Process Automation · Oilfield Services Your cash is sitting in a glovebox, on a signed field ticket.
A crew runs the job, the company man signs the ticket, and then it waits — for the truck to come in, for somebody to find the right MSA rate, for the packet the operator’s portal will actually accept. We build automation that shortens ticket-to-invoice on the systems you already run, human-in-the-loop, measured against a baseline we take before we build anything.
The Outcome
What automation actually does for you
Not a gadget — measurable leverage on the numbers that decide whether the business makes money.
Tickets off the pad the day the job runs
Field tickets captured on a phone at the location — offline when there’s no signal — signed by the company man on the spot and synced the moment the truck has service, instead of riding in a glovebox until Friday.
Invoices that match the MSA and the PO the first time
Line items priced automatically from the right rate book and matched to the PO or AFE the work was authorized under, with anything that doesn’t line up surfaced as an exception for a person to clear before it is billed.
A daily read on unbilled tickets and unpaid invoices
One view of every ticket not yet invoiced, every packet not yet submitted, and every short-paid or disputed line waiting on a rebill — broken out by operator, district, and crew.
An honest starting point
Here’s what we’d build — not a borrowed success story
We’re not going to hand you a fabricated case study. What follows is exactly what we would build for a business like yours, and how we’d prove it’s working. Every automation is scoped to your operation in an audit, built on the tools you already run, and measured against a baseline we set together — so you know what each piece is worth before we build it.
Who it’s for: Oilfield and energy service companies roughly $5M to $150M — wireline, coiled tubing, frac support, rental tools, water transfer and disposal, workover rigs, pressure control, vacuum and trucking services, and midstream maintenance contractors. Crews in the Permian, Eagle Ford, or Haynesville and a back office in Houston or Midland, where ticket-to-invoice still runs on paper tickets, emailed PDFs, and a billing clerk with a highlighter.
The Core Systems
Where AI moves the biggest numbers
One number governs cash in a service company: how long it takes a completed job to become an invoice an operator will actually pay. These four systems sit directly on that path — capture, pricing, packet, and the iron that is supposed to be billing while it sits on a pad.
Ticket to cash
Digital field tickets captured at the location
The problem: A crew finishes the job, writes the ticket on paper or a PDF in the truck, gets the company man to sign it, and the ticket sits in a glovebox until somebody drives to the yard. Nothing can be billed that the office has not seen.
What we’d build: Ticket capture on a phone or tablet that works with no signal at the pad — job details, hours, equipment, consumables, photos — with company-man e-signature on the spot and automatic sync as soon as the truck has service. The office sees the ticket the day the job runs rather than the week after, and a supervisor still reviews it before it moves to billing.
Billing accuracy
MSA pricing, PO and AFE matching
The problem: Every operator has its own rate book and every master service agreement prices the same job differently. A ticket billed at last year’s rate, or against a PO with nothing left on it, comes back as a short-pay or a disputed line weeks later — after you have already paid the crew.
What we’d build: Ticket lines priced automatically against the MSA rate book for that operator and matched to the PO or AFE the work was authorized under, with anything that does not reconcile — expired pricing, missing authorization, quantities over the PO, a job with no PO at all — pushed into an exceptions queue instead of quietly onto the invoice. Your billing team clears exceptions rather than re-checking every ticket by hand.
Collections
Operator invoice packets & portal submission
The problem: Each operator wants a different packet — signed ticket, rate sheet, scale tickets, BOLs, JSA, third-party invoices — in its own invoicing portal and its own format. A packet missing one attachment gets rejected, and the clock starts over.
What we’d build: Invoice packets assembled automatically with the supporting documents that operator requires, validated against their field and attachment rules before anyone submits, and tracked afterward so rejections, short-pays, and disputed lines come back as a work queue with the rebill already drafted. Submission and every rebill go out on your approval, under your credentials.
Utilization
Rental and equipment tracking
The problem: Nobody can say with confidence what is on which pad, what came back, and what is still supposed to be billing. Rental days go unbilled, and idle iron sits on a location for a month with no ticket attached to it.
What we’d build: On-hire and off-hire events tied to tickets and locations so every asset carries a billing status, with alerts on rentals past their authorized term, assets returned but never off-hired, and equipment out on a pad with no active ticket. The result is a daily answer to “what is out, and is it billing?” instead of a quarterly surprise.
More Ways We Automate
The fuller menu
Beyond the four that touch cash directly, this is the wider set of paperwork and coordination we automate in a service company. The audit picks the order — we do not build all of it at once.
DOT & hours-of-service paperwork
Driver logs, inspection reports, and hours-of-service records captured alongside the ticket instead of on a separate clipboard, with expiring driver files, medical cards, and certifications flagged before a truck is out of compliance.
JSA, SDS & field safety documentation
Job safety analyses, toolbox talks, and SDS acknowledgments captured on the same device as the ticket and filed against the job, so the record exists where an operator or an auditor expects to find it. The people on location still make the safety calls.
Operator audit packets
When an operator audits a period, everything they ask for — tickets, signatures, rate sheets, safety documents, third-party invoices — pulled for the date range in one pass instead of a two-week scavenger hunt through binders, trucks, and inboxes.
Crew scheduling & rotation
Rotations, days on and off, and callouts managed against certifications and district coverage, with automated notifications to crews and a clear view of who is actually available for the next job.
Per-diem & field labor tracking
Hours, per-diem, and travel captured on the ticket and reconciled into payroll, so what you pay a crew for a job and what you bill for that crew come off the same record instead of two.
Third-party & pass-through costs
Subcontractor, rental, and vendor pass-throughs matched to the job that incurred them, with the supporting invoice attached to the packet — so the cost gets billed through with its markup instead of absorbed.
Yard inventory & consumables
Chemicals, fluids, and consumables drawn down from the ticket that used them, with reorder alerts on the items that shut a job down when a truck shows up at the pad without them.
HSE incident intake & routing
Incidents and near-misses reported from the field in minutes, routed to the right people immediately, and tracked to closure. The routing, notification, and record-keeping are automated; the classification and the judgment are not.
Daily ticket-to-cash report
Tickets written, tickets not yet invoiced, packets submitted, short-pays open, and cash collected in one morning report by operator and district — the numbers to run the week on, without a clerk rebuilding a spreadsheet every Monday.
The Numbers We Move
The numbers we move
Automation isn’t the goal; moving these is. We set a starting number in the audit and measure against it, so you always know what a build is worth.
Ticket-to-invoice cycle time
Days from job complete to an invoice in the operator’s hands, cut by pad-side capture, e-signature, and automatic pricing.
Unbilled tickets
Revenue already earned and still sitting in a truck or on a billing clerk’s desk, visible daily instead of at month-end.
Days sales outstanding
Age of receivables, pulled down by packets that are accepted the first time and rebills that go back out the same week.
Short-pay & disputed line rate
Share of billed lines an operator adjusts or rejects, reduced by MSA pricing and PO matching before the invoice ever goes out.
Rental & equipment utilization
Assets on a pad and actually billing, versus idle, off-hired late, or returned with no closing ticket against them.
Back-office hours per invoice
Billing labor spent assembling, correcting, and resubmitting each invoice — the cost that hurts most when activity falls off.
The numbers in a proposal are your numbers. Before we build, we measure the ones that govern cash in a service company — days from job complete to ticket in the office, days from ticket to invoice submitted, unbilled ticket count and value, short-pay and rejection rate, DSO, and back-office hours per invoice — from your own tickets, portals, and ledgers. Every result is then reported against that starting line. We will not quote you a percentage from somebody else’s yard, because operator mix, MSA terms, and where you sit in the cycle make a borrowed benchmark meaningless.
The Engagement
Built on your operation, run by your team
A systems-first engagement scoped to your business — not a generic playbook and not a “learn ChatGPT” workshop. We assess, design, build, and train, so the automations get adopted, not abandoned.
Human-in-the-loop, always. Software drafts and forecasts — using AI only where it genuinely outperforms a simpler rule — and your team approves and acts. Nothing customer-facing goes out without you, and your people end the engagement more capable — not more dependent.
Every business is different. The audit is where we find your highest-ROI automation.
How It Works
From audit to automation that pays for itself
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Operations audit
We map your workflows, inventory the tools you run, and set baseline numbers so every later result has a starting line to beat.
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ROI-ranked roadmap
A prioritized plan: which systems to automate first, what each is worth, and what it costs — before you spend on a build.
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Build on your stack
Automations wired into the tools you already use — not a rip-and-replace onto new software.
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Train & govern
Hands-on team training plus governance and data-privacy policies, with human-in-the-loop approval on anything customer-facing.
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Measure & optimize
We track every automation against the baseline and keep tuning — and if something isn’t earning its keep, we change it.
FAQ
Oilfield Services — automation questions
Does it work at the pad with no signal?
Yes — offline capture is a requirement, not an option. The ticket is filled out on the device without a connection, including photos and the company man’s signature, held locally, and synced automatically the moment the crew has service or pulls into the yard. Nothing about the job depends on a bar of LTE at the location.
Do we have to replace our field-ticketing system or ERP?
No. We build on what you run — your ticketing or dispatch software, your oilfield ERP or accounting system, your document storage — and automate the hand-offs between them. Where you are running on PDFs, spreadsheets, and a shared drive, we start by putting structure under the ticket rather than selling you a platform migration you did not ask for.
What about the operator portals we are required to bill through?
We automate everything up to the submit button and track what happens after it. The packet is assembled and validated against that operator’s field and attachment requirements — OpenInvoice, Ariba, Cortex, or a portal only one operator uses — so it is not rejected over a missing scale ticket, and rejections and short-pays come back as a work queue with the rebill drafted. Submission happens on your approval and under your credentials.
Do the crews have to change how they work?
Barely, and that is deliberate. Same fields they already write on the ticket, same company-man signature, on a phone instead of a carbon copy — usually with fewer entries, because equipment, rates, and job details pre-fill from the dispatch. Crew adoption is what kills these projects, so we design the ticket around what the hands already do and train in the field rather than in a conference room.
Every operator and every MSA prices differently. Can automation really handle that?
Yes, and that variation is where most of the value is. Rate books are configured per MSA and per operator, along with each operator’s packet requirements and billing format, so the right rate and the right documents get applied without a person remembering which operator wants what. Anything the system cannot match confidently — a new rate, an unusual line item, work with no PO behind it — goes to a person instead of being guessed at.
Will anything go to an operator without us seeing it?
No. Nothing customer-facing or money-moving publishes without approval. Invoices, rebills, dispute responses, and portal submissions are prepared, priced, and packaged automatically, and somebody on your team releases them. Human-in-the-loop is how the systems are built, not a disclaimer at the bottom of the page.
Does any of this make safety or HSE decisions?
No. Automation captures, routes, and files the paperwork — JSAs, SDS acknowledgments, incident reports, certifications — and makes sure the right people see it fast and nothing goes missing. Stop-work authority, hazard assessment, incident classification, and every other HSE judgment stay with your supervisors and HSE staff. These systems are built to escalate to a human, never to close out a safety item on their own.
What happens when rig count drops and activity falls off?
The cost of billing does not fall with activity, which is exactly when a heavy back office hurts. Automation carries the paperwork load without the headcount you add in the upcycle and are stuck with in the down one, and the reporting matters more when margin is thin: what is unbilled, what is short-paid, what iron is idle. We also scope builds so they can be paused or scaled back rather than locking you into a fixed program across a cycle.
How is this priced?
It starts with a fixed-scope Operations Audit that maps your ticket-to-cash process, captures the baseline numbers, and returns a roadmap ranked by return. Builds are then scoped as projects against that roadmap, so you see the plan and the numbers before committing to anything. The audit is a matter of days, and the first build — usually ticket capture or pricing and PO matching — is typically live in weeks rather than quarters.
You are in Dallas. Our crews are in the Permian and our office is in Houston. Does that work?
Yes. We are Dallas-based, work on site across Texas, and run remotely nationwide — and this work lives in your ticketing, billing, and document systems rather than in your yard. We do come to where the work happens when it matters: watching how the hands actually fill out a ticket and how a company man signs one is usually what decides whether the build sticks.
The Full Practice