Finish “The Last Mile”: How Agentic AI Takes Traditional AP Automation to the Next Level

Your AP team has automated invoice processing. Early payment discounts are captured more often. Processing time has dropped.

By most measures, you’ve succeeded, so why would you revisit your setup now?

Because intelligent automation still requires your team to be the safety net for every exception, every discrepancy, every edge case. Sure, your AP staff don’t have to spend their entire work days processing invoices anymore like they did pre-automation, but their days are still dominated by triaging exceptions.

You’re experiencing remarkable benefits already, yes, but there’s significant potential for further improvement. The gap between the “automated AP” you’re currently enjoying and truly “autonomous AP” represents millions in untapped working capital, and agentic AI closes that gap by eliminating the exception-handling bottleneck.

What is Agentic AI in AP?

The most recent evolution, agentic AI, consists of deploying goal-oriented AI agents that independently execute and coordinate tasks across the entire invoice-to-pay process, from data extraction and matching to exception resolution to vendor communication and payment initiation.

But what really sets agentic AI apart is that these agents adapt to your policies and workflows rather than simply following a fixed script. They collaborate with human experts only when judgment or policy dictates, freeing your team to focus on higher-value work that moves the business forward.​

This shift matters because agentic AI in AP brings more benefits than just shaving minutes off invoice processing time. It directly advances AP leaders’ top strategic goals by:

• Accelerating exception resolution and shrinking cycle times so teams consistently avoid late-payment penalties and capture more early-payment discounts, turning AP from a cost center into a lever for working capital and margin.​
• Enforcing business rules and tax logic, logging every action for auditability, and surfacing real-time insights into payables aging and cash-flow impacts so finance leaders gain tighter control, stronger compliance, and better data for supplier negotiations and investment decisions.​

All in all, this new technology is set to help AP professionals complete “the last mile” that was previously out of reach. Still, if you have an AP solution producing results you’re loving already, you might wonder if the grass really is greener on the other side, and that’s valid.

That’s why we’ll examine each “era” and how each one improved upon the last, ultimately answering the very reasonable question of “Can agentic AI really deliver results that are substantially better?” and helping you decide what your next step is.

Accounts Payable Automation’s Evolution: Manual vs. AI-Powered Intelligent Automation vs. Agentic Automation

Phase 1: AP Processing, Manual Edition

When performed manually, the AP invoice process is heavily reliant on humans at every step. Looking at the steps outlined below, you’ll notice how much labor falls onto AP staff. It gets repetitive in more ways than one.

1. Supplier: Emails a PDF invoice to the business for payment
2. AP Staff: Locates all emails pertaining to supplier invoice processing
3. AP Staff: Manually assigns invoice-related emails to relevant teams
4. AP Staff: Extracts and verifies invoice data against system data
5. AP Staff: If they find a discrepancy, they must manually populate missing information
6. AP Staff: If the discrepancy requires them to access internal systems for missing info or contacting the supplier, they’re on it
7. Supplier: If they get contacted via step 6, they reply with the missing info
8. AP Staff: Checks that all information is present and matched
9. AP Staff: Conducts final approval
10. AP Staff: If all’s clear, they trigger the payment process
11. Supplier: Receives payment

With all these manual steps, it’s no wonder why AP staff wrapped up in manual invoice processing often lack time to dig into other work and regularly work late. And that’s why our next evolution has become so popular…

Phase 2: AP Processing, AI-Powered Intelligent Automation Edition

With intelligent automation and AI technology on board to reimagine the AP invoice process, it looks drastically different. The biggest change: the AP staff have far fewer of those tedious steps to attend to. Yet it still takes up a decent chunk of their day. Take a look:

Technologies applied: Automation and intelligent automation technologies like communications mining and intelligent document processing (IDP) are orchestrated along with human input to manage exceptions and complex scenarios, AKA “human in the loop,” to make for an end-to-end business process.

1. Supplier: Emails a PDF invoice to the business for payment
2. Technology: Communications mining scoops up all supplier emails to get them ready for invoice processing
3. Technology: IDP extracts and verifies invoice data automatically, getting PO data from your ERP system and comparing the invoice and purchase order.
4. Technology: 2 Different Possibilities…
   1. The system rules that all’s well and auto approves and processes the payment, and the supplier receives payment
   2. If needed, AP staff will need to jump in, as seen below in steps 5-11
5. AP Staff (human in the loop): If step 4. b. applies, AP staff uses a human in the loop (HITL) Action App to either accept or manually investigate the invoice discrepancy further
6. AP Staff (human in the loop): In the event of an invoice discrepancy, AP staff access internal systems for missing info or contact the supplier
7. Supplier: If they get contacted via step 6, they reply with the missing info
8. AP Staff (human in the loop): Performs a final check manually
9. AP Staff (human in the loop): Manually approves the invoice
10. AP Staff (human in the loop): Manually processes the invoice
11. Supplier: Receives the payment

Phase 3: AP Processing, “Last Mile” Agentic Automation Edition

This is the most recent evolution, and it takes even more manual steps off the AP staff’s plate. And with that more advanced, orchestrated automation, the process flies by faster and with greater accuracy, making for happier suppliers and more fulfilled AP staff who can rest assured knowing they’re going home on time. Let’s take a look:

Technologies applied: Automation, AI, intelligent automation technologies like communications mining and intelligent document processing (IDP), and “human in the loop” are joined by a newcomer, 4 agents (agents as in agentic AI), and are orchestrated to make for an end-to-end business process. You’ll get more details about precisely what these 4 agents do in our next section.

1. Supplier: Emails a PDF invoice to the business for payment
2. Technology: Communications mining scoops up all supplier emails to get them ready for invoice processing
3. Technology: IDP extracts and verifies invoice data automatically, getting PO data from your ERP system and comparing the invoice and purchase order
4. Technology: An invoice guidelines agent follows standard operational business procedures
5. Technology: A match invoice agent matches the invoice
6. Technology: 2 Different Possibilities…
   1. The match invoice agent rules that all’s well and auto approves and processes the payment, and the supplier receives payment
   2. If the match invoice agent decides further investigation is needed, it sends it to the investigate discrepancy agent, and the steps that follow are detailed below
7. Technology: 2 Different Possibilities…
   1. The investigate discrepancy agent either auto accepts the invoice, letting it get auto approved, automatically processed, and sent to the supplier, or:
   2. The investigate discrepancy agent routes it to the resolution agent, causing the following steps to occur
8. AP Staff (human in the loop): If step 7. b. applies, AP staff uses a human in the loop (HITL) Action App to either:
   1. Accept the invoice, letting it get auto-approved, automatically processed, and the payment is sent to the supplier, or
   2. Send the invoice down the escalation path with the resolution agent, which contacts the supplier asking for missing information. Once it’s received, the invoice is auto-approved, automatically processed, and the payment is sent to the supplier

“Last Mile” Agents for AP: A Closer Look

As we just observed in the agentic AI breakdown above, four different agents work together. Why are all four of them necessary? Well, their distributed capabilities and access mean that:

• Maintenance is simpler
• Each step and action that gets performed is easy to track
• Performance is better
• The segregation of tasks that four agents provide makes for better governance
• You get more granular control over the systems and the actions each agent can access or perform

Here’s a closer look at what each agent does:

The Summarize Guidelines Agent

This agent, which we saw an example of in the invoice guidelines agent above, is highly adaptable and easy to maintain. All that’s required is for a business user to update the guideline document that the agent relies on using natural language. With this, you don’t have to worry about coding in the guideline document, while ensuring that IT still manages the platform’s configuration and access.

The Match Invoice Agent

A matching invoice agent takes matching rules from the summarize guidelines agent. It also leverages extracted data using DU Specialized AI from the invoice, which makes it accurate and reliable. It also uses extracted PO information from SAP, leveraging the PO number from the original invoice document. With these capabilities, you can take on more complex or edge cases that you couldn’t have managed using traditional automation or even AI-powered intelligent automation, and it requires less of your staff’s time, too, from business users to developers.

The Investigate Discrepancy Agent

In the case of a discrepancy, say a check fails or some information is missing, the investigate discrepancy agent can explore why the discrepancy is occurring and give you clear reasoning. That’s because it’s able to read information about orders as well as vendor details and notes, all coming from your ERP system. It’s also helped by the fact that this agent can understand contractual terms, returns made, damaged items, and your company’s policies.

The Resolution Agent

The resolution agent tries to resolve the discrepancy at hand by using the capabilities and resources it has access to. This could look like:

There’s a mismatch in the amount expected to be paid. Upon investigation, it’s discovered that it’s due to the vendor failing to follow the 20% discount on all purchases, as agreed in the original contract. So, the resolution agent decides the best solution is to contact the vendor, so it drafts an email for the human subject matter expert to review and send.

Alternatively, the resolution agent can help in scenarios like apparent mismatches, being able to reason over the case and understand that it is actually a match, despite none of the rules applying. Before agentic AI, only a human was capable of this level of cross-document reasoning and judgement at scale, but with agentic AI, it’s possible.

Bringing It All Together

You’ve got agents, you’ve got employees, and maybe even robots. How do they all work together?

Agentic orchestration. See, agentic orchestration brings all these pieces together to manage all required workflows and thought processes that go into processing an invoice, and it does so seamlessly to create end-to-end automation for most invoices, with targeted human oversight where risk or policy requires it.

And to ensure that everything’s firing properly, agentic automation gives you the ability to design, streamline, and gain insights into how your invoice process is running.

If you’d like to learn more about agentic AI’s application in accounts payable, drop a question or comment in the chat below. We’d love to hear from you.