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Accounts payable automation has become essential as Nno modern business can operate independently without availing products and services from third-party vendors. On-time payments for these products (and services) are critical to establishing strong working relationships between a business and its vendors. However, only 25% of businesses with manual accounts payable (AP) processes pay their invoices regularly. By using AP automation solutions—powered by OCR for invoice capture, AI-driven classification, workflow routing, and exception management—organizations can eliminate manual bottlenecks and improve accuracy. These solutions can help businesses not only process and pay all the invoices on time but save — on average — $2.5 per invoice in processing costs, making

accounts payable automation

common AP challenges in manual or semi-manual processes

Before understanding how AP automation solutions can help, we must understand the problems surrounding the AP process. Some of the most common manual AP automation challenges in manual workflows include:

slow invoice processing & approvals :

Manual invoice processing can take hours, if not days, to receive, authenticate, approve, and pay. This slows down cash flow visibility and increases operational friction. AP automation systems can streamline this process, by centralising the invoice data, auto-routing approvals, and reducing cycle times through digital workflows.

data entry errors and manual dependencies:

Manual processing requires physical receipt and storage of invoices and supporting documentation. This can cause data entry errors and inaccurate invoice processing. AP automation solutions, such as digital invoicing or OCR scanning, can automate the data entry process and eliminate the potential for manual error in invoice processing.

lost, disappearing, or misplaced invoices:

Physical storage of invoices can also mean one can easily misplace the receipts and invoices, or they can go missing. This leads to delayed payments, disputes, and audit challenges. You can avoid this with AP process automation as you can digitally store, (search and retrieve) all the invoices and supporting documents., eliminating the risk of disappearing invoices.

fraud, theft, and compliance risks:

Staying vigilant against AP fraud and theft attempts is crucial for AP teams, which can be difficult in manual AP processes as they leave room for human error or malicious interference. On the other hand, AP automation solutions can proactively detect suspicious activity with rule-based checks, 3-way matching, audit trails, and system alerts, strengthening compliance and reducing fraud risks.

unauthorised purchases & lack of control:

Manual AP processing leaves room for unauthorised purchases, either as a quick fix to speed up the purchasing process or as a fraud attempt. Automated AP workflows enforce strict approval paths, policy checks, and spending thresholds, helping identify and restrict these unauthorised purchase attempts and alert the responsible parties.

duplicate invoices and overpayments:

You can receive and process duplicate invoices due to AP problems like manual errors or even theft attempts. AP automation solutions can restrict duplicate invoice processing through digital filtering tools, AI-based matching and workflow streamlining.

scalability limitations when volumes increase:

As the business grows, the AP processes would also need to evolve. But manual AP processing is not scalable and can hinder business growth. AP process automation, on the other hand, can introduce flexible workflows, scalability and flexibility in AP processing and the ability to handle large invoice volumes without adding headcount, enabling efficient scalability as the organisation expands.

poor visibility and tracking across the AP cycle

One of the most overlooked AP automation challenges in manual systems is the lack of real-time visibility across the invoice lifecycle. Without a unified digital platform, AP teams struggle to track invoice status, approval delays, exceptions, and payment timelines. This leads to unclear cash flow forecasting, missed early payment discounts, and reduced vendor satisfaction. With AP automation solutions, organizations gain real-time dashboards, status tracking, audit trails, and end-to-end visibility, ensuring transparency, faster decision-making, and tighter financial control.

key benefits of AP automation

In addition to helping overcome some of the most common manual AP processing challenges, AP automation solutions also offer major benefits, such as:

reduced processing costs and error rates:

With AP automation solutions, OCR can capture data from invoices, eliminating the potential for manual data entry errors in payment amounts or budget categories. This improves accuracy, reduces rework, and accelerates the validation process. This saves your team’s time, and you can streamline invoice processing while reducing overall AP costs.

faster approvals and on-time payments:

Invoice approval is one of the biggest bottlenecks in manual AP processing. With AP process automation, you can eliminate the paper trails or ‘missed emails’ by immediately sending the invoices to the concerned individual for approval and sending automatic reminders, and reducing approval cycle time. You can also set up automatic payments and simplify the necessary approvals to ensure timely and predictable vendor payments.

improved regulatory compliance:

With OCR tools to handle invoice processing and storage, you can leverage AP process automation solutions to prevent sensitive data exposure, ensure audit-ready document trails, and enforce approval controls. Additionally, you can check for suspicious activity earlier and reduce compliance-related risks.

improved transparency for better stakeholder experience:

AP automation solutions also offer improved transparency and accessibility throughout the AP process through real-time dashboards, automatic invoice processing and cloud-based document storage. This contributes towards an overall lower risk and a better stakeholders, vendors and internal teams experience.

However, despite its numerous benefits, adopting AP process automation has some hurdles. These AP automation challenges can be managed effectively with a few simple best practices, such as:

• Getting employee buy-in
• Prioritising supplier adoption
• Outlining the workflow rules
• Having up-to-date information
• Keeping track of and regularly communicating your KPI metrics

With these best practices, you can simplify AP automation solutions adoption and benefit from automating your accounts payable processes.

For organisations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed organisational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like living organisms will be imperative for business excellence. A comprehensive yet modular suite of services is doing precisely that. Equipping organisations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Infosys’ Live Enterprise is building connected organisations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.

how can Infosys BPM help resolve AP?

Infosys BPM accounts payable solutions leverage AI-driven data extraction, enrichment, and workflow orchestration to ensure an enhanced stakeholder experience. By combining end-to-end AP digital transformation with advanced automation accelerators such as IDP, AI, and RPA, Infosys BPM simplifies complex AP processes and eliminates manual inefficiencies. Through its global shared services delivery model, the organisation ensures seamless processing, consistent quality, and strong compliance controls across distributed operations.
With AP automation solutions designed to improve key KPIs—such as cycle time, invoice accuracy, exception rates, and on-time payments—Infosys BPM helps businesses scale effortlessly and reduce operational costs. These capabilities make Infosys BPM a strategic partner for organisations looking to overcome AP automation challenges and unlock intelligent, future-ready finance operations.