Juno would calculate period-end accruals from open purchase orders, goods receipts awaiting invoices, service entries and confirmations from budget owners, apply the accrual policy, propose each entry with its basis, post approved entries with automatic reversal and true them up against the invoices that follow.
It is the last working day of September, 17:30, and the final goods-receipt run at plant 1210 has finished. The agent has read 1,318 open purchase order lines and found 386 receipts awaiting invoices worth $2.14 million, among them 112 lines of material 7741-X from Brightline Metals SA received on the 27th. It proposes 386 accruals at the purchase order price and 14 service accruals from confirmed service entries.
Six service lines above $25,000 stand apart: Corvid Plastics has yet to send a service entry for them, so the policy holds the proposals and puts a confirmation request in D. Okafor’s queue with a 09:00 clock. J. Harrison, finance lead, reviews the batch summary by supplier and by cost centre, edits one freight estimate that the last three invoices show as high, and approves.
S/4HANA answers with 400 document numbers, each with the reversal date set to the first of October. On workday 1 the six held lines come back with D. Okafor’s quantities and post the same way; in October, as the invoices arrive, the true-up run compares each accrued amount with the invoiced one and stores the difference against the supplier.
Accruals and provisions rank second among the most time-consuming close activities, behind account reconciliation (Ledge, 2025) 8, and 2026 is the year the ERP vendors shipped purpose-built accrual agents. SAP’s Joule Accounting Accruals Agent reads the accrual policy, the open purchase orders and the receipts awaiting invoices, proposes each accrual with the rule and the calculation, and lets accountants accept, change or reject it before posting; general availability is scheduled for Q1 2027 (SAPinsider, 17 September 2026) 13.
BlackLine’s Verity Accruals early customers close up to three days faster and spend 80% less time on accruals (BlackLine, 11 August 2026) 26; the product asks business partners to confirm unbilled services and prepares the journals for approval 30. SAP’s Financial Closing Assistant orchestrates posting, accruals and journal validation from Q2 2026 (SAP, May 2026) 14; HighRadius lists purchase order and vendor expense accrual agents 39; Workday’s Accounting Agent prepares accruals continuously 33; FloQast’s reconciliation agent handles purchase order accruals 36.
A goods-receipt clearing account can accumulate thousands of open items a month, and one specialist agent classifies them by root cause and clears timing differences inside tolerance, on a single source (Symphony, 14 October 2025) 55. Adoption surveys rarely isolate accruals, which keeps the use case below the first two. For a manufacturer its weight is elsewhere: the accrual is the purchase order line, the receipt and the invoice status read together, the same rows the PO cancellation agent reads each morning.
On the last working day and workday 1 a general ledger accountant runs the open purchase order and goods-receipt reports in the ERP, exports them and removes the lines already invoiced. For services with a receipt document missing (contractors, consultants, utilities, freight, subcontract work) the accountant e-mails cost-centre owners and buyers for what was consumed, waits, and estimates where the replies are late.
Amounts are grouped by account and cost centre in a spreadsheet, checked against the accrual policy’s thresholds and exclusions, and a journal with automatic reversal is prepared and approved by the controller. Next period the reversal posts and the invoices arrive; the true-up is checked, if at all, when the flux review asks why an expense line moved.
One to three days of the close go to the accountant, with the confirmation chase the slowest part. In the showcase estate the acquired division runs its purchasing and payables on Oracle Fusion, so the reports come from two ERPs and are joined by hand.
Left: the last working day and workday 1 as the note describes them. Right: the designed path, with the same people confirming and approving. Showcase estate.
The six stages carry this use case’s objects, questions, terms, trigger and measure. Everything below is a design, and the supply chain half of it needs the fewest new parts: purchase order, purchase order line, goods receipt, supplier and material are objects the ontology already holds; open item, accrual proposal and cost centre would be added as a finance extension.
The market runs accruals as draft-and-approve: SAP’s agent proposes and accountants accept, change or reject before posting 13; BlackLine flags uncertainties for final review 30; FloQast keeps a person in the review 36. The blueprint designs accrual calculation and posting at A3: receipts with a purchase order price would post under the rule, and estimates and services would wait for a person. A first release would run the whole batch at A2; receipt-based accruals would move to A3 once three closes of recorded cases pass.
| Element | Setting | Set by | Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Objective | Accrue every receipt awaiting an invoice and every confirmed service at period end; propose with basis; true up against the invoice | J. Harrison, finance lead | New version |
| Data scope | Purchase order lines, receipts, service entries, invoice status, clearing items and cost centres in SAP S/4HANA, the Oracle Fusion division and the supplier portal | A. Novak, data lead | New version |
| Rules | The accrual policy and its planning table: receipts at the purchase order price; services from confirmed entries; above $25,000 unconfirmed, ask and hold | J. Harrison with the Planner Agent | New version, simulated first |
| Trigger | Last working day after the final goods-receipt run · workday 1 before payables closes · reversal on day 1 · true-up as invoices post · on demand | J. Harrison, finance lead | At once |
| Actions permitted | Post an accrual batch with the reversal date · send a confirmation request · post a true-up journal · clear a clearing item | J. Harrison, owner | New version |
| Limits | Service threshold $25,000 · batch approval above $500,000 · confidence floor 0.85 · one accrual per receipt, checked for duplicates | J. Harrison with the CFO | New version |
| Escalation | A confirmation clock that runs out, to the cost-centre owner’s manager and then J. Harrison · a failed posting, to the owner | J. Harrison, owner | At once |
| Level | A2 Supervised with the general ledger accountant as named approver and J. Harrison on the batch; A3 for receipt-based accruals once three closes pass | The CFO | Up on evidence, down in one step |
| Feedback | Every edit to a proposed amount and every true-up difference is recorded and used | Always on | Fixed |
Every row is a setting or a versioned rule; the level and the limits are the ones a manager signs.
Lima’s agent blueprint is a design of 960 agent roles across five end-to-end chains. It is the map of what Juno can be configured to do, and the first agents are built from it one at a time, the way the PO cancellation agent was.
Additional capability in Record-to-Report lists the rest of the map for this chain.
| Measure |
|---|
| accrual preparation time (adopters: 80% less) |
| days to close (adopters: up to three days faster; baseline 57% at seven days or more) |
| true-up variance: accrued against invoiced by supplier and cost centre |
| share of accruals proposed under the rule against estimated by hand |
| missed and duplicate accruals found after close |
| open clearing items over 60 days by supplier |
Baseline the true-up variance first, because it is the measure the estate already produces and the one the rule would be tuned on: for the last three closes, compare each accrued amount with the invoice that followed, by supplier and by service category. It shows at once which estimates are guesswork and which are purchase order prices, and it is the test the simulation runs before release.
Most of the accrual is receipts against purchase orders, read from materials management and the supplier portal, the same rows the purchasing agents read. One meaning of a purchase order line serves the buyer and the accountant alike.
Receipts with a purchase order price and confirmed service entries, inside the limits. Estimates, services above the threshold with an entry missing, and any exception to the policy would wait for a person.
It would ask your own cost-centre owners and buyers, through a SmartApp queue or e-mail, with a clock. Suppliers are read through the portal for invoice status.
The accruals are posted and the trial balance freezes on workday 3. Now the executive committee asks why cost of sales at plant 1210 moved 8%. Who writes that answer, and from what?
Every material movement drilled to its transactions and the supply chain events behind it, drafted in the company’s words and confirmed by its owner.
Bring two systems and one decision your planners make every week. In the first week we register the data, confirm the mapping with your team, answer your questions in ChatLima and run the first agent at the level you choose.
