Paying for an invoice can cost more than you think. The price of the invoice also comes with a processing fee that can vary from different Accounts Payable (AP) departments. A less efficient AP department can spend $10 or more when processing an invoice compared to streamlined departments that spend around $2 on their process fee.
What sets these AP departments apart is usually their digital infrastructure which includes automated invoice processing systems. Many of these systems use robotic process automation (RPA) that assigns bots to complete mundane and repetitive tasks. These bots can help process invoices faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost. Large industries like banking and finance have already been relying on RPA to automate numerous tasks like invoice processing.
Automating your invoice processing can help eliminate errors, reduce processing times, and increase employee productivity.
But how do the RPA bots actually process invoices? Thankfully, there’s not one option to choose from. RPA bots can be adapted to fit an almost limitless list of uses. Read on to learn the general model of invoice processing that RPA bots use.
Processing Invoices with RPA
RPA bots are not physical robots. They are a digital application that operates inside of the systems you already have through user interfaces. This means that RPA is implemented faster and cheaper than other coded integrations.
When an RPA bot processes an invoice, they follow these steps:
Find invoices: You can receive an invoice in many ways. RPA bots can be trained to find your invoices in emails, vendor portals, and invoicing software. You can even train them to locate invoices in all of these paths!
Pull relevant data: Once an invoice is found, the bot scans it to organize and copy data accurately for other systems like accounting software. Data recognition usually requires AI, and you can learn more about the benefits of combining RPA and AI by clicking here.
Match invoices to purchase orders/other documents: Line items for invoices and related AP documents like purchase orders and receipts will be compared by the RPA bots. They check over information for both ends and can notify someone if they find any issues.
Request approval: RPA bots can send reminders about payment deadlines and send invoices to the right manager for their approval. Once it’s approved, bots can even process payments, but a lot of businesses still leave this up to their human workers. If your business has routine payments, you can train your bots to complete the whole process without a human getting involved.
Posting payments: When your bots are done processing your invoice, they can easily post your payments to your ERP to make sure that your business has the right data for an accurate audit log.
