Invoice Processing using Robotic Process Automation
Author(s):
Akshaya.B, Agalya.P, Divviya.C, Vaishnavi.G, Sheelavathi. A
Keywords:
Abstract
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a software-based solution for rule-based business processes involving routine tasks. Robotic Process Automation is introduced with a motive to reduce human involvement in repetitive financial process like accounting, data management, billing and many more. There may be doubts regarding the capabilities and success rates of RPA for accounts payable activities like invoice processing. Invoices that companies receive from their suppliers arrive in different formats. A company’s finance team is responsible for transferring the data from these various formats of invoices into the company database. These challenges make it difficult to handle invoices and this manual process is time consuming and prone to errors. Robotic Process Automation can be applied to generate invoices automatically. RPA software robots can automate the process data input, error detection and error correction and to check and verify the correctness of the invoices. It can also automate some of the decision-making tasks done by the finance team. RPA robots monitor the folder where invoices are stored and extract information using intelligent Optical Character Recognition and natural processing capabilities. After extracting the key information, the robots verify the credentials in the invoices with the company database and then the robots start processing the invoices one by one. A notification in the form of email is sent to the corresponding vendor or supplier in case of exception or a posting notification sent in the form of e-mail to the responsible employee or vendor. Robotic Process Automation for financial processing reports benefits like productivity, speed, costs and error reduction. RPA in business processes helps to reduce customer complaints, manual efforts and increase customer or vendor satisfaction.
