The accounting expertise disaster is altering how companies deal with their funds. With the US market needing 340,000 new accountants and 45% of companies struggling to draw expertise, extra corporations are turning to specialised expense administration suppliers to deal with their accounting operations.
However this is the catch: These service suppliers face the identical expertise scarcity.
We lately labored with one such supplier who processed over 50,000 payments and invoices month-to-month for his or her purchasers. As extra corporations got here to them for assist, they bumped into the identical impediment: they could not rent sufficient individuals to maintain up with the high-volume workload. It obtained to a degree the place they needed to flip down new purchasers.
Let me take you thru how the service supplier applied automated bill processing and located a strategy to bulk-process payments and invoices with out always including extra employees.
What occurs when rising bill and invoice quantity breaks doc processing
The expense administration supplier in query focuses on serving to organizations optimize their working expenditure. As a Enterprise Course of Outsourcing (BPO) accomplice, they deal with the whole lot from utility and telecom bills to IT prices—processing payments, validating costs, and offering detailed analytics. They assist AP groups in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and authorities organizations scale back their workload whereas delivering value financial savings by means of higher expense administration.
Nonetheless, as this supplier’s enterprise grew quickly, dealing with near 50,000 utility payments and invoices month-to-month grew to become greater than only a processing problem. It uncovered elementary operational constraints that threatened their capability to scale and ship worth to purchasers.
This is what occurred:
1. Handbook processing grew to become a bottleneck: Their staff relied on guide knowledge entry and will solely course of about 100 invoices per particular person per day. It created a rising backlog and restricted their capability.
2. Expertise scarcity worsened issues: Discovering and retaining certified in-house accounting analysts to supervise the method and guarantee accuracy grew to become more and more troublesome and costly. This made it more durable to scale their staff and meet rising calls for.
3. Consumer service suffered in consequence: Processing inaccuracies and inefficiencies meant delays, errors, and, finally, sad purchasers. In addition they struggled to fulfill consumer deadlines, resulting in potential penalties.
4. Revenue margins had been squeezed: Elevated labor prices and SLA penalties reduce into their profitability, making it more durable to spend money on development and innovation.
5. Progress alternatives had been restricted: They could not effectively onboard new purchasers or tackle new enterprise alternatives. It put them on the again foot in opposition to rivals with higher techniques.
They wanted to keep up a big staff of knowledge entry clerks always to key within the sheer quantity of payments and invoices. Whereas they had been in a position to outsource a few of it, the inherent limitations of guide processing remained.
The tipping level was when the service supplier began turning down new enterprise as a result of their operations couldn’t scale to serve them.
Why bulk bill processing grew to become difficult
Check out a typical utility invoice, it’d look like a easy doc to course of. However it may possibly shortly turn into a headache if you’re processing 1000’s of them in bulk every month. Extra so if you’re aiming for the accuracy and element wanted for efficient expense administration.
Every bill comprises crucial knowledge factors that should be extracted and validated: account numbers, service addresses, meter readings, utilization knowledge, cost descriptions, and fee phrases.
This is a fast glimpse into how difficult the utility invoice processing workflow was:
- Each utility invoice is completely different
- Lots of of utility corporations, every with distinctive bill codecs—some even utilizing 7-8 completely different layouts
- Some utility corporations ship each day payments, others month-to-month
- Single invoices can run from 1 to 372+ pages
- Every format wants particular dealing with
- Billing data is not easy
- A number of meter readings for various providers (electrical energy, gasoline, water) might be scattered throughout the doc
- Service addresses for multi-location purchasers could be unfold throughout pages, or buried inside tables
- Cost descriptions lacked consistency (“Buyer Cost” in a single invoice and “Cust. Chg.” in one other)
- Similar costs would possibly seem a number of instances on a single bill, requiring guide revisions
- Accuracy necessities are strict
- Meter readings should match their corresponding costs
- Knowledge wants validation earlier than system import
- Errors might result in incorrect consumer stories, flawed monetary insights, and missed optimization alternatives
- Processing delays result in SLA penalties
These complexities imply guide processing or fundamental OCR options, which regularly battle with inconsistent layouts and sophisticated knowledge relationships, wouldn’t be sufficient. They wanted an answer that would not solely deal with excessive quantity but additionally adapt to the intricate particulars and variations of their purchasers’ utility payments.
Reworking high-volume bill processing with AI and automation
The expense administration supplier knew they wanted to automate bill processing earlier than development grew to become unattainable. Nonetheless, with 50,000+ month-to-month invoices, advanced validation necessities, and strict consumer SLAs, they could not afford any drops in accuracy or service high quality throughout the transition.
That is when their CFO found Nanonets. Our one-shot studying, customizable validation flows, hands-on help for advanced vendor setups, and talent to deal with multi-page tables satisfied them that we might meet their particular wants:
- Distinctive doc layouts
- Advanced knowledge extraction wants like a number of meter readings and repair addresses
- Excessive-volume processing with constant accuracy
- Validation necessities for his or her system import
Working with the supplier, we took a scientific method to automation. Slightly than disrupting their total workflow without delay, we began with a vendor-by-vendor method to validate accuracy and construct confidence.
Right this moment, their automated workflow processes a good portion of their 50,000 month-to-month payments and invoices. Right here’s the way it works:
1. Doc consumption
- Their staff collects invoices all through the day by means of a number of channels (mail, consumer emails, utility firm portals, and bodily invoices)
- On the finish of every workday, they place all collected invoices into a chosen SharePoint folder
- The SharePoint folder construction can go as much as 3 ranges deep (e.g., major folder → vendor folder → date folder)
- Nanonets checks the SharePoint folders each 3-5 minutes for brand new information
- When new information are detected, Nanonets routinely imports them
Observe: Backup strategies embody direct add by means of the Nanonets interface, electronic mail forwarding to a devoted mannequin electronic mail tackle, and different cloud storage choices (Google Drive, Dropbox)
2. Preliminary processing
- As soon as imported, Nanonets’ AI mannequin begins extraction instantly
- System identifies and processes:
- A number of meter readings as desk buildings
- Advanced cost descriptions
- Service addresses throughout pages
- Fee phrases and dates
- Constructed-in validation checks the payments for:
- Subject completeness
- Date format accuracy
- Quantity validity
- Required data presence
Observe: Their staff adopted an end-of-day batch add method, permitting our system to course of the whole lot in a single day. This ensures all paperwork uploaded throughout the day are processed and prepared for overview the following morning.
3. Error dealing with and high quality management
Error dealing with includes automated checks, adopted by guide critiques for corrections.
Among the automated checks performed by Nanonets:
- Flags lacking fields
- Identifies mismatched meter readings
- Catches incorrect cost descriptions
- Tracks accuracy charges by vendor
The processing staff then critiques error logs and output each day for:
- Cost descriptions within the mistaken columns
- Service addresses throughout a number of areas
- Meter readings matching their costs accurately
When points are discovered, the staff investigates the foundation trigger, corrects extraction errors immediately within the Nanonets interface, and updates the AI Mannequin’s coaching information if wanted to enhance future accuracy. This steady suggestions loop helps preserve excessive accuracy charges throughout all distributors.
Observe: Each day error reporting was applied to forestall points from bleeding by means of your complete week.
4. Put up-processing and output
As soon as paperwork cross validation:
- System applies customized formatting guidelines to extracted knowledge
- Standardizes cost descriptions throughout distributors
- Knowledge is exported in customized CSV/Excel format
- Information are organized by vendor and date
- Knowledge is imported into the service supplier’s billing system
Observe: The staff processes 15,000-20,000 pages month-to-month this fashion, which may scale to 30,000+ pages.
5. Steady enchancment
We work with the service supplier to keep up and enhance processing high quality. Their staff identifies areas for enchancment and gives suggestions, whereas we constantly improve the AI mannequin’s accuracy. This includes:
- Common mannequin updates based mostly on their processing staff’s suggestions
- Targeted enhancements in advanced areas like cost descriptions
- Gradual onboarding of latest distributors to make sure secure efficiency
- Utilizing our analytics dashboard to observe and optimize efficiency
This collaborative method helps preserve excessive accuracy charges whereas steadily increasing processing capabilities.
The affect of automation on bulk bill processing
Inside three months of implementing Nanonets, the supplier noticed important outcomes. For starters, they managed to automate processing for ~12,000 invoices per thirty days. This highlights the system’s capability to deal with their high-volume wants.
For utility invoices from recognized distributors, the AI mannequin achieved processing speeds of 173-174 invoices in simply 5 minutes — a activity that will’ve required hours of guide knowledge entry.
However the affect went past simply velocity.
Processing effectivity
- Nanonets can now course of 46 out of fifty distributors shared by the shopper
- Just one consultant file required per vendor for AI mannequin coaching
- Automated doc consumption by means of SharePoint integration
- Bulk in a single day processing of 500 invoices each day
Operational enhancements
- Employees free of guide knowledge entry to concentrate on higher-value duties like consumer reporting and evaluation
- Sooner turnaround on consumer deliverables and assembly SLAs
- Extra constant processing high quality, with fewer errors and guide corrections
- Higher dealing with of advanced invoices with a number of meter readings and repair addresses
The trail ahead
The implementation remains to be within the early levels. With solely ~20% of the supplier’s complete invoice quantity at the moment automated, there’s important room for progress.
Their subsequent steps concentrate on:
Increasing automation protection
- Processing telecom invoices (estimated 10,000 month-to-month)
- Scaling to deal with ~30,000 payments and invoices month-to-month
- Persevering with to onboard new invoice codecs from completely different utility corporations effectively
- Constructing on their profitable utility bill automation
Technical integration
- Implementing API integration by summer time 2025 to allow direct knowledge circulate between Nanonets and their expense administration resolution
- Automating error corrections the place potential to cut back guide overview time
- Constructing a extra strong integration between Nanonets and their in-house options
Managing utility payments and invoices for a number of purchasers?
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Managing utility payments and invoices for a number of purchasers?
See how automation will help you develop with out including headcount. Ebook a demo to see how we will help automate your expense administration service.
