Written by Chris Brown, PSIGEN.

It’s 2023. AP automation technology is over 15 years old. Are you still processing invoices manually?

If you are suffering from any of the three accounting headaches below, you have the opportunity to recoup thousands of hours of productivity in your accounting department.

1. Data Entry

Whether from printed invoices you receive in the mail or email attachments, AP clerks are often mired in the manual, repetitive entry of PO numbers, vendor info, invoice amounts, and line item detail. Did you know that all of the above can be automatically extracted from invoices, reducing data entry to near zero?

We say “near zero” because there are times when the data extraction software component of AP automation has trouble identifying a character. In these cases, the system will alert you, so it can be manually reviewed and entered. This is referred to as “exception processing,” which allows for quality control and greatly reduces the risk of error due to illegible print.

AP automation can also verify PO numbers, vendor info, invoice amounts, and line item detail automatically by running database look-ups in your accounting software or ERP system. If everything matches, the invoice can be processed without human intervention, referred to as “touchless processing.” If something doesn’t match, it gets kicked over to someone for review to correct any errors and/or contact the vendor if there’s a problem with the invoice.

AP automation can also automate the indexing process. Simply set up the naming convention, including what needs to be automatically populated from the document into the naming convention, and AP automation will automatically name each file so it can be stored electronically and instantly found later.

2. Manual Approvals

How do you get invoice approval today? From a flurry of email? From having to walk a document around for signatures? Do you have to mail it to managers in the field?

With AP automation, approvals are automatically routed and obtained electronically. If signatures are required, you still don’t need paper – you can obtain e-signatures in our system. Cloud software allows you to securely access invoices from multiple locations, further reducing the time needed to access and approve invoices. AP automation also records each action as part of an audit trail.

3. Printing & Filing

Do your employees print out invoices and back-up? Are older, physical documents taking up space somewhere offsite? AP automation completely eliminates the need for all of the above.

Once captured and processed, they are stored electronically in document management software, which serves as an electronic filing cabinet. Employees can then search and retrieve them based on indexed values or invoice content if you do full-text extraction.

eBizDocs, your source for AP Automation

eBizDocs is the leading PSIGEN Partner who sells and adds value to the PSIcapture and PSIsafe products with its implementation and customization services. eBizDocs helps you harness a combination of automation technologies: optical character recognition (OCR), robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML) – and other technologies.

Tell us about your AP headaches. We’ll even take a sample of your invoices and show you how it works from soup to nuts. You’ll be amazed by how quickly our AP automation technology will process your invoices.