Accounts Payable and AI: An Ideal Fit for Efficiency and Insight

Accounts payable professionals know all too well that handling invoices is a time-consuming, labor-intensive process prone to errors. Few enjoy manually typing in numbers or chasing paper and incomplete details. Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to alleviate the hassles and busy work, providing businesses the necessary efficiency and spend visibility.

Our new whitepaper, Invoices Meet Their Match with AI, explores how AP and its processes are an ideal focus for AI and its strengths – the ability to comb massive amounts of data in a way that no person or team can. Businesses gain productivity, spending control and insights, and a tool to help address the ongoing shortage of people and expertise for finance roles. Employees can focus on higher-value work and be part of AP teams, bringing greater value to the company.

“Businesses have come to a resounding realisation – a robust AP operation can be a strategic powerhouse capable of delivering tangible value, enhancing bottom-line performance, and optimising overall operations,” says Andrew Bartolini of Ardent Partners, producer of reports on AP trends.

Recent research shows finance leaders are becoming more comfortable with AI, recognising its potential for better forecasting and automating mundane tasks, and early adopters are putting it to work on bookkeeping, fraud-monitoring, and other functions. Nearly two-thirds – 63% – plan to invest in cutting-edge technologies this year.² Considering the benefits, AP is a good place to target.

How AI address Accounts Payable Challenges

As now handled at many businesses, invoices arrive in multiple formats that bring multiple challenges, often lacking essentials such as PO number or contact information and key errors involving prices, quantities, and more. The AP team does the cleanup, often by manually typing in details. It’s a slow-moving, back-and-forth process. Issues get missed, errors get made, suppliers get upset, late fees get assessed, and early payment opportunities get lost.

Solutions that use AI to capture key invoice details expand upon the automation and tools such as optical character recognition. They learn from mistakes, remember company-specific variations, create their own templates, and build upon human expertise and institutional knowledge.

The intelligent solutions can:

• Capture such details as vendor name, invoice number, date, currency, total amount, tax, and PO number.
• Separate documents into multiple invoices and route validated invoices for approval and payment.
• Perform three-way matching of POs, invoices, and bills of goods.
• Improve compliance and fraud detection by spotting patterns, exceptions, and duplicates.
• Improve analytics for cash flow and revenue.

Balancing AI and Human Expertise in Accounts Payable

AI can deliver many advantages to the AP process, but it cannot replace the skills and knowledge finance professionals have built over years working with the business and its customers. These employees will be in charge of the AI technology and fine-tune it to the company’s needs.

AP teams may need training with the AI, and their roles will evolve. But with fewer manual tasks and more complete and accurate spending details, they gain time and can play a larger role in strategic work such as forecasting and budgeting. As opposed to chasing every exception, they can focus on the costlier ones and possible fraud. They can help develop the protocols for how the business applies AI and ensure that the checks and balances finance requires are in place.

Many AP and finance teams today face a fundamental challenge of too few people to do the work. Talent is tight, with fewer accountants coming out of college and an aging workforce. The efficiencies AI can bring can help close the gap, and potentially make AP and the finance profession a more attractive field for younger workers.

“Many AP departments have become ‘centers of efficiency,’ but an increasing number are also focused on becoming a ‘hub of intelligence,’” says Bartolini. “Business leaders are relying on the function to furnish a clear and accurate depiction of the organisation. … And with the emergence of AI within AP, data will only become more important … and valuable.”

Learn more: An AI solution for invoice management

Visit Concur Invoice to explore how the solution can help your business automate, digitise, and accelerate the invoice management process and provide benefits such as compliance, fraud reduction, and customisation. Take a demo, hear how other businesses benefit, calculate your ROI, and discover how solutions and integrations expand the advantages.

1. Accounts Payable 2024: BIG Trends and Predictions. Ardent Partners, a report sponsored by SAP Concur, 2024.

2. SAP Concur CFO Insights: Repositioning for Growth, March 2024