Business

How to Create a Workflow for Automated Invoice Processing

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By Admin Desk

Do you want to automate the processing of invoices? Consider using Medius pre-trained Invoice OCR or creating your own bespoke Invoice handling procedure. To discover more about medius AP use cases, you can also request a demo! This blog provides an in-depth look at the current technology that can help you accomplish so.

Checkout procedure for finance departments is a jumbled mess, with invoices arriving in every format imaginable: paper bills, PDFs, scanned PDFs, emails, and so on. Seasonally, the quantities fluctuate, with peaks being particularly busy for finance employees. During these periods, invoice capture utilizing manual data entry into systems leads to issues like lost papers and tally inconsistencies.

In this article, Medius discusses what an ideal “Automated Invoice Processing” system looks like, as well as its benefits and drawbacks.

Software for Invoice Automation

The following steps are usually included in the Procure to Pay cycle:

Any invoice processing consists of three steps:

  • Scanning the physical invoice
  • Applying business rules to the data on the invoice
  • Data entry into any ERP

On the market today, there are two types of invoice processing software:

Kofax, Tipalti, and Abby are rule-based OCR softwares. Medius and Rossum are intelligent OCR software. Before pushing the final details into the ERP for payment processing, the software should intelligently extract the relevant information and validate it according to business criteria such as mapping to a Purchase order number. As businesses add/churn vendors, rule-based systems don’t scale well, and developing new rules every time is an inefficient procedure.

Cognitive Capture of Invoices

Medius invoice OCR solution captures invoice data regardless of format by combining the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence with lower computational costs. There’s no need to set up rules anymore.

Extraction from a Table

After the tables have been found, the information is extracted in this phase. How the content is formatted and what content is present in the table are both important considerations. As a result, it’s critical to comprehend all of the obstacles before developing an algorithm.

Dense Content: The cells’ content can be either numeric or textual. The textual content, on the other hand, is frequently dense, with unclear short bits of information and the usage of acronyms and abbreviations. Tables must be deciphered, and abbreviations and acronyms must be enlarged in order to be understood.

Font Styles, Colors, and Height: Fonts come in a variety of styles, colors, and heights. medius needs to make sure they’re generic and easy to recognize. Few font families, particularly those classified as cursive or handwritten, are difficult to remove. As a result, adopting a nice typeface and suitable formatting aids the algorithm in effectively identifying the information.

Table text lines are responsive to a predefined threshold in multiple page PDFs and page breaks. It’s also tough to tell which tables are which when cells cover numerous pages. It’s tough to tell the difference between tables on a multi-table page. Tables that are sparse and irregular are difficult to deal with. As a result, graphic ruling lines and content layout should be employed in tandem for recognizing table sections.

Advantages

  • Reduce the number of keystrokes written by over 90% and take advantage of early payment incentives.
  • Productivity: By eliminating the time-consuming chore of manual data entry, your finance team can focus on other vital responsibilities. 75 percent more quickly
  • Analytics: Using machines, you can now extract a lot more data a lot faster, allowing for detailed analysis of inefficiencies and bottlenecks in business operations.
  • On-premises: medius recognizes that this is confidential information for your company. On-premises deployment of Medius AP Automation software is possible.

The process of invoicing has evolved over time

Over time, the process of assessing bills has changed dramatically. The process of invoice processing has gone through three primary phases as a result of technological advancements.

Reviewing manuals is the first phase

Consider a scenario in which a company is reimbursing its regular vendors for the expenses incurred over the month.

In order to process invoices, the following actions are taken:

People are expected to deliver many bills to the point of contact for the concerned organization in person.

This individual would then transmit all of the invoices to a reviewer, who would thoroughly examine each document. This entails writing down or entering each detail into software, such as the purchaser’s name, the store from which the purchase was made, the date and time of the purchase, the items purchased their costs, discounts, and taxes.