Role
Accounts payable and receivable
How many people touch one cost invoice before it reaches the ledger? The national e-invoicing system solved the problem of retyping data from the document. It solved none of the others - and they took up most of the time.
Intro call
Four questions we would start with
An invoice flow is rarely difficult. It is long - and it is the length, not the difficulty, that costs the most. A structured document shortened the first stage and made every later one visible.
How many people touch one cost invoice before it reaches the ledger?
Accounts payable, the approvers, sometimes purchasing and a controller. The data arrives ready, but assigning the cost, linking it to an order and approving it still need a flow - and it is the flow that decides when the invoice is posted.
Where does an invoice go once it is pulled from the system?
If the answer is "to somebody who recognises whose purchase it is", you have a stage that did not disappear along with the paper. The payment clock runs whether or not anybody has established who is accountable for it.
What happens when an invoice does not agree with the order?
Usually: it goes aside and waits for an explanation. The document is formally correct, so nothing stops it - it is stopped only by a person who notices the quantity does not match.
How long does reconciling a balance with a counterparty take?
If it is a whole day's task, you do it rarely - and rare reconciliations mean discrepancies build up for months before anybody notices.
We take over the posting and the chasing, you keep the judgement calls
Assigning the cost, matching to the order and the delivery, moving the document through the flow and the pre-payment checks can be taken off the desk. Every mismatch goes to a person and they decide what to do with it.
- Nothing enters the ledger without approval. - The prepared posting waits for approval. For an invoice that agrees with the order that is seconds, for one that does not it is normal work as before.
- A discrepancy is shown, not smoothed over. - A different quantity, a different price, a different date - we point out the difference and its size, instead of picking the version that looks more sensible.
- The payment checks happen before the transfer, not after. - An account outside the taxpayer whitelist and a line requiring split payment are flagged while there is still time to react.
Scope
What can be taken off accounts payable and receivable
Twenty-five example tasks. Each one has a human approval point. Below is a selection, and the scope we fit to your process.
Taking in the document
- Pulling domestic invoices and linking them to the counterparty
- Handling documents from outside the system: foreign, consumer, from the fallback mode
- Recording the date of arrival, whatever the channel
- Detecting a document already entered
- A signal when an invoice has no corresponding purchase (assessment: the specialist)
Posting and assigning the cost
- A proposed posting based on the purchase history for that counterparty (approved by: the specialist)
- Assigning the cost to a department and a cost centre (correction: the specialist)
- Pointing out purchases unusual for a given supplier
- A signal when a line needs a tax decision (assessment: the specialist)
Matching to the order and the delivery
- Linking the invoice to the order and the goods receipt
- Pointing out differences in quantity, price and terms (settled by: the specialist)
- Flagging invoices with no order - material for a conversation with the ordering department
- A summary of lines needing clarification with the supplier (contact: the specialist)
The approval flow
- Routing the document to the right approver under the rules
- A reminder about documents waiting for approval
- A signal about documents at risk of missing the payment date
- A record of who approved and when
- Stand-ins in the flow during an absence
Checks before payment
- Verifying the counterparty's account against the taxpayer whitelist
- Pointing out lines subject to mandatory split payment
- A signal when the account differs from previous payments (assessment: the specialist)
Reconciliations, dates, reminders
- The balances to be reconciled with counterparties
- Pointing out contested items with the history of how they arose
- A list of overdue receivables with ageing
- Preparing a reminder matched to how late it is (sent by: the specialist)
A day's work
Today
- The documents arrive correct, but nobody knows whose cost it is
- With an invoice that has no order, the hunt for who ordered it begins
- You chase documents waiting for approval by email, one at a time
- You learn about an approaching payment date from the supplier's reminder
- You check the account against the whitelist on a sample, or not at all
- You reconcile balances once a quarter, because it takes a whole day
With AI assistance
- The posting is prepared from the history, you approve it
- The link to the order and the receipt is ready, and the differences flagged
- Documents in the flow remind themselves, stand-ins too
- You see payment dates in advance, not from a reminder
- An account outside the whitelist reports itself before the transfer
- The balances are always at hand, so you reconcile more often
- Time through the invoice flow
the document reaches approval the same day
posting and routing stop being a manual stage
- Paying on time
less interest and fewer reminders
dates at risk are visible before, not after
- Tax risk on payment
fewer transfers to an account outside the register
the check happens before payment, not at an audit
- Visible liabilities
it is known what you will pay in the coming period
the documents in the flow are counted, not only the posted ones
We start with posting cost invoices of one type, not with the whole flow.
- Step 1
We count what comes in
Two weeks of invoices split by supplier, type of purchase and whether they have an order. It usually turns out most of the volume comes from a dozen or so suppliers and repeats the same posting - and that is where we start.
- Step 2
Posting with manual approval
For the chosen group, with every line approved. We measure how many lines genuinely need a human touch.
- Step 3
The flow, the dates and the payment checks
Routing for approval, reminders, the whitelist and split payment. Only once the intake into the process is clean.
- Step 4
Balances and reminders
Reconciliations and soft collections. Deliberately last - they rest on the data from the earlier steps.
Common questions
Questions that come up at the first meeting
E-invoicing was supposed to handle this. Why anything more?
It handled one thing and handled it well: the invoice data arrives complete and does not have to be retyped. The trouble is that retyping was never the longest stage. The longest is establishing whose cost it is, whether it was ordered and who has to approve it - and that is not in the document and will not be. The intake is now clean, so only now is it visible where an invoice actually stands.
What about invoices that do not go through the system at all?
They remain and have to be handled separately - foreign, consumer, those from the fallback mode. That is a minority of the volume today, but the most troublesome, because it falls outside the main process and is easily forgotten. That is why we treat it as a separate path rather than as an exception to handle by hand.
What if the posting is wrong and the cost lands in the wrong place?
That is why nothing enters the ledger without approval, and the proposed posting shows what it rests on - the purchase history for that supplier. Lines unusual for a given counterparty are flagged, not filled in by guesswork. The first stage in fact serves exactly that: counting how many proposals need correcting.
Does this fall under the AI Act?
Handling invoices is not a high-risk use. What does apply are the usual requirements on accounting evidence: legibility, retention and the ability to reconstruct who approved what. The approval trail here is fuller than with a paper flow. From the AI Act, what applies to you is the obligation common to every rollout - AI literacy among the people who use the system.
Still have a question that is not here? Book a call
Next step
How many invoices are waiting right now for somebody to establish whose cost they are?
We will show you what an invoice flow looks like when the posting and the link to the order are waiting ready for approval, and the payment checks happen before the transfer.