Defense
Meet Kos, the last finance hire your next plant needs.
Defense hardware makers open plants and subsidiaries faster than they can hire. Vendor bills, POs, receipts and packing slips go from ten a day to three hundred. Kos works the AP inbox from day one.
Kos reads all 812 pages of Ridge Electric’s pay app #14, ties out the distribution and generator lines, and flags switchgear billed ahead of the work, Hollis Supply’s missing lien waiver and retainage held at 2.5% where the contract keeps 5%. It recommends $754,300 of the $1,374,750 requested, drafted in NetSuite for your approval.
Procure-to-pay: Calder Power emails a milestone invoice to the AP inbox. Kos enters it as a bill in your ERP, matches it to PO-4512 and the signed factory test report, codes it, flags $4,860 of freight that isn’t on the PO, and saves the bill at $486,000, pending your approval.
Maya invites Kos to a video call and walks it through a bill on screen share, Kos asks who to tell when a bill doesn’t match the PO, then replays the workflow on a new bill in the ERP sandbox while she watches: it finds the prepayment already went out, tells the requester on Teams, and leaves the bill pending your approval.
Customers and investors
The Problem
Every part ships with a bill. The AP inbox doesn’t scale.
Three problems defense hardware finance teams describe, and who feels each one most.
Three-way match breaks on real life
A partial receipt, or a $300 shipping charge split ten ways, makes a clean PO look $3,000 overbilled. Every exception lands on a person.
Felt most by the AP manager
You can’t hire your way out
About 800 emails a week hit the AP inbox and 80–100 new POs go out a day. Experienced AP staff take months to find.
Felt most by the CFO
Nobody can read it all in time
Bills sit on hold waiting for receipts, and month-end turns into a hunt for where each expense came from.
Felt most by the controller
What Finance Teams Tell Us
A lot of the things that are forcing us to have more touches in the system for three way match do require some level of judgment.
It’s too hard to throw bodies at. And you have the attrition and people moving into different roles. And something’s almost getting dropped.
I’ve gone from being able to handle my job to sort of rubber stamping, because there’s just no way in hell I can actually do it accurately.
Nobody in their right mind has the time to review it. So they’re getting scammed and things are getting missed.
The Solution
Kos works every bill, the day it lands.
The answer to each problem above: exceptions worked, every plant covered without a new hire, and the close traced line by line. You approve before anything posts.
Procure-to-pay
Exceptions get worked, not queued. Kos enters each bill, works partial receipts and split freight against the PO and receipt, and codes it. At Saronic: 3 minutes a bill, 99%+ accuracy.
Learn more: Procure-to-payBilling review
A new plant doesn’t need a new hire. When you build a plant or shipyard, Kos checks the contractor’s pay apps against the contract, alongside the supplier bills.
Learn more: Billing reviewTeach Kos
Month-end stops being a hunt. Show Kos your close once on a screenshare, and it accrues, codes and traces every expense across entities the same way each month.
- PO automation
- Month-end close
- Accruals across entities
How It Works
Vendors keep emailing. Kos works every bill.
Nothing changes for your team or your suppliers. Bills reach Kos the way they reach a colleague, and come back matched and coded, or with one precise question, the same day.
The bill lands, or you forward it
Suppliers keep emailing the AP inbox, where Kos has its own address. Or forward Kos a bill, or ask it in Slack, Teams or on a call.
Kos runs the checks
Vendor, PO and remaining balance, receipts, duplicates, entity, GL coding and sales tax, each line against the PO, the receipt and the vendor’s history.
Kos works the exceptions
A partial receipt, split freight or a price above the PO gets one precise question on the invoice’s own thread, with the evidence attached.
Clean bills wait for your approval
Each bill is drafted in your ERP, coded to the entity and program, and logged. Your team approves and pays in the system you already use.
What It Catches
What Kos holds on every bill.
Each hold comes back with the reason and the evidence. Approval and payment stay with your team.
Duplicate bills
The same bill sent twice, or re-sent under a new number. Held, with the original linked.
Duplicates
Bills past the PO
Over the remaining balance, priced above the PO, or charged to a closed PO. Held, with the reason.
PO balance
Wrong entity
Bills coded to the entity on the letterhead, not the one that owns the PO.
Entity
Missing receipts
Held where the PO requires a three-way match and the parts haven’t been received.
Receipt
Sales tax
Tax charged where it shouldn’t be, or missing where it should.
Sales tax
Milestones billed early
A milestone billed before acceptance, or a deposit invoiced twice.
Milestones
In Your ERP
Forward the bill. Kos works it in your ERP.
Kos works inside your ERP with its own login, like a new hire, whether that’s NetSuite or another system. Nothing to install, and nothing posts until your team approves it.
The bill lands in the AP inbox
Corvane Composites emails CC-88213 to the AP inbox, where Kos has its own address. Or forward it to Kos as you would to a colleague.
Kos matches the PO and receipt
Kos opens PO-20377 and its receipt in your ERP and ties the bill to lot 2 of the hull panels, backed by the packing slip.
Kos codes it and flags the fee
Program 140, cost code 140-2210, GL 1410. The $1,850 expedite fee isn’t on the PO, so Kos flags it and recommends $128,000.
Drafted for your approval
The bill waits as pending approval with the flag noted. Nothing posts until someone on your team approves it.
Not New Software
Kos exists where your team already works.
Kos has its own email address and accounts, like anyone you hire. Forward it a bill, ask it about a PO in Slack, text it about the close or bring it into a call. Nothing to install.
Invite Kos to a Zoom, Google Meet or Teams call and share your screen. Show it how you match a partial receipt once, and it matches the next one the same way.
Instead Of
More clerks, more tools, or one hire.
What defense finance teams reach for today, next to a colleague who checks every bill.
| Compared on | More AP clerks | Outsourced firm | ERP add-ons | Frontier LLMs | Kos |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time per bill | Minutes each, keyed by hand | Batched, days behind | Quick until a line breaks | Hours of prompting and checking | 3 minutes, at Saronic |
| What gets checked | What time allows | A sample, at month-end | Exact matches only | What you upload | Every line, PO and receipt |
| Where the work lands | Spreadsheets and email | A monthly close file | An exception queue | A chat reply | Your inbox and ERP, once you approve |
| How you work with it | Hire, train, retain, per plant | Engage, wait, pay by the hour | Configure, map, maintain rules | Build, prompt, check every bill | Email, Slack, a call |
| What it takes to start | Months of hiring | A statement of work | An implementation | A custom build on the models | Forward one bill |
Outcome
With Kos on the team, every bill clears checked.
Kos reads every bill, PO and receipt, and your team approves what posts.
Nothing slips through
Spend stays inside the PO. Bills over the remaining balance, priced above the PO or charged to a closed PO are held with the reason, and duplicates are never entered.
Same-day reviews, suppliers paid on time
Bills clear the day they land, so suppliers get paid on time and the parts keep arriving. The close no longer waits on a queue of exceptions.
Hired, not implemented
Kos works in your ERP and AP inbox under its own identity and shows its reasoning on every bill. Ask it at 11pm what’s still open on a PO, and it answers with the documents behind the number.
You Stay in Control
Kos does the reading. You make the call.
- A human approves before anything posts.
- Every flag shows its page and clause, so your team can check any finding.
- Kos has its own identity, only the access you give it, and a full audit log.
- Your data stays in your systems.
Who It’s For
Built for the teams that build for defense.
For the companies that design, build and supply defense hardware, and the finance teams inside them.
Hardware companies scaling up
New plants and subsidiaries open faster than you can hire, often on an ERP less than a year old. Kos codes each bill to the entity that owns the PO.
For the CFO and controller
Shipyards and new plants
A new yard or plant brings contractor pay apps alongside the supplier bills. Kos checks both, against the contract and the PO.
For project accounting
Component suppliers
Long-lead parts ship in lots and bill on their own schedule. Kos matches each lot to its receipt and holds what’s billed before it ships.
For the AP manager
Questions, answered.
Kos is deterministic (not generative), governed, verifiable, and scalable for can’t miss, backoffice workflows. It checks every line item, every clause, every time.
Nothing posts until someone on your team approves it. When Kos is unsure about a line, it asks instead of guessing.
There’s nothing to implement. Kos gets a login like a new hire, and your suppliers keep emailing the same AP inbox.
Yes. It codes each bill to the entity that owns the PO, and to the program and cost code your team uses.
Only what its role is given. Kos works inside your systems under its own identity, your data stays there, and every action is in a full audit log.
No. They keep sending bills and packing slips to the same AP inbox.
Experienced AP staff take months to find, and each covers a share of the inbox. Kos covers every plant and subsidiary from the day it starts, to the same standard.
Why Now
The buildout won’t wait for your next hire.
Defense procurement is up 57% in five years.
And the FY2027 request asks for $413B. Every dollar of it becomes a PO, a receipt and a supplier’s bill that someone has to match.
+57%
DoD procurement, FY2026 against FY2021
- $0B
- $200B
- $400B
- $600B
- $143B
- $156B
- $182B
- $205B
- $187B
- $224B
- $413B
- FY21
- FY22
- FY23
- FY24
- FY25
- FY26latest
- FY27request
The autonomy request has quadrupled in a year.
$54.0B for autonomous and remotely operated systems in FY2027, up from $13.4B. The companies building them are opening plants faster than they can hire an AP team.
4×
requested for autonomous systems, FY2027 against FY2026
- $0B
- $20B
- $40B
- $60B
- $13.4B
- $54.0B
- FY26request
- FY27request
Navy shipbuilding could more than double in two years.
The FY2027 request is $65.8B, for 18 battle force ships. Each hull is thousands of supplier POs for steel, castings, pumps and cable, received and billed lot by lot.
2.2×
Navy shipbuilding, FY2027 request against FY2025
- $0B
- $20B
- $40B
- $60B
- $80B
- $29.4B
- $45.1B
- $65.8B
- FY25
- FY26
- FY27request
Artillery shell output is up 2.6× since 2022.
36,000 rounds a month by March 2026, with 140,000 planned by the end of 2027. Every round starts as metal parts, explosives and packaging bought from suppliers.
2.6×
155mm shells a month, March 2026 against before 2022
- 0
- 50,000
- 100,000
- 150,000
- 14,000
- 36,000
- 140,000
- Before 2022
- Mar 2026latest
- Dec 2027planned
Scale the plant, not the AP team.
No new software to learn. Email Kos the work and watch it run.