What is Intelligent Accounts Payable Automation?

Accounts Payable Automation (AP Automation) is a software solution that uses robotic process automation (RPA), intelligent capture, and document classification to bring digital transformation to your AP department. AP automation lets you streamline this labor intensive, manual processes to give invoice processing a boost that will save your organization time and money.
Why Use Intelligent Capture and RPA for Accounts Payable?
You didn't hire your accounts payable team for data entry, chasing down invoices, and manually matching POs. Plus, manually processing invoices is inefficient and prone to costly errors like vendor over charges, lost or misplaced invoices, and late payments. AP automation is an easy way to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and stay compliant. Here’s how:
Robotic Process Automation
Software bots take over tedious, repetitive processes like monitoring an inbox or entering data into an ERP or other critical applications.
Intelligent Document Processing
A robust patented machine learning engine leveraging artificial intelligence eliminates the manual sorting and classification of documents and captures relevant data elements in invoices, credit memos, and more.
See AP Automation in Action
See the benefits an intelligent capture solution can bring to your accounts payable department.
Ways to Use Intelligent Capture and RPA in Accounts Payable
Automate Report Generation
RPA can interact with accounting systems to automatically generate general ledger and budget reports and share them with key stakeholders.
Intelligent Classification and Capture
Classify and separate multi-page invoices and supporting documents. Leverage OCR capture of relevant data elements like summary and line-item detail to achieve automated invoice processing.
Data Syncing
Seamlessly integrate with your ERP or P2P system—like SAP, Syspro, or PeopleSoft—to automate record keeping and eliminate manual data entry and minimize end-user training.
Archiving Invoices
Electronically archive your invoices. Files can then be made available for future use and searched for in a secure single point of storage for all documents.
Data Extraction and Validation
Automatically extract relevant data fields — from machine printed forms to even barcodes. Route forms electronically with the ability to easily output images and data to the correct applications for processing.
General Ledger (GL) Identification
Automate finding criteria like vendor, amount, category, etc. to classify payables before posting payment. Use GL business rules for determining how to route AP documents or move data between systems.
Get Common Data From Uncommon Places
RPA excels at handling data from defined sources. But when more critical thinking is required, you need intelligent document processing (IDP) to capture and classify more complicated data. Together RPA and IDP can work with virtually all data and help you solve your biggest AP challenges.

STRUCTURED DATA
Structured data—from a spreadsheet, database, or portal—is organized, clearly defined, and searchable, but represents only about 20 percent of the data in each company. Robotic process automation (RPA) excels at structured or quantitative data automation.
Structured data—from a spreadsheet, database, or portal—is organized, clearly defined, and searchable, but represents only about 20 percent of the data in each company. Robotic process automation (RPA) excels at structured or quantitative data automation.

UNSTRUCTURED DATA
More than 80 percent of all data within organizations is unstructured. Unstructured data—from emails, forms, and invoices—is typically qualitative. It is difficult to interpret and analyze because it has no pre-defined structure.
More than 80 percent of all data within organizations is unstructured. Unstructured data—from emails, forms, and invoices—is typically qualitative. It is difficult to interpret and analyze because it has no pre-defined structure.
What Can You Achieve Using Intelligent RPA in Accounts Payable?
There’s no such thing as a typical invoice. Other capture solutions struggle with invoices that have different formats or multiple pages. But an intelligent AP solution can handle invoices and documents in all types of formats and sizes to give your AP department back time, money, and sanity. With an intelligent AP automation solution you can:
Capture Invoices
the minute they arrive into your organization
Classify Documents
automatically by separating your invoices from supporting documents
Reduce Manual Data Entry
by automatically extracting line-item-detail data elements to share with your ERP
Electronically Route Invoices
for pricing and approval and easily export images and data to your ECM solution
No Template Building
with custom machine learning algorithms, quickly setup previously unseen documents
Manual Visibility & Compliance Controls
allow insight into which invoices are queued for processing and can apply strict controls
Why Choose Automate for AP Automation?
Easy to Install
Start processing documents in hours, not days or weeks with simple setup and installation.
No Template Building
Custom machine learning algorithms quickly setup previously unseen documents.
Easy to Maintain
As your documents change, ML ensures your system is always up-to-date.
Request a personalized demo of intelligent AP automation to see how you can streamline your AP processes.
REQUEST A DEMO
Looking for an AP automation solution for IBMi? Meet Webdocs for AP, our invoice capture and processing software that delivers AP automation for PO and non-PO based invoice management.