Are you tired of all those tasks that can make accounts payable (AP) a bit repetitive and tedious? Get an AI assistant to help you out.
Automating the tasks
One of the most critical functions in finance, AP depicts money that a company owes to vendors for services or products that it purchased on credit, appearing on the balance sheet as a liability. Entering invoice data, correcting data errors, searching for information across systems, and responding to calls and emails from suppliers and customers are all critical tasks. But doing them manually can lead to data entry errors, fraud, double payments, duplicate invoices, and slow processing.
At the same time, AP team leaders are currently dedicating more time to transaction processing than to managerial responsibilities. Instead of engaging in more collaborative activities with stakeholders, for example, AP managers often find themselves grappling with business rules, auditor guidelines, and corporate standards to carry out invoice processing and facilitate supplier payments.
Automating the process will help you transform your finance function in two ways. First, you can use AI Assistants (aka AI agents) to handle mundane tasks, allowing employees to explore more innovative ways to use analytic resources and connect business problems to data for better decision-making. And second, an AI assistant can help your team members become more motivated and engaged as they realize how the tool impacts their day-to-day job.
Training your assistant
Let’s not forget that AI learns what we humans teach it. When getting started with a new AI tool, treat it like a new member of the team. You wouldn’t expect a new employee to automatically know everything about the documentation you work with, so you would give specific instructions on how you expect the person to complete the task.
It’s the same with an AI tool. It’s a matter of giving exact instructions in the form of prompts and providing a logical, step-by-step process flow. The other key element is to provide the correct data.
Companies that are processing hundreds or thousands of invoices manually every month often experience data entry errors, omissions and common accounting mistakes due to incorrect data. If you haven’t told the tool that one of your vendors has a new address, how will it know? It will continue issuing the invoice to the wrong address until the human in charge makes the change.
Working together
The entire finance function is undergoing a profound digital transformation thanks to new technology such as generative AI that is disrupting traditional ways of working. Here’s some advice for teams that want to transform their AP function.
Start by learning the basics—the required mathematics, the processes, the principles that underpin accounting practices and the preparation of financial documents. Once you are well versed in the basics, let the AI tools do the drudgery and the boring bit. Your job will be to catch the errors. If you are an expert in the basics, you will recognize errors and realize they are not the result of wrong calculation made by the tool, but the result of incorrect data in the system.
Reaching the Next Level with Autonomous AP
True transformation will happen when humans and machines start working together seamlessly as a team. Automating financial document processing solutions bring numerous benefits:
- The solutions require no configuration or training but allow for 'human in the loop' validation when necessary.
- All critical financial documents, such as invoices and payments, are efficiently processed within existing ERP or CRM systems. This affords companies time to assess and revise key processes in tandem with their existing business systems.
- Documents are processed with an accuracy close to 100%, with human intervention as needed.
- Hundreds and thousands of documents are consistently processed, ensuring no backlog.
Learn more about Hypatos, a leading provider of AI-based document processing solutions, and how it is revolutionizing the way businesses manage and extract value from their documents. As a sponsor and presenter at SSOW, Hypatos is showcasing its innovative solutions and sharing insights on how AI and automation are transforming document-centric processes within shared services and outsourcing operations.