Cut Accounts Payable Costs 70% with AI Automation
One area many companies overlook is automating accounts payable.
Most people hear “AI” or “automation” and think it’s either too complicated or too untrustworthy to implement.
“I don’t even know what’s possible to automate.”
“I don’t trust the system to do it correctly.”
Here’s some perspective that might help:
🔹 Start with a “human-in-the-loop” approach.
This means the automation runs, but a person still reviews the result. Once confidence builds (after 50 or 100 workflows), you can decide whether to fully automate or not.
🔹 Understand your current process first.
Before automating anything, map out the exact steps your team follows. From receiving the invoice → extracting the data → checking against POs → to logging or entering into your system.
🔹 Custom automation often works better than plug-and-play.
Off-the-shelf tools are great, but for specific platforms like Dynamics 365 (which doesn’t always have native integrations), a simple Python script can bridge the gap.
🔹 Use OCR to handle invoice differences.
Invoices vary by vendor. Optical Character Recognition (like Google OCR or Mistral) helps normalize the data before it’s processed.
🔹 APIs are your friend.
Automation is about getting systems to talk. API calls let you send data from email/PDF → through scripts/OCR → into your ERP like Dynamics 365 or Netsuite.
Bottom line: You don’t need to overhaul your whole company. But if your team is spending hours on repetitive finance tasks, there’s a good chance parts of that workflow can be automated — without risking accuracy.
Curious — have you considered automating any part of your accounts payable process?