Accounts payable automation

Accounts payable automation sells as document reading, and document reading is the easy half. The hard half is that the purchase order, the goods receipt and the invoice live in three different systems and nobody has ever joined them. Until they agree, a faster reader just approves the wrong number sooner.

Half your invoices need a person, and the clean half waits in line behind them. Your volume and your tolerance — not mine.

The clean invoices clear themselves; the rest stop, and say why

Tell me what your invoices look like

Two lines is plenty. How they arrive, and what has to be true before one gets paid. I read it myself and answer within one working day.

Tell me what your invoices look like

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Sergey Avakyan. You are writing to me, not to an inbox — I am the whole company, and I am the one who builds it. More about me →

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A clean three-way match under a limit you set clears on its own; everything else stops with the reason named, on your desk to approve.

Projects go in the order they arrive — the earlier we start, the earlier yours is built.

• One place every invoice lands, whatever route it came in by — email, portal, paper, the supplier who still faxes.
• A three-way match against the order and the goods receipt you already keep — paid only when all three agree, under a limit you set, from a supplier you have paid before.
• A written list of what it must never pay alone — a new supplier's first invoice, bank details that changed since last time, anything above the limit — enforced in the code, not asked for in a prompt.
• Every stop named and every payment written down, one batch to approve each morning.

The joining problem underneath this is not new work: one clean store with a single true record per item — the thing that makes a match mean something — has run as one of the thirteen systems of mine live every day, out of sixty-five built.

€4,800 – €8,300

First clean matches clearing themselves in 2 weeks · usually finished in 6–10 weeks

A quarter of whatever figure we agree is due at the start, and that quarter is the only money at risk under the two-week promise — nothing else is due until it is running. What puts you at the bottom of that band: invoices from suppliers you have paid before, a tolerance you can already state out loud, and a purchase order and goods receipt that already live somewhere findable. What puts you at the top: three systems that were never joined, half the invoices arriving in a shape nobody agreed, and a rule for what may be paid that no one has written down. It sits in the middle band because reading the invoice is the easy half — the work is joining the three documents you already keep and agreeing, in writing, what it must never pay on its own.

• Two weeks, or the first stage is free. The first stage is one named piece, written down before we start. If it isn't running two weeks after the start, you pay nothing for it. The clock pauses on any day I'm waiting on you for an access or an answer.
• You write the pass mark before I write the code. Before anything is built we agree one sentence that says what working means — for example, "it takes the call, puts the booking in the calendar and never promises a price, on nine of every ten of fifty real calls". If it misses that, you choose: I finish it at my own cost, or you take that stage's money back and the work stays with me.
• Three months of fixes included. For three months after handover I fix whatever breaks in what I built, already paid for. Something you ask for later, or a service someone else changes underneath it, is new work — and I'll tell you which it is before I touch it.

“I” here is the whole company: AVAROPA SLU, one founder and one employee, both of them me. The guarantee is the company's, and I am the person who honours it — you deal with the same one throughout.

Every stage you have paid for is yours the moment it is paid — the code and the accounts, handed over as we go. Nothing here depends on you staying.

Prices exclude VAT — 21% in Spain, reverse charge for an EU business with a valid VAT number, and normally none outside the EU — confirmed on your invoice. The band is a starting point; the exact figure is agreed and fixed before any work begins, and it does not move after that. The two-week first piece is the part I guarantee; the finish windows are what a job this size usually takes.

The same problem, already solved elsewhere

• Data platform — the joining problem solved properly: several systems into one clean store, one true record per item, so the match is against a number everyone agrees on.
• Advertising manager — the same pull, merge and judge shape on different documents: roughly 600 campaigns gathered from separate places every morning, each coming out with a plain verdict on it.
• Systems watchdog — the answer to invoice processing that stopped quietly: a monitor whose only job is to notice the moment something stops running.

Honest answers

How much does accounts payable automation cost?

€4,800 to €8,300 as a one-off build, toward the top when three systems have never been joined and half the invoices arrive in a shape nobody agreed. A quarter is due at the start and is the only money at risk under the two-week promise; nothing else is due until it runs. The first hour is free, and you keep the answer whether or not you build.

Is accounts payable automation worth it?

It earns its keep on repetition. If you process invoices by the hundred and roughly half are clean, the clean half paying itself back frees real hours. At a handful of invoices a month it is not worth it — a shared inbox and one written rule beats a build.

What does accounts payable automation actually automate?

The matching, not the deciding. Invoices land in one place, the fields come off them, and each one is checked against the purchase order and the goods receipt within a tolerance you set. Clean matches go through. Everything else becomes a short exception list with the reason attached.

Is AP automation the same thing as invoice scanning?

No, and the difference is the whole cost of the project. Reading a PDF is solved. Getting your ordering system, your warehouse and your invoices to agree on what happened is the work, and it is the part that decides whether any of it can be trusted.

Can it pay an invoice on its own?

Under limits: a clean three-way match, below a threshold you set, from a supplier you have paid before, on bank details that have not changed. New supplier, changed bank details, or anything outside tolerance stops and goes to a person. That is where invoice fraud lives.

How long before it is doing anything useful?

The useful thing arrives in stages. One landing place for invoices helps immediately. Field extraction is next. The match against orders and receipts takes longest, because it depends on data you own, not on software I write — which is also why I ask to see a month of real invoices before quoting anything.

What if our suppliers send invoices five different ways?

That is normal and it is fine. Email, portal, PDF, scan, and the one supplier who still faxes all end in the same place. What matters is not the channel but whether the order and the receipt exist somewhere a machine can read.

Does this have to talk to our accounting system?

Eventually, or the approved invoice gets retyped and you have moved the manual step rather than removed it. Where a proper integration is not affordable yet, a scheduled file exchange both ways is honest, it works, and it can be replaced later without redoing the matching.