It takes many days to process an invoice from receipt through payment approval.
Robotic process automation is streamlining the invoicing process to reduce valuable time and resources, and can make finance & accounting departments more efficient.
Despite all the innovations and technologies, invoice processing is still burdened with a large number of manual tasks and inefficiencies.
AP and finance teams that are already leveraging Robotic process automation are experiencing powerful benefits across a number of dimensions including reduced costs, improved compliance, quality/accuracy, and productivity.
From a workforce perspective, RPA improves staff satisfaction by taking over monotonous tasks. allowing individuals to focus on higher value work.
Invoice Formats : Paper copy, a Word document, a PDF email attachment, or a fax
RPA software robots can automate data input, error reconciliation, and some of the decision-making required by finance staff when processing invoices.
Invoice Processing Step-by-Step
- RPA software robots are able to constantly monitor a email or dedicated folder where invoices are saved.
- Once robots detect the presence of an invoice in the folder, they begin to extract information from the document.
- Robots extract the key information from each invoice, they use their credentials to open the company’s database or enterprise resource planning system (ERP).
- After successfully registering each invoice, the software robots are then able to send posting notifications in the form of emails to the responsible employee or to the vendor in question.
- An email is also sent to the responsible party in case of an exception.
Limitations of RPA : Invoice Processing
Every technology has its limitations, and RPA is best viewed as an additional cost reduction lever.
- RPA has limited capabilities in case of unstructured inputs.
- Diverse inputs coming from multiple sources can be a challenge.
- There will always be a volume and cost threshold below which RPA is not an economic solution.
- Applying RPA to a broken and inefficient process will not fix it
| RPA Tools | Popular Robotic Process Automation Tools |
|---|---|
| UiPath | Manage credentials, encryption and access controls, faster automation through Citrix |
| Automation Anywhere | Bank-grade security, authentication, encryption, and credentials, Real-time reports and analytics |
| Blue Prism | Multi-environment deployment model, Network and software credentials Security, Multi-platform |
| Pegasystems OpenSpan | high-volume, repetitive tasks, bridging system and data integration gaps at scale |
| Power Automate | Microsoft Power Platform |
| NICE Systems | makes routine desktop tasks easy, fast and error-free, for improved efficiency, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. |
| Kofax | automate repetitive tasks and manual processes |
| Others | Redwood Software, Contextor, Jidoka, Kryon Systems, Visual Cron, WorkFusion, Inflectra Rapise |