Invoice processing automation is the solution offered to the enterprises across varied business verticals wherein the accounts payable teams or the finance department can streamline their respective accounts payable processes by automating payment of supplier invoices. Invoice processing automation workflow extracts and validates the invoice data before publishing it into the respective ERP system within seconds. This allows the payments to be made sooner to the vendors which enables business productivity and efficiency.
What is Invoice Processing Automation?
The usual Invoice Processing Automation steps include:
-
Data Capture from Invoices and reconciliation – Data from invoices gets captured (vendor information, bill to/ship to information, line-item details, tax, etc.). This data is then matched and reconciled manually by the AP team against Purchase Orders and Goods received.
-
Approval on Invoices – Invoices are forwarded to the authorized approvers, who can then verify and approve invoices for payments. Multi-level approvals are often required depending on the invoice amount.
-
Extracted data enters the ERP system – After the approval phase, invoices are then entered manually for processing by the AP teams.
-
Payments against invoices – Invoices processed for payment using standard payment methods like cheque, wire transfer, or via ACH.
-
Auditing – Invoices archived with the complete process log that contains actions taken and payment information.
If we compare this with traditional accounts payable processes, it’s considered as the most tedious setup and leads to a longer invoice processing cycle time. Invoice processing responsibilities depend completely on the Accounts Payable teams. The ingestion of the invoices happens through mail, fax, email, etc. but it gets difficult for the AP teams to move further down the workflow in a traditional setup.
This is where the AP teams must rely on AI-based Accounts Payable Invoice Automation. Automation is the advanced level of manual processing. Accounts Payable teams can take advantage of Invoice Automation to streamline the laborious and tedious invoice processing tasks with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Companies can take advantage of this digitalized system to process invoices wherein the digital invoices go through a workflow that is completely automated. By engaging in a digitized automation setup, companies can accelerate their respective AP processes and save up to 80% of their operational costs.
Compared to a traditional old-school approach, an automated invoice process makes automated workflow faster manifold. AI-powered Accounts Payable Invoice Automation eradicates all the manual and laborious tasks from an accounts & finance department and reduces the cycle time from days to just seconds. Automation can take care of all the above-mentioned steps like matching price, Purchase Order match, manual data entry, etc. with ease.
How does Invoice Processing Automation work?
To go back to the traditional method of invoice processing management, it starts when the accounts payable teams or department receives a vendor invoice. After the invoices are received, they are further processed for entering, matching, and approvals. However, if the amount of the invoices provided is larger than the set limits for payouts then further approvals are required.
After that the invoices are keyed into the system where they are published for payments. The processing cycle on the invoices depends on the company but it might take weeks for the invoices to be processed under various steps involved in the traditional workflow setup. Considering weeks, which is clearly a large amount of time; especially when the process is set up on multiple invoices. Automated invoice processing cuts through all this long cycle time. As soon as the invoices arrive, they are scanned and fed into the respective accounting system. A standard OCR capture typically gets you low accuracy and so you need to couple the OCR with multiple AI technologies to be able to extract data with really high accuracy. The automated invoice processing platform then converts all the captured data into a text searchable file.
The data captured from the invoices can be extracted and mapped in the automated invoice management system so that it remembers which business fields are necessary to capture and published into the ERP system. The data includes information like vendor name, line-item description and amounts and so on. An automated AP Invoice automation should automate the reconciliation process. Invoices can then be routed toward the appropriate approver and reviewer automatically. The automated platform also gives the opportunity to interact or chat and collaborate with the team members within the platform as well.
What are the benefits of Invoice Processing Automation?
There are countless benefits and advantages of invoice processing automation. This includes savings of up to 80% of operational costs and reducing the invoice processing cycle time from weeks to seconds. Some of the high-level benefits are as follows:
-
99.5% data extraction accuracy with error-free processes
-
Zero-touch invoice processing without manual intervention
-
Savings on manual labor costs which allows the staff to work on more business-critical projects
-
Prevention of Accounts Payable frauds and duplicate payments
-
Improves vendor-business relationships with complete transparency
-
Gather early payment discounts that optimizes costs
What does Kanverse.ai bring into the table?
As per a recent report, there are over 3000 invoice processing applications across the globe. If you are on the lookout for such a powerful platform, consider some of the factors below:
AI powered Platform:
Kanverse AP Automation platform offers a unified platform for the accounting & finance teams to access their invoice processing workflows. Kanverse brings together multiple AI technologies like Machine Learning, Computer vision, fuzzy logic, and Natural language processing to deliver zero-touch automation. Kanverse.ai offers multiple dashboards for operations, error and fraud analytics that help to manage vendors, invoices, and potentially fraudulent activities by the AP teams.
Easy Customization:
Kanverse offers its customers the chance to create custom business rules and workflow to validate the invoices with third-party systems before filing into ERP systems. Kanverse.ai does provide exception handling through its highly intuitive user interface and everything is carried out with regulations of compliance and security standards.
Global and secure deployment:
Kanverse supports global businesses to stay connected internationally, without any hindrance to paperwork. It provides a role-based access-controlled environment for teams across business units and legal entities in the same organization to work together. The platform is multilingual and supports 30+ languages out of the box. Such a type of integrated solution allows the business to control the complexities on a global level.
Elevating Efficiency: AI-Powered Invoice Processing Workflow Transformation
Invoice processing workflow, whether manual or automated, involves capturing data from invoices, approvals, entering data into ERP, payment processing, and auditing, but automation powered by AI revolutionizes the process, saving time and costs while ensuring accuracy and transparency.
About Kanverse.ai
Kanverse Accounts Payable Invoice Automation digitizes document processing for enterprises from ingestion, classification, extraction, validation to filing. Extract data from a wide gamut of documents with up to 99.5% accuracy using its multi-stage AI engine. Say goodbye to manual entry, reduce cycle time to seconds, optimize cost by up to 80%, minimize human error, and turbocharge productivity of your team.
Schedule a demo with us today to find out more.
About the Author
Himanshu Naidu, Product Marketing, Kanverse.ai