AI Accounts Payable Automation
Turn incoming invoices into matched, approved, ready-to-pay entries — no manual keying.
- Project range
- $7,000–15,000
- AWS running cost
- $60–280/mo
- Time to deploy
- 4–6 weeks
- Best-fit industries
- Construction, Manufacturing
Executive summary
An accounts-payable engine that ingests invoices from any channel, extracts line-level data, and performs two- and three-way matching against purchase orders and receipts. Clean invoices flow straight to approval and payment staging; only genuine exceptions reach a human. It removes the keying, chasing, and reconciliation that make AP slow and error-prone.
Business problem
Accounts payable is a manual bottleneck: invoices arrive as email attachments and PDFs, get keyed by hand, and are matched to POs on spreadsheets. The result is late payments, missed early-pay discounts, duplicate payments, and no real-time view of what is owed.
Architecture
AWS services
Amazon S3
Storage- — Encrypted invoice intake and archive
- — Retention for audit
Amazon Textract
AI / ML- — Extract header and line-item data from invoices
AWS Lambda
Compute- — Orchestrate extraction, matching, and routing
- — Assemble payment-ready records
Matching engine
Compute- — Two- and three-way match to PO and receipt
- — Duplicate and tolerance checks
Amazon Bedrock
AI / ML- — Explain and resolve exceptions
- — Suggest GL coding and cost allocation
Amazon DynamoDB
Database- — Invoice records, match status, and approval state
Amazon EventBridge
Messaging- — Trigger processing and approval routing
ERP / accounting adapters
Integration- — Sync vendors and POs, post approved bills
- — Stage payments
Amazon CloudWatch
Observability- — Logs, metrics, and cost alarms
Data flow
- 1
Invoices arrive by email or upload and land encrypted in S3; EventBridge triggers processing.
- 2
Textract extracts header and line items; the matching engine runs two- and three-way matching against POs and receipts.
- 3
Clean invoices are coded and routed to approval; Bedrock explains exceptions and proposes fixes for the rest.
- 4
Records and status are tracked in DynamoDB with a full audit trail and duplicate detection.
- 5
Approved bills post to the accounting system or ERP and are staged for payment on the right terms.
Security considerations
- Invoice and vendor data encrypted at rest and in transit.
- Segregation of duties between capture, approval, and payment.
- Duplicate and anomaly checks to prevent erroneous or fraudulent payments.
- Least-privilege IAM; ERP and payment credentials in Secrets Manager.
Cost considerations
- Textract (per page) and Bedrock (per exception) are the main variable costs.
- Straight-through processing means AI reasoning runs only on exceptions.
- S3, DynamoDB, and EventBridge are inexpensive at rest.
Scalability
- Serverless throughout; absorbs month-end invoice surges.
- New vendors and formats onboard without code changes.
- Matching tolerances and approval routes are configurable per company.
Deployment roadmap
Phase 1 — Rules & connections
Weeks 1–2- — Define matching, tolerances, and approval routes
- — Provision AWS foundation and connect the accounting system
Phase 2 — Build & integrate
Weeks 3–5- — Build extraction, matching, and exception handling
- — Wire ERP posting and payment staging
Phase 3 — Pilot & tune
Week 6- — Pilot on a vendor subset
- — Tune matching and coding for straight-through rate
Future enhancements
- Early-payment discount capture optimization.
- Vendor portal for status and self-service.
- Spend analytics and duplicate-vendor cleanup.
- Cash-out forecasting into the finance dashboard.