You get an invoice missing a PO number. Someone on your team drops what they’re doing to fix it. Another invoice arrives with a new layout and suddenly the system needs help again.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. For many accounts payable teams, automation hasn’t fully delivered on its promise. The goal is true touchless processing, invoices moving from supplier to payment without manual intervention. But if your tools still rely on OCR, you’re likely spending more time fixing issues than you should.
Let’s talk about what real AP automation looks like and why AI makes the difference.
What “Touchless” Actually Means
When we say “touchless,” we mean exactly that: invoices move from supplier to payment without anyone stepping in to review, retype, or reprocess.
For that to happen, several things need to work together automatically:
- Capture and intake of invoice data from any format
- Extraction of line items, totals, PO numbers, and more
- Validation against business rules or past behavior
- Pre-match to POs and receipts using 2-way or 3-way matching rules before invoices enter the ERP
- Predictive GL coding for non-PO invoices
- Automated routing for approvals
- Supplier issue resolution without AP intervention
When all of this happens behind the scenes, AP teams free up hours of manual work. But that level of automation depends on smarter technology than most legacy tools can offer.
Why OCR Isn’t Cutting It
OCR (optical character recognition) was a big improvement over manual keying. It scans documents and generates data.But its inherent error rate means each invoice must be reviewed.
Here’s where it falls short:
- Inconsistent accuracy: Unstructured invoices or new formats can trip it up
- Manual cleanup: When OCR can’t interpret something, it sends the invoice back for review
- Endless review: Every time a layout changes or new one arrives, someone has to adjust the template
Instead of solving the problem, OCR often just shifts the manual work downstream and that’s a bottleneck no team wants.
What AI Does Differently
AI-powered platforms go far beyond scanning. They’re built to understand invoices by recognizing context, behavior, and patterns—and they keep learning over time.
Here’s what makes AI different:
- Learns from history: Recognizes supplier patterns, invoice structures, and past exceptions
- Understands meaning: Interprets what the fields represent, not just the characters on the page
- Adapts automatically: No retraining needed when suppliers change formats or data shifts
This level of automation doesn’t just reduce errors it eliminates the manual review cycle entirely, enabling true straight-through processing.
How This Looks in Practice
Let’s say a supplier sends an invoice with missing data and a layout your system hasn’t seen before.
With OCR:
- Data is pulled incorrectly (or not at all)
- The invoice is flagged and sent for review
- Processing slows while someone sorts it out
With AI:
- The system recognizes the format automatically
- Missing fields are predicted or returned to the supplier for resolution
- The invoice moves forward without delay
The result:
- Fewer exceptions
- Faster approvals
- Lower cost per invoice
- Stronger supplier relationships
The difference is night and day, especially at scale.
What to Look for in a Smarter AP Platform
Not every solution labeled “AI” delivers real intelligence. If you’re evaluating platforms, look for:
- Learning-based capture that improves over time
- Real-time validation before workflow entry
- Pre-matching and predictive GL coding
- Automated exception handling and supplier resolution
Questions to ask during the demo:
- How does the platform handle new invoice formats?
- What percentage of invoices go through untouched?
- How does the system learn and adapt over time?
- How are supplier issues resolved without manual follow-up?
The best systems remove friction from the entire process, not just the front end.
Ready to Ditch the Cleanup?
Touchless AP doesn’t happen just because you’ve moved away from paper. It takes intelligent systems that can learn, adapt, and resolve issues before they ever reach your team.
If you’re still spending hours cleaning up behind OCR, it’s time to see what AI can do instead. Book a quick demo to see the difference in action.
