Accounts Payable Automation That Ends Manual Invoice Entry

Accounts payable automation is a system that handles supplier invoices end to end without manual data entry. It collects invoices from email or a supplier portal, extracts the supplier, invoice number, dates, line items and totals, matches them against purchase orders and goods receipts, sends them to the correct approver based on value or cost centre, and posts the approved bill to your accounting software. Your finance team reviews exceptions rather than typing every invoice.

Both Xero and QuickBooks expose an API for creating bills, attaching source documents and reading supplier records. We capture the invoice, extract the data, look up the supplier in your chart of accounts, then create the bill through that API with the original PDF attached. Approval happens before posting, so what lands in Xero or QuickBooks is already checked. Nothing is typed twice and the audit trail stays intact.

Marathon works at A$150 per hour, or on a fixed price once scope is agreed. A single-entity AP workflow covering capture, extraction, one approval step and posting to one accounting system is usually a two to four week build. Multi-entity, multi-currency or three-way matching against a purchase order and goods receipt takes longer. We give you a fixed figure after the discovery call, not before, because the cost turns on how your approvals actually work.

No. Automation sits around your existing finance system rather than replacing it. If you run Xero, QuickBooks, MYOB or Sage and it has an API, the automation posts into it. Replacing an accounting platform is a much larger project with its own risks, and it is rarely what a payables bottleneck actually calls for.

Packaged AP automation software gives you a fixed approval model and charges per invoice or per user, which works well if your process matches the product. A custom workflow matches your approval thresholds, your cost centres and your exception handling, and carries no per-invoice fee. We build on n8n, which can be self-hosted, so the cost does not rise with volume. The right answer depends on volume and how unusual your approvals are, and we will say plainly when packaged software is the better buy.

An automated accounts payable system covers four things: capture of the invoice from email or a portal, extraction of the supplier, invoice number, dates, line items and totals, approval routing by value or cost centre, and posting of the approved bill into your accounting software with the original attached. Anything that fails a check becomes an exception for a person to clear rather than a silent error in your ledger.

Usually not. Dedicated accounts payable approval software makes sense when you need a standalone approval record across many finance systems at once. For a single accounting platform, the approval step is better built into the same workflow that captures and posts the invoice, because it keeps one audit trail and removes a subscription. We build approvals so an approver can act from email or a chat message, with reminders, escalation and a full record of who approved what and when.

A single-entity build covering capture, extraction, one approval step and posting to one accounting system is typically two to four weeks. Approvals are usually where the delay sits rather than the typing, so we route each invoice by value, supplier, department or cost centre to the right approver, chase the ones that go quiet, escalate after a set period, and record who approved what and when. Approvers act from email or a chat message without logging into another system.

Yes. The same pattern works in reverse for receivables: raising invoices from your CRM or job records, sending them on a schedule, matching incoming payments against open invoices, and chasing overdue accounts automatically. Most clients start with payables because the manual effort is more concentrated there, then extend to receivables once the first workflow is running.

Modern document extraction handles clean supplier invoices reliably, and struggles with poor scans, unusual layouts and handwritten additions. We do not pretend otherwise. Every workflow we build sets a confidence threshold: invoices above it post automatically, invoices below it go to a person with the extracted fields pre-filled for correction. That keeps errors out of your ledger rather than hiding them.

It becomes an exception rather than a failure. The workflow holds the invoice, records what did not match, being quantity, price, or a missing goods receipt, and puts it in front of the person who can resolve it with both documents side by side. Nothing posts to your accounts until the mismatch is cleared.