How to Choose AP Automation for the Way Your Business Actually Works

There are plenty of ways to automate accounts payable. ERP vendors, specialist AP platforms, expense management providers, and AI companies all offer solutions. Many promise faster invoice processing, easier approvals, and less manual work.

With so many options, how do you choose the right fit?

My answer starts with the depth of the questions you ask. Before comparing products, understand where your team spends time, how your processes work, and what happens when a transaction needs special handling.

A useful evaluation should follow an invoice through your business: from receipt and validation to approval, accounting, payment, and reconciliation. The best fit depends on how much of that journey you need to improve.

Follow one invoice through the business, and note where the time goes

1. 1

   Receipt

   Entering invoice details

2. 2

   Validation

   Chasing purchase orders or missing receipts

3. 3

   Approval

   Finding the right approver

4. 4

   Accounting

   Correcting coding, splitting costs between entities

5. 5

   Payment

   Authorizing payment under your policies

6. 6

   Reconciliation

   Reconciling payments

Across every stage: answering questions about invoice status

Start with where the time goes

“AP takes too much time” is a starting point. Break it down.

Is your team entering invoice details? Chasing purchase orders or missing receipts? Finding the right approver? Correcting coding? Splitting costs between entities? Reconciling payments? Answering questions about invoice status?

These are different problems. Faster invoice capture may help with data entry, but it may do little for a team whose biggest burden is resolving mismatches or chasing approvals.

Review a representative month of work. Measure both transaction volume and the effort spent at each stage. Include exceptions and month-end activity.

A relatively small group of difficult invoices may deserve more attention than a much larger group of straightforward ones. Let your actual workload determine what matters in the evaluation.

Make the process clear enough to automate

Before buying a solution, ask whether the underlying decisions are clear.

Who owns vendor records? When is a PO required? What evidence confirms receipt? Who can approve which amounts? What happens when the approver is unavailable? Who can change payment details?

You do not need a perfect process before starting. You do need enough clarity to configure rules, assign responsibility, and identify where judgment is required.

If the process varies by department or entity, decide which differences are necessary and which should be standardized. Ask the provider how easily your team can maintain those rules as the business changes.

Include process design in the implementation scope wherever those answers are still missing.

Decide how much belongs under one roof

Some businesses need invoice automation. Others need procurement, corporate cards, employee expenses, reimbursements, vendor onboarding, and payments to work together.

An integrated platform can be a good fit when those activities share policies, users, and reporting needs. A specialist AP solution can also work well alongside existing expense or procurement tools.

One platform, or a specialist alongside your existing tools?

One integrated platform

Procurement, cards, expenses, reimbursements, vendor onboarding, AP and payments together

Fits when

• Those activities share policies, users and reporting needs

Worth it only if

• It simplifies the work, not just the vendor list

Specialist AP solution

Alongside the expense or procurement tools you already use

Fits when

• Your existing tools work well for their part of the process

Worth it only if

• Each product performs its role well and the connections are dependable

Evaluate what the combined process will feel like for employees and finance:

• Will users have to enter the same information twice?
• Can vendor, accounting, and approval data stay consistent?
• Where will people check status?
• Can finance report across the full process?
• Who resolves a problem that crosses two systems?

“One platform” is useful when it simplifies the work. A connected set of products is useful when each performs its role well and the connections are dependable.

Ask whether it can move with your ERP

A separate AP solution can be a sensible choice, especially if you want the employee experience to continue through an ERP change.

But “integrates with your ERP” needs a closer look.

Does the integration support your required transactions, entities, dimensions, receipts, credit notes, attachments, and payment status? How does it handle failed transfers, corrections, and duplicate submissions? Who owns support when the systems disagree?

Then ask the longer-term question: if you replace your ERP, what can you retain and what must you rebuild?

A connector to another ERP is only part of the answer. Account mappings, approval rules, tax treatment, vendor records, open transactions, and historical evidence may also need work.

If you replace your ERP, what can you retain and what must you rebuild?

Item	Retain	Rebuild	Effort, cost and limits
Connector to the new ERP	○	○
Account mappings	○	○
Approval rules	○	○
Tax treatment	○	○
Vendor records	○	○
Open transactions	○	○
Historical evidence	○	○

Ask the provider to explain the migration effort, cost, and limitations. Decoupling can create flexibility, but that flexibility needs to be demonstrated.

Also review the automation available in your current ERP. Your selection should account for capabilities you already license and the cost of making them usable.

Give edge cases a central role in the evaluation

This is the part I would give the most attention.

A clean invoice with a matching PO and an available approver is a useful demonstration. Your evaluation also needs the transactions that routinely send your team back to email, spreadsheets, or manual corrections.

Bring examples such as:

• An invoice covering multiple POs or partial receipts.
• A price or quantity mismatch.
• A non-PO invoice requiring additional approval.
• A duplicate invoice or a credit note against an earlier transaction.
• A cost split across departments, projects, or legal entities.
• An invoice received after the accounting period has closed.
• A rejected invoice that is corrected and resubmitted.

For each scenario, ask the provider to show the complete resolution. Where does processing stop? Who receives the issue? What information do they see? Can they correct it and resume processing? Is the history preserved?

Edge-case scorecard: bring your own transactions to every demo

Scenario	Where does processing stop?	Who receives the issue?	What do they see?	Correct it and resume?	History preserved?
Invoice covering multiple POs or partial receipts	○	○	○	○	○
Price or quantity mismatch	○	○	○	○	○
Non-PO invoice needing additional approval	○	○	○	○	○
Duplicate invoice, or credit note against an earlier transaction	○	○	○	○	○
Cost split across departments, projects or legal entities	○	○	○	○	○
Invoice received after the period has closed	○	○	○	○	○
Rejected invoice, corrected and resubmitted	○	○	○	○	○

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Finance documentation, for example, describes receipt matching that can fail after a configured number of attempts, and review and correction before failed workflow submissions resume. These are the kinds of recovery paths worth examining.

A system does not have to automate every exception. It should make exceptions visible, explain what needs attention, and help the right person resolve them without losing control or context.

If AI is involved, ask how uncertain results are flagged, when human review is required, and which actions require explicit authorization.

Examine approvals and accounting depth together

“Supports approvals” leaves a lot unanswered.

Can routing depend on entity, department, project, amount, or type of spend? Can it handle delegation, escalation, multiple approvers, and reapproval after a material change? Are invoice approval and payment authorization handled according to your policies?

Then test the accounting scenarios that matter to your business.

For multiple entities, examine separate policies, currencies, tax rules, access, and reporting. For intercompany activity, ask how an invoice paid by one entity on behalf of another creates and reconciles the required entries. Selecting an entity from a dropdown does not demonstrate that full process.

For fixed assets, test an equipment invoice that needs capitalization, allocation, or construction-in-progress treatment. Where is the asset created? Who reviews the classification? What information reaches the ERP? How does the process distinguish an asset purchase from an operating expense?

Apply the same scrutiny to prepayments, accruals, and project costs where relevant. Establish which system performs each step and what still requires manual work.

Look for insights that help people act

Decide what you need to know after automation is running.

Which invoices are stuck, and why? Which approvals take the longest? Which vendors repeatedly create exceptions? How much work still requires manual intervention? What approved obligations are approaching payment?

Ask whether users can move from a report directly to the invoice and its supporting evidence.

Measure progress against the original problem. If approval delays were the main issue, track approval time. If exceptions consumed the team’s day, track the effort needed to resolve them. A processing count alone will not tell you whether the work became easier.

Compare the full cost and the delivery responsibility

License savings can be a valid objective, especially when many employees only need to submit expenses or approve transactions. Verify the licensing requirements for those roles, the integration, and any indirect access under the applicable contracts.

Compare the complete cost: subscriptions, invoice or usage charges, approver access, entity fees, implementation, connectors, additional modules, support, and future changes.

Compare the complete cost

Software

• Subscriptions
• Invoice or usage charges
• Approver access
• Entity fees
• Additional modules

Delivery

• Implementation
• Connectors
• Support
• Future changes

What remains

• The manual work that is left
• Pricing when volume grows
• Pricing when an entity is added
• Cost of an ERP change

Include the manual work that remains. Ask what happens to pricing when volume grows, another entity is added, or you change ERP.

Also evaluate the vendor and implementation partner. Who understands your accounting requirements? Who owns a failed integration? Which changes can your team configure, and which require paid assistance? Get those responsibilities into the proposal.

Choose with your own transactions

Before making the decision, run a pilot using a representative mix of your invoices, approvers, entities, and accounting scenarios.

Agree on success measures in advance: time saved, exception resolution effort, accounting accuracy, approval speed, user experience, and total cost. Record the gaps and confirm how they will be addressed.

My recommendation is to choose the solution that removes the work your team actually struggles with, handles your exceptions clearly, and supports the way your business needs to operate.

At Skalable, we believe the evaluation should begin with those questions. Understanding the process deeply is what makes it possible to recommend the right technology, and make it work in practice. If you would like a second view on your AP process, start with the Quick-win finder or read how we approach AP automation.