Start with the decision after data entry
An invoice arrives in a shared inbox. Someone reads it, forwards it to a manager, waits for a reply, and then enters it into accounting. Reading the PDF faster helps little if nobody knows who can approve it.
Define the approval decision before selecting extraction software. This guide focuses on that decision and the accounting handoff. For the earlier step of reading documents, see the OCR and document automation guide.
Choose one supplier group or invoice type for the first workflow. Give a finance owner responsibility for the rules and an operator responsibility for unresolved items. Those may be different people.
Before adding software, check the approval features already available in your accounting system and measure the work they leave unresolved. Map existing approval rules before creating another layer. Low handling effort or a configuration fix may make a custom integration unnecessary; invoice count alone does not settle that decision.
Write the approval rules in plain language
Record who may approve each invoice type, what evidence they need, and who covers absences. Use your organization’s actual spending limits; do not copy a generic monetary threshold from a software demo.
Where purchase orders and receipts exist, compare the invoice with both. An ordered item is not necessarily a received item. Where there is no purchase order, name the alternative evidence and the person authorized to accept it.
For example, a hypothetical restaurant group could route a supplier invoice to the location manager to confirm what arrived, including short deliveries or damaged items, then to finance to resolve a price difference or an expected supplier credit. The system can move the document and show the mismatch without deciding that the supplier should be paid.
| Check | Evidence to retain | When to stop for review |
|---|---|---|
| Supplier identity | Approved supplier record | New supplier or changed payment details |
| Duplicate invoice | Supplier, invoice reference, amount, prior record | Possible repeat, even with a different file name |
| Goods or services | Receipt, contract, or authorized confirmation | Missing evidence or disputed delivery |
| Amount and currency | Invoice and agreed commercial terms | Difference that exceeds your approved rule |
| Approval authority | Approver, decision, time, document version | Approver lacks authority or is unavailable |
| Accounting handoff | Destination record identifier | Submission outcome is unknown |
Do not use invoice number alone as a universal duplicate key: different suppliers can use the same number. Define how credits, revised invoices, and partial deliveries relate to the original record. A possible duplicate should enter review, not disappear silently.
Separate extraction, approval, and payment
An extraction tool proposes fields. Validation checks formats and relationships. An authorized person or a specifically approved business rule decides whether the invoice can proceed. Payment release is another step with its own authority.
Keep supplier bank-detail changes out of automatic approval. Have finance verify them through its established independent process. A valid-looking PDF is not evidence that new payment instructions are legitimate.
If you use AI extraction, show the source document beside the proposed values. Test on representative documents, including poor scans and unfamiliar layouts. A model’s confidence score is not a substitute for matching the right supplier, currency, and business record.
Make the exception queue usable
Each unresolved invoice needs a reason, an owner, an age, and a next action. “Processing failed” is less useful than “receipt missing; location manager must confirm delivery.” Provide a backup owner for absences and an agreed escalation point before a due date is missed.
If an invoice changes after approval, preserve the earlier decision and require review of the changed version. Do not let an attachment replacement silently inherit approval. Record who changed the data and why.
Start with a small manual review queue if the team can clear it reliably. More routing rules are useful only when they remove a real bottleneck.
Prove the accounting handoff
Distinguish “approved,” “sent,” and “recorded in accounting.” If a request times out, the destination may already contain the invoice. Check its result before repeating the write. Store a stable reference so a retry does not create another payable.
Somnio’s CRM automation case study describes using external order identifiers to prevent duplicate imports and reconciling records before cutover. That is relevant integration evidence, not an invoice-approval case study or proof of accounts-payable savings.
Reconcile source invoices with destination records during the pilot. Review missing items, duplicates, changed values, and rejected submissions. Keep the existing payment process until finance accepts the new handoff.
Run a small, measurable pilot
Use redacted examples of a normal invoice, a repeat submission, a revised total, a missing receipt, and an unavailable approver. Agree the expected result for each before implementation. Test a destination timeout as well as a successful submission.
Measure staff handling time, time waiting for approval, and unresolved items separately. Faster extraction can coexist with slower approval. Include correction and review time when estimating the benefit; the automation pilot metrics guide explains this distinction.
Before the pilot, measure the current workflow on comparable invoices and agree with finance what improvement would justify expansion. Include acceptable correction rates and unresolved items, not only processing speed.
Your first deliverable can be one marked-up approval flow with named owners. If the accounting system already supports it, configuration may be enough. If the process crosses several systems, bring that flow to a Workflow Audit before commissioning a custom integration.
