Skip to content
Apex Wright
Illustrative

Invoice processing automation

An AI-assisted pipeline that reads supplier invoices, validates them and posts clean data to the accounting system, with humans reviewing the uncertain ones.

Sector
Finance operations
Service
AI Automation
Typical team
Delivery lead, 1 AI engineer, 1 back-end engineer, part-time QA

The challenge

A finance team keys supplier invoices into the accounting system by hand. It is slow, error-prone, and the busiest weeks pull people away from higher-value work.

Approach

How we would tackle it

  1. 01

    Start with the data you already have

    Collect a representative sample of invoices, including the messy ones, and agree what counts as a correct result.

  2. 02

    Build an evaluation set first

    Label a test set so accuracy is measured, not guessed, and every change can be compared against it.

  3. 03

    Keep people in the loop

    Confident extractions flow through. Uncertain ones go to a review queue with the source document beside the proposed fields.

  4. 04

    Monitor after launch

    Track accuracy, review rate and cost per document, and retune as suppliers and formats change.

Solution

What gets built

Ingestion

Invoices arrive by email or upload and are stored securely with an audit trail.

Extraction

Language and vision models pull out supplier, dates, lines and totals into a strict schema.

Validation

Rules check totals, duplicates, tax and purchase-order matches before anything is posted.

Review and integration

A review queue for exceptions, then an API integration that posts approved data to accounting.

  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic Claude
  • PostgreSQL
  • n8n

Timeline

Typical phases

  1. 1 week

    Map

    Pick the workflow, gather samples, define success.

  2. 2–3 weeks

    Prototype

    Working proof of concept measured on the evaluation set.

  3. 3–4 weeks

    Integrate

    Connect to email, accounting and the review queue with logging.

  4. Ongoing

    Monitor

    Quality and cost tracking with scheduled improvements.

Goals

What we would aim for

Targets we would agree up front and measure, not results we claim.

  • Most routine invoices processed without manual keying
  • Exceptions surfaced clearly instead of buried in an inbox
  • Accuracy measured against a labelled test set, not anecdotes
  • Sensitive data handled with minimal exposure and full audit logs

More about AI Automation

Let's scope your project

Tell us what you're working on. We'll reply within one business day with next steps and a clear plan.