods receipt confirmed → nobody. Otherwise → PO creator or PM.
Order or stock, $15,000 and overPO creator or PM, then Josh

Your PO creators are Matt, Daniel and Zach — the same three who hold Bill approver in QuickBooks. Miles is not in your approval chain, and we haven't added him.

Please confirm

  • Is $15,000 still the right line? A bill of exactly $15,000 — we've read that as needing the second approval.
  • Should small bills have a lighter path? Around $5,000 has been discussed. We'd rather you set it.

Automated bill work pauses on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for your cash routine.

2

Bill date correction

The sync stamps bills with the warehouse date instead of the invoice date. Max finds them.

Whose job
Vanessa — the next-day QuickBooks step
Systems
Fishbowl · QuickBooks
When
Tuesdays and Fridays

What Max does

  • Scans QuickBooks for bills still carrying the receipt date
  • Queues them as candidates
  • Proposes the corrected date for each one you confirm

What stays yours

The right date is on the invoice PDF and in no system field. A person reads it and confirms. One field per bill, approved first.

Who approves
Vanessa.
Who can see it
Finance. The scan lists vendor names and amounts.
3

Customer invoice generation

Your invoicing already fires on its own. This closes the gap before it fires.

Whose job
The PM who owns the order — Matt for engineered, Daniel for jacket
Systems
Fishbowl · QuickBooks

How it works today

  • Noah ships in Fishbowl → the nightly batch runs → QuickBooks creates the invoice
  • On engineered and jacket orders, that waits on the PM clicking final-ship
  • The PM holds that click deliberately — progress payments mean all lines must fulfil together for one clean invoice
  • The delay is between the truck leaving and that click

What Max does

Watches for orders that have shipped but aren't final-shipped yet, and nudges the owning PM.

The agreement scopes this workflow to the invoicing itself. We're including the nudge as well, because the invoicing already works and the nudge is where the days actually go.

What stays yours

The PM keeps the final-ship click. Creating an invoice by hand stays reserved for genuine exceptions, as an approved proposal.

Please confirm

Who gets the nudge? The owning PM alone, or Josh copied?

4

Accounts receivable collections

Vanessa's collections pass gets drafted for her instead of by her.

Whose job
Vanessa
Systems
QuickBooks · Microsoft 365
Time
Three days a week, one to two hours each

What Max does

  • Pulls the aging from QuickBooks
  • Tiers overdue accounts by amount and days overdue
  • Drafts the outreach — invoice re-send for the low tier, a firmer email for higher tiers, in your template over Vanessa's signature

What stays yours

Every draft reviewed before anything sends. Nothing auto-sends, including the low tier. The agreement allowed low tiers to resend automatically; we'd rather they didn't. Say if you want that changed back.

Who approves

Vanessa. Escalation follows your existing path: the PM who owns the customer, and currently Josh.

Please confirm

  • Vanessa's tier thresholds — dollars and days.
  • Does the low tier re-send the QuickBooks invoice itself, or a drafted email?
5

Cash flow tracker

The Tuesday pull, done for you. You said this is the one you most want automated.

Whose job
Miles
Systems
QuickBooks · Fishbowl · ClaritySoft
Time today
Two to three hours every Tuesday

What Max does

  • Pulls cash, A/R and A/P from QuickBooks
  • Pulls open SO and open PO balances from Fishbowl
  • Pulls the weighted pipeline from ClaritySoft
  • Computes your headline number:

GOLD = Cash + A/R − A/P + Open SO − Open PO

  • Shows GOLD as a trend against prior runs, never as a standalone figure
  • Puts the pipeline alongside it as a forward view, not inside the formula

Two alerts, the ones you already watch for

  1. Open POs running high against open SOs — overextended on purchasing. Your conversation with Josh about letting inventory drop.
  2. Short runway plus a weak pipeline — the sales-push or expense-cut discussion.

What stays yours

The commentary. About a third of your Tuesday is judgment rather than arithmetic. Max produces the numbers and the flags, not your read of them.

Who can see it
Finance. This is the most sensitive view in the system.

Two to settle

  • The Tuesday/Wednesday bill freeze. It exists partly because you record bills yourself on Tuesday. Once Max does that pull, it may not need to exist. Your call.
  • History. Your workbook holds the trend back to 2022. We'd rather carry that over than start from zero — tell us how you want it handed across.

Sales pipeline

Workflows six and seven.

6

Project Hunter

Weekly outbound research, scored with your own rubric.

Whose job
Tom
Systems
Open-web research · ClaritySoft
Delivery
Monday morning, one page

What Max does

  • Scans for projects in sulphur, heavy crude, asphalt and chemicals
  • Scores them with your custom rubric — made portable, so it isn't locked to one AI vendor
  • Checks ClaritySoft by account name so you never chase a customer you already have
  • Delivers a ranked list showing why each one ranks where it does

What stays yours

Tom annotates and routes by territory. Max never creates a lead in the CRM and never routes on its own.

Please confirm

  • Do you subscribe to a paid projects database we should draw on?
  • What time Monday, and your current territory map.
7

Daily pipeline view

One screen, on demand.

Whose job
The sales team. Carson owns the measurables it feeds.
Systems
ClaritySoft

What Max does

The funnel by stage, counts and value, open pipeline separated from won, and a callout of the one deal carrying the most near-term weight. Company-wide or by rep.

Who can see it
Everyone on Max.

Deal values are dollar figures, so we checked this against your access rule. Your rule was about QuickBooks-equivalent access, and the pipeline isn't in QuickBooks — it's in ClaritySoft, which your sales team reads directly. Tell us if you'd rather deal values were restricted.

Operational continuity

Workflows eight and nine.

8

Order entry assistance

An inbound PO becomes a drafted sales order instead of a typing job.

Whose job
Vanessa, with Josh training her
Systems
Fishbowl · quote figures you supply

What Max does

Drafts the Fishbowl order with your entry rules applied, branching on order type: standard, engineered, jacket or services. That covers the SO-number suffix, salesperson, scheduled ship date, terms, tax on every line, and progress-payment milestones.

It pays particular attention to the four fields Josh flags in training:

  • Packing-list accuracy
  • Delivery address
  • Shipping method and terms
  • Progress-payment setup

What stays yours

Order Entry reviews and commits. The draft never enters Fishbowl on its own.

On the quote comparison

Your quotes live in protected Excel with no database behind them, so Max can't read the original quote. The person entering supplies the key figures and Max checks against those, flagging anything off for whoever quoted it. This supports Michele's existing PO-versus-quote check rather than adding a second one.

9

KPI scorecard

The Planning Team scorecard fills itself in.

Whose job
Miles assembles Tuesday. Planning Team reviews Wednesday.
Systems
QuickBooks · Fishbowl · ClaritySoft · Smartsheet

What Max does

  • SALES from ClaritySoft
  • CASH from QuickBooks and Fishbowl
  • PRODUCT MIX from Fishbowl
  • All anchored in the Smartsheet you already use

Your measurables stay fixed. You've said the set is complete, so we populate it — we never add or rename a metric. Owners stay as they are: SALES → Carson · CASH → Miles · PRODUCT MIX → Josh.

Anything a source doesn't carry shows as pending, with the reason — never as a zero, never as a miss.

What stays yours

Publishing a dated snapshot to Smartsheet is a write, and follows the approval rule.

Please confirm

LOC drawn and Overhead feed Net Cash Position and have no system source. Overhead currently sits at a $250K placeholder. Where should each come from?

Summary

The nine at a glance.

#WorkflowSystemsWhose jobWho approves
1Vendor bill intakeM365, Fishbowl, QBOVanessaPO creator/PM, then Josh over $15K
2Bill date correctionFishbowl, QBOVanessaVanessa
3Customer invoicingFishbowl, QBOMatt, DanielThe owning PM
4AR collectionsQBO, M365VanessaVanessa
5Cash flow trackerQBO, Fishbowl, ClaritySoftMilesReads only
6Project HunterWeb, ClaritySoftTomReads only
7Daily pipeline viewClaritySoftSales teamReads only
8Order entryFishbowlVanessaVanessa
9KPI scorecardQBO, Fishbowl, ClaritySoft, SmartsheetMilesMiles, on publish

What we need from you

Eight answers.

#QuestionWho
1Is $15,000 still the right approval threshold? Should small bills have a lighter path, and where does it start?Miles · Josh · Vanessa
2Vanessa's collections thresholds — dollars and days — and what the low tier sendsVanessa
3Who gets the invoice nudge — the PM alone, or Josh copied?Josh · Miles
4Does the Tuesday/Wednesday bill freeze still need to exist once the tracker is automated?Miles
5Project Hunter — paid database, delivery time, territory mapTom
6Where do LOC drawn and Overhead come from each cycle?Miles
7Should deal values stay visible to everyone?Miles · Tom
8Sign-off on the access modelTom

Item 8 is the one that turns QuickBooks on, and QuickBooks unlocks six of these nine.

Read the access model