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The project is delivered. What still needs closing?
Short answer
Project closure automation for a services firm lists what is left after delivery: the client's sign-off, work entries missing from the invoice and tasks without an owner. The manager sees the list with the person in charge of each item, and decisions on sign-off and invoicing stay with people. At Syntalith the automation costs from €3,000 net, and at 60 projects to close a month of 60 minutes each it pays back in 2.1 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net for the automation of one process, build paid once
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 2–6 weeks
- free prototype on your cases
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Services firms and AI: statistics 2026
2.1 mo.
payback of a €3,000 automation at 60 projects to close a month: €2,094 of work today, €631 with checking and the model. Scenario.
40.4%
According to Eurostat (2025), 40.4% of EU enterprises in professional, scientific and technical activities used AI.
42%
According to the European Commission (2026), 42% of EU SMEs and mid-caps already use AI or algorithmic management, mostly in a limited and experimental way.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
90%
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of companies using AI say that people take the decisions, and 2% of decisions are fully automated.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
14–56%
According to Anthropic (2025), studies with a control group found smaller time savings, from 14% to 56%.
Source: Anthropic, Estimating AI productivity gains (2025) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Two open items after the final delivery
A services firm has sent the client its final report. As agreed in the project, the manager is waiting for sign-off, and the client has only replied „thank you, we will review it”. Meanwhile the person preparing the invoice asks about a work entry from last week that is missing from the draft invoice. The next engagement is starting in the calendar, and questions about the previous one keep coming back in messages.
A summary shows the manager both items and the person in charge of each. For the sign-off, it shows which report was sent and that confirmation is still missing, with a link to the correspondence. The person in billing compares the approved work entry with the lines of the draft invoice and explains the omission. A draft invoice does not confirm that the client has accepted the result.
- Deliverables handed to the client and their confirmations
- Approved work entries compared with the invoice lines
- The invoicing terms agreed for the project
- The person in charge of every open item
AI can find the passage about sign-off in a long email thread. The employee opens that message and judges for themselves whether it is a confirmation.
What project closure automation costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 60 projects to close × 60 min = 60 h (€2,094)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 30% of the time
- €628
- Model, 2 calls per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €2.98
- Cost of one case
- €34.90 today, €10.52 with the system
- Saving
- €1,463 a month
Payback of €3,000
2.1 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 10,000 input tokens and 800 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and passing things on. What stays is the time to check the result, 30% of today's work in this scenario. Before the quote we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a free test that takes 5 working days.
The most expensive items are the work entry that never reached the invoice and the sign-off nobody closed before the next engagement. In the trial we therefore count the hours of work found after a project was closed and the days from delivery to invoice.
When a shared list is enough
If the firm runs few projects, a list of items to close in the current project tool is enough, with a link to the document next to each item. Automation makes sense when the open items regularly have to be found in several systems: projects, time tracking, invoicing and email. When the biggest problem is invoices from contractors, the post about reconciling subcontractor work is closer to your case.
A few projects a month, one tool
a closure list in the project tool
no build
Work entries and invoices in one system
a report of differences in that system
configuration
Several systems, dozens of projects
an automated closure list with an owner for each item
from €3,000
Start with a project your team recently closed
The first scope covers one type of project. Start the conversation with the last engagement the team had to return to after delivery. We build this kind of system as part of our AI automations. For the free analysis, a description of one case from the last few weeks and the tools it went through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: AI in a services firm
We run the same count for your projects in the free analysis.
€4,363
a month for handling 1,500 job emails
Payback: 0.8 mo.
5 minutes to read an email and reply and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 3,000 + 600 tokens per message with a draft reply, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
