Robotic Process Automation for Invoice Automation

The word appears highly technical, isn’t it? In a layman language, it can be said as the software that can be easily framed to perform the basic tasks which are repetitive across all the applications. RPA frames and deploys a software robot that has the capacity to launch and easily operate other tasks which are programmed in its configurations. We tell you the meaning of RPA briefly and more questions about Robotic Process Automation for Invoice Automation raised by people.

What is Invoice Automation?

Invoice automation refers to the automation software that converts the scanned invoice and documents into image and text-searchable documents. The different range of invoices can also be defined into the software so that we can easily remember from which range an invoice can get defined into the software. The captured and registered data further gets into the ERP systems.

Invoice Automation further includes:

• Import of images through scanning or E-mail.
• Identifying different vendors and business units which associate with the invoice
• Extracting Data
• Exporting the Extracted data and images

Why use RPA for Invoice Automation?

The accounting firms receive hundreds and thousands of invoices from all the vendors for processing the data. The accounts departments of the company in a manual manner analyses every invoice information into the accounting system and transfers it further in the hierarchical structure to initiate the payment. The efficiency of the process totally depends on the team and how many hours are provided by the accounting department.

Yup! We all know that the working hours of such jobs are faulty.

Any delay and errors while manually processing the major question on the functioning of the accounting department. Manual processes can be too tedious and time-consuming and such automation in this process will pace up the processes and the human accountants will be more efficient. RPA solutions have been establishing invoice processing at a faster rate. The tasks which consume more time and assets can now be automated to get it completed faster providing more stable and affordable results. Such a webcast will introduce new attendees by leveraging RPA invoices automation.

Invoice Processing with UiPath RPA tool

UiPath’s software bots are enabling to keep a continuous track of the dedicated folders where invoices get to save in the PDF format. When the bots can detect the presence of invoices in the folder, they can extract all the information from the same document. UiPath makes into use 3 OCR technologies such as:

• Microsoft OCR
• Google OCR
• Abbyy OCR

By making the use of OCR technology and natural language processing potentiality. Thereby, Software robots can read the information and data which recognize on the invoice. Once the invoice gets considered by the bots, it can further read and search specific data from all the invoices. The data which gets collected by the RPA bots can be further modified and configured as per the choices of the use cases. Robots can extract the data from every invoice and they can use the credentials to inaugurate the company’s resource planning system if it doesn’t get open. The robots can start processing their invoices on one by conveying the most suitable information. 

Invoice processing with Automation anywhere RPA tool

In Automation, IQ Bots are the only intellectual bots that provide benefits to AI and Machine Learning for the invoices end-to-end.

• Computer vision technology helps in bringing down the setup time by 90%.
• Machine Learning in a rapid way triggers down the validation costs
• Built-in RPA automation processes the invoices to initiate the payments.

Alright! We got to know the benefits of automation. But how does it actually work

How does it actually work?

The steps involved in its working are as follows:

1. Monitoring of Invoices

Invoices arrive in companies as structured XML documents right from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), PDF’s and even the image files through Emails and hard copy documents. This EDI software is well equipped and can automatically process the structured XML documents, complete the crucial payments, and even the accounting entries. Digital invoices, RPA bots or a simple automation tool to send Emails can flag the emails with invoices and further forward it for data extraction. There are companies that use a dedicated Email address for invoices for further simplification of voice monitoring. For hard-copy invoices, the companies are switching it to use a single address which helps in centralizing the invoice scanning.

2. Invoice capture

The RPA bots gather Extracting relevant details (Bank Accounts, ordered item) from all the invoices. If the bots are not satisfied with the results and they still have any doubts then it is further sent to the human accountants to check it manually. 

4. Recording invoice-related information

For this, invoices without the purchase orders need to insert in the general accounting ledger account. Even machine learning solutions that used to match the invoices into the accounts.

Concluding Lines

Invoice automation will take the accounting industry to the next level. The firms that implemented RPA bots will have immunity over their competing firms. Further, human accountants will get the time to use for the betterment of the firm rather than just investing their time in laborious and repetitive tasks. 

About the Author

Parth Patel is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of SyS Creations which is a top provider of RPA in Accounting. Operating the IT Infrastructure of SMEs and startups keeps him on his toes and his passion for helping others keeps him motivated.

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