Manual accounts payable processing is one of the most tedious jobs for accountants. Here, the concerned authorities need to ensure that all the outstanding invoices from varied departments are processed, and paid.
As it turns out, manual accounts processing is not the best option today. It doesn’t do any good for your business, keeps your resources busy, and restricts the overall growth of your business.
Challenges in Accounts Payable Processing
According to a recent report by Levvel, routing invoices for approval manually and entering the data manually are the two biggest challenges that companies face.
Other common issues or challenges faced in manual accounts payable processing include:
- This whole accounts payable processing is a very time consuming process.
- Human beings performing too many processes at a time make way for human errors which could prove to be detrimental.
- The high amount of time taken and the errors cropping up could lead to a direct loss of business for the company.
- This loss of business would mean that the cost to the company is increasing without sufficient profits.
- Manually performing accounts payable processing would mean a number of human resources are involved in the same process. This results in wastage of available resources on the same task.
Automating Accounts Payable Processing
As is evident, manual accounts processing is crippled with various challenges. This is when intelligent automation tools like AutomationEdge come to your rescue and help you out by automating the entire process.
Accounts payable automation with AutomationEdge helps businesses process invoices from the supplier’s end without actually requiring any human intervention. The whole manual process is converted into a digital workflow and the invoices are passed through the different stages to complete the process.
AutomationEdge accomplishes all the operations at a faster speed with zero errors and 80% reduced costs. Equipped with advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, chatbots, ready bots, and machine learning, the tool is able to improve the turnaround time from hours to minutes.
Here are a few benefits of AutomationEdge:
- No coding needed
- Exercise full control over the tool
- Top notch security and compliance
- Easy to scale
- Generate reports and insights
Business Impacts of RPA
Automating the whole process of accounts payable processing has major implications on the business. As reducing costs are becoming a common focus of most business strategies, Deloitte revealed that RPA will become important to business strategies.
- Invoices from the supplier’s end are approved very quickly with reduced chances of errors.
- Since the approvals come in quickly, the payments are all made on time, in an organized fashion.
- The RPA module provides complete visibility and transparency to the online process so that the suppliers can track the operations and payments online.
- Since RPA will improve the speed with which invoices are approved greatly, this will improve your business relations with supplier.
[Also Read: How does RPA in Accounts Payable Enhance Data Accuracy?]
All of these factors together contribute to better cash management. This would mean that there are no errors in the balance sheet at the end of the year and the whole process is carried out smoothly.
This makes sense as to why implementing an RPA is the need of the hour and the sure path to success! What are your views on this? Let us know in the comments below.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The accounts payable (AP) process involves receiving vendor invoices, verifying them against purchase orders or contracts, and processing timely payments. It’s critical for maintaining cash flow visibility, supplier trust, and compliance with financial controls.
- Invoice data extraction
- Validation
- PO matching
- Approvals
- Payment scheduling
This eliminates manual errors, speeds up processing, and frees finance teams to focus on higher-value activities like cash flow optimization and vendor analysis.
Common AP pain points include:
- Manual data entry errors
- Delayed payments
- Invoice-PO mismatch issues
- Limited visibility and tracking
- Risk of fraud and non-compliance
Automation addresses these by:
- Digitizing end-to-end AP workflows
- Enabling real-time tracking and reporting
- Enforcing policy compliance through intelligent workflows
- Reducing cycle times and fraud risks
- Capture invoices from email or scanned documents
- Validate data against master records
- Match invoices for purchase orders and receipts
- Route for approvals and schedule payments
This leads to faster, accurate, and auditable financial operations—with minimal human intervention.
- Auto-process invoices upon receipt
- Automate multi-level approval workflows
- Enable real-time dashboards and exception handling
This reduces turnaround time, enhances transparency, and ensures compliance—all without reengineering core systems.
RPA in AP involves using software bots to mimic human actions like –
- Reading invoices
- Extracting and validating data
- Updating systems
- Triggering payments
Bots work across multiple applications and formats, creating a touchless invoice-to-pay process.
Key benefits of AP automation include:
- Faster invoice turnaround (up to 70% reduction in cycle time)
- Improved accuracy by eliminating manual errors
- Stronger compliance through audit-ready workflows
- Lower operational costs through process efficiency
- Better vendor relationships through timely and predictable payments
- End-to-end encryption
- Role-based access controls
- Audit trails and logs for every bot action
The platform supports compliance with financial regulations such as SOX, GDPR, and industry-specific standards, ensuring AP processes are both secure and auditable.