Automation of accounts payable process: Complete guide & tips

● Manual process

With a manual process, your vendors will likely send you a paper invoice, which means you’ll have stacks on stacks of them to work through. Not to mention that they can be difficult to process without a standardized format. This is also true for PDF invoices.

● Automation

Accounts payable automation technology allows you to capture your invoices digitally, regardless of how an invoice is sent to you. Ideally, vendors will be able to send invoices electronically with a standardized digital format that AP platforms can recognize and capture.



● Manual process

When you get sent a paper invoice or an invoice through email, you’ll have to perform manual data entry and enter the invoice information into your accounting system. The more invoices you have to process, the more time-consuming this administrative process will be.

● Automation

Knowing how to automate accounts payable means knowing about optical character recognition (OCR) technology, which allows you to simply scan or take a photo of an invoice document to extract its data. All it takes is a few seconds and even fewer clicks.



● Manual process

Having a manual invoice approval workflow means that much of the work involves chasing approvers from desk to desk to get their physical signatures. It’s a slow process that could result in delays if you can’t find an approver to give you a signature.

● Automation

An accounts payable automation solution can digitize and centralize your approval workflows. Automatically route each invoice through its appropriate workflow and allow the system to send approvers alerts. Approvers can review and approve requests within minutes—no more delays involved.



● Manual process

Before an invoice can be paid off, you’ll have to ensure it contains all the right information by manually comparing it to its corresponding purchase order. This means going through all your documents one by one and manually matching and validating all the information.

● Automation

There’s no need to go through each document manually and spend long periods of time performing invoice matching. Get an automated matching system that can read both invoices and purchase orders to match them.

You will automatically be notified of any discrepancies or irregularities.



● Manual process

After invoices have been matched and approved, you’ll still have to initiate and process payments. The traditional manual way to do this would be to use a payment method of your choosing and initiate the transaction separately. You’ll then reconcile it with the general ledger.

● Automation

An AP automation solution should be able to help you facilitate electronic payments without having to click out of the platform. Get different payment options such as bank transfers and card payments to settle your invoices. Recurring payments can also be set up automatically.



● Manual process

Gone are the days of having to manually search through a lot of data to formulate and generate reports. While it is possible to create several reports in this manner, it gets harder to do the more reports you have.

● Automation

An AP automation solution can effectively solve this problem. By simply selecting the data you want to use and the report type or format, you can quickly generate the necessary reports. Moreover, this automation enhances accounts payable data analysis, providing you with valuable insights into your data patterns with minimal effort.



● Manual process

Audits are notoriously difficult to prepare for, but they’re even worse when you have to put together your audit trail manually. That will involve plenty of scrounging around for the right data and information, as well as organizing them into a cohesive audit trail by hand. Overall, it’s a time-consuming process.

● Automation

With accounts payable automation, it will take no time at all for you to compile an audit trail. All the information you need is easily accessible and already organized on your AP platform.



● Manual process

With a manual process, storing and organizing documents will take up a lot of your time. You will have to invest in either file cabinets or spend time categorizing your documents into different folders on your desktop.

● Automation

There’s no need for all that hassle with accounts payable automation technology. All your data can be stored in a server, with cloud-based platforms allowing you to store it on a remote server that is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. Accounts payable document management ensures that all your documents are well-organized and easily retrievable, making the process quicker and more efficient.

● Manual process

Instead of relying on long back-and-forth worth of text messages, collaborating with your suppliers is much easier to do with accounts payable automation. Your suppliers will be able to send invoices directly to your platform, eliminating delays in the invoice receipt step of the process.

● Automation

Once you’re ready to pay your invoice, you can also do it immediately through the AP automation platform. As soon as you get a notification that the transaction is successful, you can let suppliers know that the invoice has been settled.



The accounts payable process is notoriously complex and time-consuming, especially when performed manually.

You can cut the time taken to complete each step of the accounts payable cycle by half when you use tools that allow you to automate the process.

Matching your invoices with their corresponding purchase orders and delivery receipts, for example, can be automatic.



Routing invoice approvals for payments can be done automatically on a single platform with accounts payable automation technology. By setting up custom approval workflows, you can make the approval cycle faster.

Each invoice will automatically be entered into the appropriate approval workflow, eliminating the need to chase approvals from desk to desk.



Accounts payable automation guarantees that all your related data is updated in real-time. You’ll know the status of all your invoices at any time, which is easily accessible in just a few clicks.

You can also check how far into the approval workflow each invoice is and which payments have been made, ensuring better visibility.



Manual accounts payable makes it difficult for you to maintain compliance within the entire organization.

With accounts payable automation technology, however, you can set up notifications and alerts for suspicious invoices or transactions, which will be automatically flagged.

The automated approval workflows also mean that all approvals will be trackable and controlled.



Most accounts payable automation technology and tools also offer additional security for your data. It’s easy to centralize your data and use just a single platform for every step in the process.

This way, you’re less likely to lose data. Not only that, but you also get to store your data in an encrypted cloud-based server.



It may be easy to do the accounts payable process manually when you’re just starting with your business, but you’ll want to know how to automate accounts payable to scale better.

Accounts payable automation software allows you to scale your business hassle-free. You won’t have to worry about spending too much time on administrative work.



One of the biggest problems you’ll run into with doing your accounts payable work manually is that it’s difficult to maintain accurate records. You’re bound to run into errors at some point, which are time-consuming to fix.

Automating your accounts payable is not only time-saving, but it also makes sure that your records are accurate. 

You probably already have other systems in use to help you with your business processes.

To avoid data silos and mismatches between systems, it’s recommended that you pick an accounts payable automation solution that has integration capabilities with the systems you already have.

Most accounts payable technology will offer some form of integration, but you must consider integration with the specific systems you use.



Each business will have slightly different accounts payable needs. To find the best way to automate your accounts payable, you want a solution that has customization options to suit your business.

The more customization options available, the better. Solutions that allow you to personalize the software according to your business needs will also make it easier for you to scale.



Alongside wanting the best features for your accounts payable automation solution, you also want these features to be easy to use.

When you’re exploring a particular provider, ask if you could see what the platform looks like or get a free trial. This will help you familiarize yourself with the system before you commit to it. You want a system that is intuitive and user-friendly.



Other than features to help you automate the accounts payable process, you also want good reporting and analytics of the process. Look for a platform that allows you to automate AP reports.

You’ll save a lot of time by automatically generating reports using the data available. For instance, an accounts payable aging report can be easily created to track overdue invoices and assess payment patterns. Ideally, you also want customization options to create the exact reports you need.





Knowing how to automate accounts payable using a desktop computer is useful, but the best solutions should be easily accessible from anywhere. Try to look for an AP automation solution that offers mobile accessibility.

This way, you and your accounts payable team can collaborate and complete work remotely. There will be no more delays in your processes when people can easily approve invoices.



Setting up an AP automation solution and familiarizing your team with it takes some time and effort. Consider whether a software provider is well-known for its good customer support and service or not.

When you’re shopping around, ask representatives of different providers if they offer training sessions. Getting someone to train your staff will be helpful in the overall implementation process.



No matter how good an AP automation solution sounds, you want to make sure that you know of its reputation before committing to any particular platform.

The best accounts payable automation technology will have a reputation of being trustworthy.

Make sure that you check out reviews and references from other customers to see how the system performs and whether or not it has issues. 

To ensure you're making an informed choice, check out our blog on Best accounts payable software in the US in 2024 for a comprehensive overview of top solutions that meet these crucial criteria.

Make note of how long it takes you to process an invoice, from the receipt to the payment. When you implement an accounts payable automation solution, you should be able to reduce the processing time of an invoice.

You want to reduce the processing time by at least 20%, but the higher the reduction, the better.



Keep a close eye on what your invoice accuracy looks like before and after you implement accounts payable automation technology.

While you may run into errors during the training period as your employees are getting used to your AP system, you want there to be fewer errors in the long run.



There’s a lot of emphasis on more efficient approval workflows when it comes to AP automation.

Other than a shorter overall processing time, you want to specifically measure the invoice approval cycle time after you know how to automate accounts payable. You should see faster cycles by eliminating manual approval processes.



When you add up different factors such as shorter invoice processing time and improved accuracy, your suppliers are bound to be more satisfied.

It may be a bit difficult to measure supplier satisfaction without other metrics, so make sure you specify how to measure this particular KPI when assessing the effectiveness of your accounts payable automation technology.



One advantage of AP automation software is that you’ll be able to improve compliance adherence, with suspicious reports being automatically flagged.

With approvals easily tracked as well, employees should be more conscious about complying with policies.

You want to regularly review if compliance adherence within your organization has improved after implementing automation.



You naturally will reduce the amount of errors during the AP process when you improve your accuracy by using accounts payable automation software.

Another important metric that you want to keep in mind is the error resolution time, which should be reduced thanks to features that help you flag discrepancies.

Every time your business receives an invoice from a supplier or vendor, using the OCR(optical character recognition) technology, our invoice management software scans and reads the invoice to automatically generate a bill within the system.

This saves your finance team a lot of time spent on manual data entry when the invoices need to be paid.

A smart accounts payable software will be able to tell the difference between an unpaid invoice and a duplicate invoice. Volopay’s alert function notifies you when you are close to the due date of an invoice.

The payment history feature will reduce incidents of late payments and help you avoid duplicate payments by letting you see your payment history.

A major reason why companies face late payment fees is that their invoice sourcing is not organized in one place. They are scattered making it tough to keep track of every invoice.

With Volopay’s 3-way invoice sourcing, invoices are automatically synced from your email, accounting software, and can directly be uploaded to the platform. This way you won’t miss out on any payments.

We know that the details of any expense are important for accounting and auditing purposes. This is why Volopay has enabled two-way sync of bills between our platform and the accounting software that you use.

Minute details like a vendor’s name, invoice date, due date, item description, quantity, amount, tax code, are all automatically scanned and synced to your accounting tool.

The Volopay platform provides you with two major payment methods to choose from for domestic and international payments.

You can send money via SWIFT, which is a vast messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions to keep track of exactly where your payment is.

You can also send money to 40+ countries in their local currencies through a Non-SWIFT method which is more economic, faster, and money received by the receiver is in full.

Accounts payable automation software also gives you the ability to schedule payments. Using Volopay, you get to schedule invoice payments in three ways.

Firstly, you can select a custom date and schedule the payment for that day. Secondly, you can schedule a payment as soon as the approver on the platform approves it.

And lastly, you can also schedule invoice payments right before the due date so you get to hold money for as long as possible in your account and earn interest on it.

Volopay allows you to create multi-currency wallets and store money in different currencies. This lets you pay international vendors or suppliers in their local currency, and save on FX charges.

Additionally, the receiver gets the money in full without you having to pay extra in the first place to ensure that vendors receive the amount that they’re supposed to.

Paying invoices is a task that your finance team will do every month. There will be vendors you will have to pay every month.

With Volopay you can create recurring payments to these suppliers. Set a particular date and payments for an invoice will go out every month without the need for manual interference.

Sending international payments with Volopay is a breeze. Our platform allows you to transfer money to 100+ countries in 65+ currencies.

This is possible through our integration with Rapyd, which is the world’s largest local payments network.