The intelligent and accurate solution for automated invoice matching and payment is designed to free a company’s Finance and Accounting department from the immense volume of invoices and documents. This traditional process is not only time-consuming but also harbors serious risks of error, directly impacting the company’s cash flow and financial transparency.
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The Burden of Manual Work in Finance and Accounting Operations
Invoice and Payment Processing is one of the most core and labor-intensive processes in the Finance and Accounting department, especially for the Accounts Payable (AP) team.
How Does the Manual Invoice Processing Workflow Happen?
Before diving into the automated invoice matching solution, it’s crucial to understand the traditional process:
- Receipt and Collection: Receiving invoices from various sources.
- Manual Data Entry: The accountant opens each invoice, reads the information, and manually types it into the ERP/Accounting Software. This is the step most prone to errors.
- Classification and Approval: Assigning the invoice to the correct Cost Center and routing it to management for approval via email or complex paper-based processes.
- Matching: This is the most critical step, requiring the comparison of invoice data with related documents (such as the Purchase Order – PO and Goods Receipt Note – GRN). This is often referred to as 2-way matching or 3-way matching.
- Payment Execution: After successful matching and approval, the accountant prepares the payment order and transmits it to the bank, typically through manual operation on the banking portal or by creating a batch payment Excel file.
Core Operational Challenges
Operating the above process manually creates significant challenges that hinder a company’s speed and growth potential:
- High Cost of Time and Resources
An experienced accountant can spend an average of 10–15 minutes to process, enter, and match a complex invoice (one with multiple line items requiring cross-checking against several documents). When the invoice volume reaches thousands per month, the total time consumed is enormous. - Risk of Errors and Financial Fraud
Statistics from global financial organizations show that the error rate in manual data entry can be up to 3–5%. A minor error in the tax ID, amount, or date can lead to duplicate payments, incorrect payments, or failure during the audit process. More seriously, the lack of strict control in the automated invoice matching stage creates opportunities for internal fraudulent activities. - Extended Payment Cycle (DPO)
Due to the slow approval and matching process, the payment cycle for vendors is often prolonged. This not only causes the company to miss out on early payment discounts but also damages its reputation with business partners. A study by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) indicates that companies using manual accounts payable processes have processing costs per invoice that are 3–4 times higher than those that have adopted automation.
Application of Smart Technology: The Automated Invoice Matching Solution
To comprehensively address these challenges, companies need to transition to an Intelligent Automation model by integrating the most advanced technologies.
Foundational Technologies: IDP, OCR, and RPA
The automated invoice matching solution is built upon the harmonious combination of three key technologies:
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) / Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
- Role: Replaces manual data entry. This technology uses Artificial Intelligence (AI-OCR) to recognize and extract data from various invoice formats (images, PDFs, XML e-invoices).
- Value: Achieves an accuracy rate of over 95% right from the extraction step, significantly reducing entry errors.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Role: Simulates and replaces repetitive human actions across different software. In this context, RPA acts as the “operator” of the process.
- Value: Ensures the process is executed 24/7 without interruption, with a processing speed many times faster than a human employee.
Description of the Automated Invoice Matching and Payment Workflow
The process, after adopting smart automation, becomes streamlined and achieves superior efficiency:
| Process Step | Before Automation (Manual) | After Smart Automation (IDP + RPA) |
| Collection & Data Entry | Accountant opens email, downloads file, manually enters 100% of data into ERP. | Automation: Bot automatically downloads invoices from email/portal, IDP extracts data, Bot automatically enters data into ERP/Accounting System. |
| Invoice Matching | Accountant must access each system (purchasing, warehouse) to search and compare PO, GRN data with the invoice, taking a long time. | Automated Invoice Matching: Bot automatically accesses 3 systems (Invoice, PO, GRN), performs 3-way matching automatically. If the match is >98%, it is automatically routed for approval. If not matched, the Bot sends an alert to the accountant for exception handling. |
| Approval | Forwarding emails, awaiting multi-level approval confirmation via paperwork or email. | Automation: Integrates with the approval system (Workflow), automatically routes successfully matched invoices to the approver based on defined levels and policies. |
| Payment Execution | The accountant creates an Excel file or manually enters each payment order onto the banking portal. | Automation: After approval, Bot automatically creates and securely sends a Batch Payment File to the electronic bank, or automatically executes the transfer order according to the configuration. |
Value Derived from the Automated Invoice Matching Solution
The automated invoice matching solution brings a powerful transformation, measured by specific numbers:
Superior Speed and Efficiency
- Processing Time: Reduced from 10–15 minutes/invoice to under 1 minute/invoice.
- Increased Throughput: Processing thousands of invoices each day, instead of a limit of 50–70 invoices/day/person.
- Shorter Payment Cycle: The cycle from invoice receipt to payment can be reduced from 7 days to 24–48 hours, maximizing the utilization of early payment discounts.
High Accuracy and Compliance
- Accuracy: Increased from 95% (manual) to 99.9% (automated), virtually eliminating data entry and matching errors.
- Fraud Control: The automated 3-way invoice matching system helps early detection and prevention of duplicate transactions and fraudulent invoices, ensuring compliance with internal audits and tax laws.
Uninterrupted Operation and Improved Experience
- 24/7 Operation: Bots work continuously, even outside business hours, helping international transactions be processed promptly.
Employee Improvement: Frees up accounting staff from repetitive tasks (data entry, reconciliation) so they can focus on more strategic, value-added work such as financial analysis and budgeting.
