Accounts Payable Automation
Rethink Accounts Payable with AI Agents and Automation

Invoices arrive in every format from every vendor, and someone on your team keys them in, chases the approval, and matches them against the PO. AI agents and automation take that on inside the ERP you already run, so your team spends its day on the exceptions, the vendor relationships, and the close.

What is AP automation? AP automation captures invoices however they arrive, reads the data off them, checks it against your purchase orders and receipts in your ERP, routes anything that needs a person to the right approver, and posts what comes through clean. Your team keeps the approvals, the exceptions, and the vendor conversations. 

Achieve More With the Team You Have

Change how your AP department handles invoice processing without adding people to do it. Automation takes on the keying, matching, and chasing, which shortens processing time per invoice, reduces cost per invoice, and gives your team back the hours those steps were eating.

Processing Time Reduction per Invoice
0 %
Processing Cost Improvements per Invoice
0 %
Reduction in Late Payments
0 %
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Transforming Accounts Payable with Automation

Intelligent automation is the foundation we have built for decades, and it still does much of the capture and routing work in AP. What is different now is that it runs alongside AI agents rather than alone, which is how the harder cases get handled: the non-PO invoice, the vendor who changed their format, the line item that does not match. That combination is what makes an Agentic Enterprise, where people, agents, automation, data, and your core systems work together across a whole process.

Why AP Automation

Enhance Your AP Efficiency with Advanced Automation

Automating invoice processing makes your AP operation faster, more secure, and easier to see into. Our AI Optimization Team does that build work embedded in yours, prioritizing what to automate first, delivering it on one governed foundation, and improving what is in production after go-live. We are measured by the value delivered, not by hours billed. 40+ years of process expertise and thousands of delivered use cases sit behind it. 

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Save Time and Money

Reduce the time your team spends on manual invoice processing, so those hours go to exception handling, vendor management, and the close instead.

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Special Tools for Managers

Provide managers with real-time dashboards and tools to monitor invoice status, address bottlenecks, and make informed decisions.

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Improve Security

Enhance the security of your invoice processes by ensuring sensitive documents are handled securely and tracked accurately. Plus, AI can help with fraud prevention by identifying anomalies like duplicated invoices or suspicious vendor patterns.

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Quick Return on Investment (ROI)

Agents and automation absorb spikes in invoice volume and handle formats that vary by vendor, so peak periods do not become backlogs and your team is not the constraint. 

Customer Story

Clay Lacy Aviation Boosts Efficiency by Automating 95% of Invoices

Get the story of how Clay Lacy Aviation automated its accounts payable process, including automating 95% of its invoice processing, reducing its error rate from 10% to 0.2%, improving the customer experience, making more efficient use of staff’s time, and eliminating their reliance on paper.

Discover the Impact

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How to Use It

Apply Agentic AI and Automation to Your Invoice Process

From capturing invoices to routing them for approval, integrating with core systems, and reporting on what is moving, AP automation covers the full invoice lifecycle. Each capability below extends the same governed foundation rather than adding another disconnected tool.

Capabilities Include

  • Invoice Capture & Data Extraction
  • Automated Invoice Routing
  • Electronic Approvals
  • Integration with Core Systems
  • Real-Time Dashboards & Reporting
  • Customizable Business Rules
  • Vendor Management
  • Robotic Process Automation

Invoice Capture & Data Extraction

Automate the capture of invoices from various sources and extract relevant data to simplify your accounts payable process.

  • Capture invoices from fax, mail, email, and EDI
  • Extract data automatically, eliminating manual data entry
  • Store invoices in a centralized system for easy access
  • Reduce errors and improve data accuracy

Automated Invoice Routing

Ensure invoices are processed quickly and efficiently by automatically routing them to the appropriate business units or managers.

  • Route invoices to the correct department or manager
  • Set up rules for automatic routing based on invoice type or amount
  • Track the status of invoices in real-time
  • Reduce processing time and avoid bottlenecks

Electronic Approvals

Speed up the approval process by allowing managers to review and approve invoices electronically from any device. When invoices are prioritized, you can avoid missed opportunities for early pay discounts and positively impact vendor negotiations.

  • Approve invoices from desktop or mobile devices
  • Receive notifications for pending approvals
  • Add comments or additional data during the approval process
  • Complete approvals faster and with greater flexibility

Integration with Core Systems

Connect your core systems, including your ERP, so your people and your agents work from the same data.

  • Allow users to stay in your core systems like Workday, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, JD Edwards, etc.
  • Compliment master data, improve productivity with intuitive search, and reduce manual data entry
  • Accelerate processes with seamless connection
  • Centralize content directly within industry-specific systems to drive further insights

Real-Time Dashboards & Reporting

Gain visibility into the status of invoice processing with real-time dashboards and reporting. AI can also check invoices against tax codes and validate TINs, and every action leaves an audit trail, so compliance reporting draws on consistent data. 

  • Monitor invoice processing status in real time
  • Identify and address bottlenecks quickly
  • Adjust workload distribution as needed
  • AI generates spend analytics, supplier performance metrics, and cost optimization recommendations

Customizable Business Rules

Customize business rules within the AP automation software to fit your organization’s unique needs and adapt to changing business conditions.

  • Set up rules for invoice approval and routing
  • Make real-time changes to approval processes
  • Ensure invoices are delivered to the correct people
  • Adjust approval rules as the business changes, without a development request

Vendor Management

Link vendor case management profiles and documents together in one place for enhanced visibility and control, making it easier to manage contracts, terms, and expiration dates.

  • Manage vendor contracts, terms, and expiration dates in one place
  • Allow personnel to interact with vendor-specific information, compliance documents, contract details, and correspondences
  • Standardize vendor sourcing and improve decision-making
  • Reduce risk through greater visibility and vendor governance

Robotic Process Automation

Speed up invoice processing and compliance monitoring with RPA and AI. Bots take on the repetitive steps, which reduces manual data entry errors and matches transactions in seconds during reconciliation.

  • Bots complete repetitive tasks at rapid speed with capabilities like cross-checks, auto-alerts, site logins, etc.
  • Finance | Review invoices, POs, and bills and perform ERP/CRM lookups
  • Increase data accuracy and reduce reliance on manual data entry
  • Effortlessly manage the receipt, approval and payment of invoices
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Boost Your AP Efficiency with Intelligent Automation

Let our experts guide you toward the right AP automation solution to streamline your invoice processing, enhance security, and empower your team, giving you more time to focus on strategic tasks.

Let’s Talk

Customer Stories

Every Success Story Starts With a Vision

Our customers inspire us every day. It’s our privilege to help them achieve their goals and reimagine what’s possible.

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Automating our accounts payable process has allowed us to maintain existing staffing levels as our fleet grows, supporting the company’s continued growth and scalability.

“Clay Lacy Aviation’s managed fleet has expanded from 50 to over 140 business jets nationwide. Automating our accounts payable process has allowed us to maintain existing staffing levels as our fleet grows, supporting the company’s continued growth and scalability.”

A row of private jets is parked on the tarmac in front of a building with the sign "Clay Lacy.

Avel Trinidad

Senior Manager of Accounting Business Operations, Clay Lacy Aviation

We like the integration between OnBase and our financial system. Now, they talk to each other.

“We like the integration between OnBase and our financial system. Now, they talk to each other, and everything is in one place, so you don’t have to go into different folders and applications to find invoices and relevant files. It’s all in Unity now, which is amazing.”

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Tracy Engbloom

Director of Financial Information, Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin

Accounts payable has been transformed from a paper-pushing payment process to a flexible, time-saving solution.

“I love this solution. Accounts payable has been transformed from a paper-pushing payment process to a flexible, time-saving solution. We no longer spend time pushing physical paper through the process and filing that paper once we’re done with it.”

Director of Finance, Wis-Pak

See What Customers Are Saying

The time was right for us to implement OnBase in accounts payable, and I was very happy to see this vision finally come into reality because it has been a real benefit for the organization. Not only does our team love it, but most of the users are happy with it, too. And we‘re already talking about what we‘re going to do next using these tools.

Jessica Rogers-Heintz

Senior VP of Finance and Administration, Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin

Integrating workflow into our accounts payable operation allowed us to realize the full potential of an automated workflow solution that has proved to be nothing short of a game changer for Clay Lacy Aviation.

Brad Wright

Chief Financial Officer, Clay Lacy Aviation

Accounts Payable Automation FAQs

AP automation captures invoices however they arrive, reads the data off them, checks it against your purchase orders and receipts in your ERP, routes anything that needs a person to the right approver, and posts what comes through clean. Your team keeps the approvals, the exceptions, and the vendor conversations. 

Yes, and this is where AI agents earn their place over rules-based capture. Non-PO invoices, vendors who change their format, and line items that do not match are exactly the cases templates fail on. An agent reads the document, works out what it is looking at, and routes what it cannot resolve to a person. 

The system checks each invoice against what it has already seen and against your vendor records, then flags anomalies like duplicate submissions, unusual amounts for a vendor, or changed banking details. It flags them for review rather than blocking them outright, because a person should make that call. 

They route to a person, which is the point rather than a failure. A well-built AP process is designed around a clean straight-through path and a clear exception path. Your team sees the exceptions with the context attached instead of working through every invoice to find them. 

No. AP automation is designed to work with the ERP you already run, keeping your team in the systems they know. What matters is how deeply the integration reaches into your data and who maintains it as your ERP changes. 

That depends on invoice volume, how much of your intake is already electronic, and how many exceptions your current process creates. Starting with one process and measuring it is more reliable than any generic payback figure. 

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