RPA's impact on
Finance & Accounting processes

Automating invoices with UiPath

This customer outsourced over 5,000 monthly invoices that arrived incompatible with their ERP System. Assigned a unique ID, these invoices were turned over to a BPO provider for manual indexing and posting. A workable solution, but limited for cost, accuracy and scalability improvements.

Now, UiPath Orchestrator has robots extract the invoices and place them in a work queue; complementary cognitive technology captures each one’s semi-structured data; assembles it into an ERP invoice template, and robots take it through the ERP validation process. Validated invoices are indexed; placed into a work queue; posted by robots into the ERP system, then sent to the customer for archiving. Invoices that fail validation are returned to the customer for exception handling.

Blending AI/Cognitive & RPA technology into an automation solution gave this customer more than just greater accuracy and scalability, it also delivered 3X faster cycle times and > 50% cost reduction.

Turning AR into cash with RPA 

A manufacturer who investigated an increasing level of uncollectible billings discovered several interrelated problems that defied any easy solution. Solving them with an ERP integration project was not practical and re-engineering processes seemed almost as expensive, as well as risky.

Most of the billing issues were with smaller customers who used web payment portals. Smaller customers couldn’t be ignored—they contributed significantly to growth—but posting an invoice with all the supporting documents to these portals was a slow, manual process. Then, the supporting documents were often in error, leading to genuinely contested invoices. Multiple legacy systems meant researching issues and errors were time-consuming and frequently inclusive. With no clear answer for contested billings, the customer was often forced to write-off disputed amounts or the entire invoice.

Now, the company has an RPA interface with all customer payment portals, which enables easy integration with ERP and legacy systems. This means multiple keying of the same data, cutting and pasting, and manually attaching supporting documents to invoices are eliminated. The RPA solution automatically extracts invoices, attaches the required billing documentation and uploads this information to the customer’s portal in seconds or minutes, not days or weeks. The company estimates that its new order-to-cash efficiency is saving hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

Closing the SAP AP Automation gap

This company was receiving almost two thousand invoices daily that needed data validation from their legacy systems before being posted into their SAP system. Integrating these legacy technologies with their SAP system was cost-prohibitive, so this work was outsourced to a BPO provider. Having heard of RPA, the company approached UiPath to see if robots could give them more cost savings and a better scalability when invoice volumes spiked.

The UiPath solution has almost completely eliminated human activity from the company’s AP process, allowing it to take full advantage of its SAP system. Robots extract these invoices from a mailbox and place them into a work queue where they’re registered and indexed with SAP. Once indexed, robots perform required validations by cross-checking the invoices against legacy systems. Finally, business rules tell robots to post, park or block the invoice. Accuracy is 95+%; cycle times are 3x-4x faster and cost savings are >70%.