I was wondering if anyone has automated the processing of supplier invoices with an RPA system

My question is as invoices come in in different formats depending on the supplier do you need one robot per supplier?

Many thanks

Divide the process of invoice capturing into two parts. Gather data & insert data.

While insert data into SAP or another application is same for each invoicing company.

Gathering of the data is more challenging topic.

• You can define each customer as a template. You will use keywords on the invoice to distinguish between invoices and then parse data which are necessary to capture.
• Use third party software to gathering of the data. Usually AI taking care of gathering the data. You just need to insert couple of invoice as an example for the AI. Do not want to make any propagation, but there are companies like: https://rossum.ai/,  href="https://typless.com/" rel="nofollow">https://typless.com/ etc..

And that's where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can be impactful, providing touchless business process automation to back-office jobs, reducing manual effort, cost, and human error while offering high ROI to businesses.

A significant part of an entire business process goes into back-office jobs related to financial accounting and invoice processing. Businesses have to keep track of all pending and ongoing financial transactions between their suppliers and their clients alike.

This often involves people to carefully go through each of the invoices (usually in PDF format) generated by the suppliers, entering them into their database, and approving payments accordingly. This is a tedious and time-consuming process. According to research from Aberdeen, it can take anywhere between 4 to 16 days for companies to process an invoice, from receipt to payment approval.

• Take the time and pain out of business processes with RPA

Methods of invoice processing and other back-office automation

Even though back-office tasks are tedious and time-consuming, they are often repetitive. But thanks to AI-driven automation, these tasks can be automated easily with RPA.

RPA can generally be applied to any task or process that is:

• Rule-based, allowing decision flows to alter dynamically
• Consistent, where the same step is performed repeatedly
• Template driven, with data entered into specific fields in a repetitive manner

Organisations that wish to automate invoice processing and accounts payable (AP) processes can usually implement an RPA software to automate these tasks. The software can be connected to the organisation's ERP system and other potential business applications.

Business process automation will be different depending on the type of supplier invoices being handled. For indirect spending & expense invoices, the accounts payable automation solution would involve data capture, coding (modification), and distribution of the invoice to the suitable approving authority within the organisation.

For direct expenses, the automation software would automatically match the invoice data to the purchase order, and if everything matches, the invoice will directly be sent to accounting for payment without any human intervention. Hence, the term 'touchless invoice automation' is the end goal of AP automation.