Chandan Mukhwas is a well-known Indian food brand specialising in mukhwas, mouth fresheners, and digestive snack blends that have been a staple in Indian households for generations. Built on a foundation of traditional recipes and quality ingredients, the brand has grown steadily into a recognised name in the packaged food segment, with a distribution network that spans retail, modern trade, and online channels.
Behind the consumer-facing product, however, is a procurement and payables operation that had to keep pace with that growth. Vendors supplying seeds, spices, packaging materials, and other inputs needed to be paid accurately and on time. Invoices needed to be processed, validated, approved, and posted. And the finance team needed to maintain the kind of audit-ready records that a growing food business operating in a compliance-heavy environment demands.
250+ hours/month
Time previously consumed by invoice processing, approval chasing over email, payment ticket management is now handled by the system.
~90% reduction in manual effort
AI-led invoice capture, automated validation and digital approval workflows have removed nearly all manual effort from the AP process.
2x Improved audit readiness
Every invoice and payment now moves through a defined, system-enforced approval workflow with a complete digital audit trail.
The Problem: Payables process running on paper and goodwill
The accounts payable function at Chandan Mukhwas had been built around manual habits that were deeply embedded in daily operations. Invoices arrived from vendors and were processed largely by hand, with each one requiring individual attention for data entry, verification, and routing. There was no automated capture, no structured validation layer, and no system-level workflow to move invoices from receipt to approval to payment in a predictable, trackable way.
Delays and follow-ups were a constant feature of the process. When an invoice stalled somewhere in the chain, finding out where it was and why it hadn’t moved required reaching out to the relevant person and waiting for a response. The lack of visibility into invoice status meant that payment readiness was always uncertain, and vendors who needed to know when to expect payment had no reliable answer to give them.
Payment tracking was handled through printed payment tickets. When a payment was due or approved, a physical ticket was generated and used to track it through the process. This system had a fundamental weakness: last-minute invoice rejections, which happen in any payables operation, were hard to track and even harder to reconcile. When a payment ticket existed for an invoice that was subsequently rejected or put on hold, the mismatch between the paper record and the actual payment status created confusion and, in some cases, erroneous payments.
Approval flows compounded the problem. Rather than running through a structured, system-based workflow, approvals happened over email. An invoice requiring sign-off from two or three people would move through a thread of replies, forwards, and follow-up messages that was difficult to track, easy to lose, and impossible to audit cleanly. When questions arose later about whether a specific invoice had been properly approved, finding the evidence required searching through email history rather than checking a system record.
For the finance team, the cumulative effect was a persistent lack of real-time visibility. At any given moment, they couldn’t quickly answer basic questions: which invoices were pending approval, which were approved and ready for payment, which had been rejected, and which were overdue for action. This made payment planning difficult, created friction with vendors, and left the team perpetually reactive rather than in control.
The Solution: From paper trails to a digital, approval-driven AP system
Chandan Mukhwas partnered with Finifi to replace a paper-based, email-driven payables process with a structured, automated AP workflow that integrated directly with TallyPrime. The objective was to bring predictability to every stage of the invoice-to-payment cycle, from the moment an invoice arrived to the moment payment was released, while building the kind of audit-ready record that a growing business needs.
AI-Led Invoice Ingestion
Finifi’s AI-led invoice capture eliminates manual data entry from the start. Invoices arriving via email are ingested automatically, with the relevant data extracted and validated against vendor records, tax classifications, and line-item parameters before anything enters the system. Duplicate invoices are caught at ingestion. Tax discrepancies are flagged before they reach the approval stage. And all invoice data is stored centrally in a single, searchable repository rather than scattered across inboxes and physical files. The email chaos that had previously defined invoice management is replaced by a clean, organized, and fully traceable digital record from day one.
Automated Payment Tickets
The printed payment ticket system is replaced entirely by system-generated payment tickets with structured, role-based digital approvals built in. When an invoice is validated and ready for payment, a payment ticket is created automatically within the platform, routed to the correct approvers based on defined rules, and tracked through every stage of the approval process. There is no more paper, no more ad-hoc tracking, and no more uncertainty about where a payment stands. Every decision is recorded, every approver’s action is timestamped, and the full approval history is available at any point without searching through email threads.
Digital Approval Workflows
Finifi introduced role-based digital approval workflows for both invoices and payments, ensuring that every transaction follows a defined, system-enforced process rather than an informal one. The right approver sees the right item at the right stage, with all the relevant context available within the platform. Approvals that previously happened over scattered email threads now happen within a structured workflow where nothing moves forward without the correct authorization, and nothing gets lost in someone’s inbox.
Exception Handling
Invoice rejections, discrepancies, and items requiring additional review are surfaced as clearly defined exceptions within the platform rather than discovered through manual checking or vendor follow-up. The team works from a structured exceptions queue where each item has a clear reason and a clear next step. Last-minute rejections that previously created confusion in the paper-based system are now handled within a workflow that automatically updates payment status, removes the rejected invoice from the payment queue, and creates a clean record of the decision.
Automated Bank File Download
Once invoices and payment tickets have completed the approval workflow, Finifi generates bank-ready payment files automatically, eliminating the manual effort of preparing payment data for upload. The step that previously required someone to collate approved payments, format the data, and prepare the bank file by hand now happens as a natural output of the approval process. Payment execution becomes faster, more accurate, and fully traceable from approval to disbursement.
“We used to track payments on printed tickets and chase approvals over email. It worked until something went wrong, and then it was very hard to piece together what had happened. Finifi gave us a process we can actually rely on, and records we can stand behind in any audit.”
The Transformation: Finance team that moved from reactive to in control
The change at Chandan Mukhwas was most visible in the daily rhythm of the finance team. The morning no longer began with sorting through physical payment tickets and chasing approvers over email. It began with a clear, digital view of where every invoice stood, what was pending approval, what was ready for payment, and what needed attention.
Vendor relationships improved almost immediately. With payment status visible in real time and approval workflows running on a predictable cycle, the team could give vendors accurate, timely information about when payments would be released. The friction that comes from uncertain payment timelines, repeated vendor follow-ups, and last-minute surprises was substantially reduced.
The audit trail that the business had always needed but never had was now building itself automatically. Every invoice, every approval decision, every payment ticket, and every exception was recorded within the platform with a complete timestamp and user record. When questions arose about a specific transaction, the answer was in the system rather than in someone’s inbox or filing cabinet. Audit preparation, which had previously required dedicated effort to compile documentation, became a matter of pulling records that were already organized and complete.
The shift to automated bank file generation removed the final manual step from the payment cycle. What had been a process defined by paper, email, and individual effort became one defined by structure, visibility, and system-enforced control.
