Accounts payable process: why invoices get keyed

A supplier’s invoice is 45 days old and unpaid, so their credit controller sends it again. To get attention, they give it a new reference. It lands in a different shared inbox from the first copy. Two people on the accounts payable team key it into the ERP in the same week, the budget owner approves both, and both are paid.

The second copy had a new reference, so nothing in the process compared it with the first.

Invoice capture is where procure-to-pay turns a supplier’s document into data the ERP can match and pay. In many finance teams, it is still done by hand.

What is the accounts payable process?

The accounts payable process takes a supplier invoice from arrival to payment. It captures the invoice from wherever it arrives, reads it, checks it for duplicates, codes it to the right budget, matches it against the order and the receipt, and pays it on the supplier’s terms.

Why invoices still get keyed by hand

1. Invoices arrive everywhere. The shared AP inbox, buyers’ own inboxes, supplier portals and the post each get some, and nobody sees them all.
2. PDFs are typed in. The ERP needs fields, and the invoice is a picture of a page.
3. The duplicate check looks only at the reference. A resent invoice with a new number passes.
4. Coding waits on the requester. AP doesn’t know which budget a purchase belongs to, so the invoice sits until the person who raised it answers.
5. Approvals happen in email. The approver replies “OK”, and someone copies that into the ERP by hand.

What it costs

Keying takes time, and the time grows with every supplier added. Late payments cost early-payment discounts and supplier goodwill. Duplicates cost money directly, and they tend to surface only when someone reconciles the supplier’s statement.

What to fix first

1. Bring every invoice into one queue. Forward every inbox and portal to one intake, so nothing is paid from a side channel.
2. Read invoices with a confidence score. An AI agent reads the fields from the PDF and says how sure it is. Invoices it is sure about go straight through, and the rest go to a person to check.
3. Check for duplicates on content. Compare supplier, amount, date and line items as well as the reference number.
4. Code from the purchase order. An invoice that matches an order takes the order’s budget, so AP only chases invoices with no order.
5. Keep approvals inside the system. The approver acts on the invoice in Slack or email, and the decision is written to the ERP with who made it.

The guide to building AP invoice processing has the prompts for each step.

Where it fits

Capture depends on a clean supplier record to know who sent each invoice. Once captured, the invoice goes to three-way match, which checks it against what was ordered and what arrived. Anything that commits or pays money still goes to a person for approval.

For the whole procure-to-pay process, from purchase request to paid supplier, see the procure-to-pay process.