How to automate invoice processing

An agent that reads supplier invoices from your AP inbox, checks them against purchase orders and receipts, and queues clean ones in your accounting system for approval. A person approves every payment. Below: real examples, the steps to set it up, how it connects to the tools you use, and the pitfalls.

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Public examples

Built by other companies and vendors, with figures exactly as their sources publish them. They are not our clients; follow each source for the full story.

Eurowag · fintech and mobility for commercial transport, Europe: Invoices sent to one email address are read by Rossum, routed by document type and cost centre, then posted to Coupa for approval and SAP for payment, across 60 entities.; Result: 70% average automation rate; end-to-end processing time from 9 days to 4 days; on-time payments from 60% to over 90%.; Source: Rossum, 2026
Kiwi.com · travel, Czech Republic: Rossum captures invoice header fields and line items and pairs vendors and cost centres; Kiwi's engineers connected it to NetSuite through Rossum's API.; Result: AP posting work down to fewer than two hours per person a day, with the same headcount.; Source: Rossum, year not stated

How it is set up

Intake: pull invoices from a shared AP mailbox, a supplier portal or a scan folder through IMAP or the mail API, and store each file with its sender and receipt time.
Extraction: run OCR on scanned PDFs, then an LLM step that returns a fixed schema (supplier, invoice number, date, currency, line items, tax, total). Store the position of each value on the page so a reviewer can check it.
Rules and checks: match the supplier to the vendor master; reject duplicates on supplier plus invoice number plus amount; check that lines add up to the total; match to a purchase order (two-way or three-way) where one exists.
Confidence gate: invoices where every field passes and the score is above the threshold go straight to posting; the rest go to a human review queue with the extracted fields side by side with the scan.
Write-back: create a draft bill in the ERP or accounting system, then route it for approval by amount and cost centre. Never post a payment from the agent.
Logging and monitoring: keep an audit record of each field value and who changed it, and report weekly on touchless rate, correction rate and duplicate hits.

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Connecting your tools

QuickBooks Online: official REST API (bills, vendors, attachments). Docs
Xero: official REST API (bills, contacts, attachments). Docs
SAP S/4HANA: official OData APIs for supplier invoices and purchase orders. Docs
Odoo: external JSON-RPC/XML-RPC API (vendor bills, attachments). Docs
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central: REST API v2.0 (purchase invoices, vendors). Docs
Gmail: IMAP or the Gmail API to read the AP inbox. Docs
Microsoft Outlook: Microsoft Graph mail API. Docs
Google Sheets: API for exception logs and reconciliation tabs. Docs

Questions people search for

How to automate invoice data copy to Excel

Use a flow that picks up each invoice from an email attachment or folder, extracts the fields, and adds one row per invoice to an Excel table. Microsoft Power Automate has Outlook and Excel connectors for this, and an OCR or AI step can read the PDF. Keep a "needs review" column so nobody trusts an unchecked total. Docs

How to automate invoices in QuickBooks

Connect the AP inbox to QuickBooks Online through its REST API so each approved invoice becomes a bill with the PDF attached. Start with one vendor and a manual approval step before enabling automatic posting. Docs

How to automate invoice generation

This is the outbound side: create invoices when an order ships and email them. Use the invoice endpoints of the accounting system (QuickBooks or Xero) rather than building a PDF engine. Docs

Invoice to payment automation

Chain intake, approval and payment: once approved, a payment batch is prepared in the bank or AP system. Keep release of the payment with a person, and check bank details against the vendor master before the batch goes out. Docs

AI invoice processing

The pipeline in "How it is implemented" above applies: OCR and LLM extraction, checks, approval, then write-back. Pilot on one vendor group and track the touchless rate before widening it.

Pitfalls

Bank detail changes on invoices are a common fraud route. Teams block any change to a vendor's bank account from the agent and require a call-back to a known number.
Resubmitted invoices with a new number slip past duplicate checks. Teams also compare supplier, amount and date within a window.
OCR errors on decimal separators and currency codes change totals silently. Teams check that lines sum to the total and hold any mismatch for review.
LLM extraction can return plausible but wrong values. Teams keep the source position for each field and never auto-post on a low score.

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