In this solo presentation, Sachin Sharma explains why many AP automation projects fail and outlines a proven, end‑to‑end approach that first fixes the purchasing process before automating accounts payable. He walks through eight practical steps: (1) establishing a standardized purchase‑approval workflow with clear delegation of authority and self‑approval thresholds; (2) using vendor punch‑out integrations so employees can shop on familiar sites while still routing requests for approval; (3) centralizing invoice intake via a single invoices@ email and embedding that address on purchase orders; (4) leveraging OCR and AI to auto‑capture invoice data, eliminating manual entry and cutting processing time by roughly 50%; (5) automating two‑way and three‑way invoice matching, with exception routing for price or quantity discrepancies; (6) streamlining invoice approval by auto‑approving fully matched invoices and applying rule‑based coding and routing for PO‑less purchases; (7) implementing no‑touch, bi‑directional integration with major accounting systems (QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, etc.) to sync approved bills without manual export; and (8) summarizing the business impact—halved processing cycles, no more chasing approvals, and real‑time spend visibility. Throughout, Sharma references his experience with the ProcureDesk platform and invites viewers to request a demo.
Chapters
If you are a growing company, I'm willing to bet that your accounts payable team is busy chasing invoice approvals, drowning in emails, trying to figure out where all the invoices are, or manually entering invoices in your accounting system. And the thing is, most companies try to solve this problem by automating AP alone, but that's actually the wrong approach. And that's why so many AP automation projects don't actually fix anything. At ProCareTest, we have helped hundreds of companies automate their AP process and we have consistently seen that companies who do this right fix their purchasing first. In this video, I'm going to break down how to automate your accounts payable process in the right way. So your team can cut the invoice processing time by half, they stop chasing approvals, and you can actually see what people are spending money on before the end of the month. Let's dive in. So the first thing you need to do is, as I said, fix your purchasing process first. So what do I mean by fixing your purchasing process? Number one is you need a standard process for employees to buy something so that they can get approvals for anything that they need to purchase before they actually spend the money. So that gets rid of buy now, ask for forgiveness later attitude that most companies have at the start. And the workflow captures a spend the moment it's approved and not afterwards when the invoice shows up. So what do you really need to set up a purchasing approval workflow process? So number one is you need to define what is typically called delegation of authority. If you already have your delegation of authority defined in your organization, you can simply automate that with a system like Procure Desk. The goal here is that your purchase requ should go to the right person for approval, whether it is the department head, whether it is finance team or anybody else. Right. Second is you could set up thresholds for self approval. I mean, you don't want people to like, you know, if you want to buy a pencil, you need to get an approval, right? So you probably want to set up self approval limits. Maybe it is, you know, $500, maybe it is $100 or $200, whatever you feel comfortable with. But we do recommend that you at least for smaller budgets. So set up a limit so that people can buy without getting an approval or for that matter, emergency purchase. The important thing with approval workflows is to keep it simple. You don't want 15 people doing the approval, right? You know, then somebody ordered something, by the time they get the product, they have completely forgotten why the hell they ordered it. So one of the common mistake to avoid here is don't route your invoices or your purchase requests to CFO for every approval or the owner of the business for approval. Now it's seem like a, you know, I would say a common solution, right, that the owner should review it. But again, they don't have time for it. So don't design a system which slows down the whole process. Right? So that's number one. Now you want to make sure that the process is also easy for employees. It's not just about, you know, setting up a purchase approval process, it's about making it easy so that they use it. Right? That's kind of the reason for setting up a purchasing process. There's no benefit of setting up a process which nobody use. So where is the friction point and how do you go about avoiding that? Typically what we see in our experience is employees. Employees are used to using their favorite websites. It's Amazon or Staples or, you know, VW or Thermo Fisher, whatever it is. And they can just simply review what they need to buy, what products they normally buy and place the order. Now you're giving them a different process altogether and say fill this form, enter this details and so on. Now you can avoid all that, which means employees can still go to the websites to pick up what they want to buy, but you have control in place that the request needs to be approved first before the purchase can happen. This process is called punch up out or punch outs. And vendor punch outs allow you to provide better experience to your employees. At Procare Desk, we have over 300 different punch outs with different vendors. You name it, we, you know, cover it and so on. And the idea here is to make it easier for employees. In case you're interested, you can click the link in the description below to request a free demo. So that's step one, automate the purchasing process. Step two is to now centralize the invoice intake process. If you have, or if you don't have rather a centralized process, you're probably receiving invoices in different ways. Probably your employees are getting invoices directly, your AP team is getting it, your finance team is getting it, you're getting physical mail and so on. It could be overwhelming. What that means is you probably don't have all the invoices in one place. You're always missing invoices and there are these last minute payments that needs to be made because you've missed the invoice. It's a critical vendor and they need to be paid today. Right. I'm sure you're all kind of seen that. So the fix to that is, is to create a simple intake process for invoices. Here's what it looks like. You create an invoice email, it could be invoices@your company.com, right. So that all the vendors can send invoices to that. Now there are a couple of ways to, I would say practical solutions to making sure that vendors are actually using that email. Number one is you can put that on the purchase order so when the purchase order goes out to the vendor, it has instructions with that email saying please send your invoices to this email. Number two is you can instruct different stakeholders so that they inform the vendors about the new email and so on. Right? So that way you have one single place where AP needs to look for processing the invoices. So now you have all your invoices in one place. The last thing you want your AP team to do is actually go and enter that data manually into your accounting system. And that is where technology can help. So for example, with Procare Desk, we have a built in OCR AI combination that can read incoming invoices, see what information is present in that and automatically create an invoice for you. And all your team has to do is review, review the information that is presented and not worry about entering the data manually. This step alone can cut your invoice processing cycle time by around 50%. That's a common thing we have seen across all our customers. Now let's talk about automating the invoice matching process. Now we got the invoice, you got the purchase order. Very common thing here is we see teams now manually matching those invoices to peers. And that's where technology can automate a lot of this matching process. So whether you are buying a service or whether it is a material, like you know, bought something, something tangible, your matching process can look slightly different based on that. So let's talk about very common, I would say invoice matching problems. So it's a three way match or a two way match. A three way match is where you're matching your invoice with a purchase order and a receipt and you're looking to confirm and say, what did we order? Is the invoice for what was ordered? And by matching it to a receipt, you can figure out was it actually delivered, did we return anything? Is this the right quantity, right price, all that gets checked. Now on the other Hand, a two way match is as the name suggests, two documents, right? So invoice and a purchase order, very common for like subscriptions services like cleaning services and so on. And the concept there is that you will issue a blanket purchase order and then the vendor keeps on sending the invoices. Those invoices need to be reviewed by someone to confirm that the service has been performed as per their satisfaction and so on. Right? So now not every invoice will match perfectly and that's perfectly fine. That's the purpose of the process is to identify those discrepancies. So whether, let's say take an example, you ordered a widget for $100 unit price and the vendor sends you for 120 unit price. It's possible that maybe the price have changed, right? So since the time you ordered. So that might be an opportunity for you to work with the vendor to lock in the price for let's say the next six months or nine months and so on. So you can avoid things like that, right. Or the other would be maybe the quantity. You know, you don't have a receipt in the system. So the vendor saying they delivered the product, but you don't have any confirmation from your internal team unkn like whether it was delivered or not. So that's kind of the invoice or automated matching process between invoices, purchase orders and receipts. Let's jump to the next step which is streamlining invoice approval process. Now sometimes invoices needs to be approved and what we see is a common practice is companies just approve every invoice. Most companies who have done this right don't approve every possible invoice. The way they manage this is they look at the invoice that is coming in, they let the system run a automated match and if everything matches, which is like invoice exactly matches what, what's on the purchase order or on the receipt, they will automatically mark that as ready for payment. However, if it doesn't, yeah, it can get routed to the right person. And again that process is also fully automated. So imagine invoice comes in, system creates the invoice automatically using ocr. Then it matches it with the right PO receipt and so on and then if there's an exception, it automatically routes to the right person. That's example of streamlining the invoice approval process. The second scenario you need to consider is not every purchase is going to have a purchase order. So you might have invoices for legal services or one off services where there is no purchase order. So you need to have a provision to automate the approvals for that as well. There you're looking to automate the coding of the invoices as well. Right. For example, you can set up simple rules, say if it is this vendor automatically coded to this chart of account or this department and so on, so that way you're not spending time coding and then also who's the right approver. So the system can automatically send the invoice for approval to that. That person. Right. So that is about streamlining invoice approval process. And the final step is integrating with your accounting system. The last thing you want to do is you process an invoice in a separate system. Then you got to export the invoice data load into your accounting system and whether you're using QuickBooks, whether you're using build.com, whether you're using NetSuite, Sage Intact, Microsoft Business Central, or so on. So Procuredesk integrates with all these systems to automatically sync the approved invoices to your accounting system and including the actual document or the attachment that comes along with the email. Right now, there are two aspects of integration here. Number one is pulling the information from your accounting system, like chart of accounts, list of projects, existing vendor list to start with, and so on. And the second is pushing the information back, which is when the bill is created. Or maybe you're using your accounting system for paying the vendors. So now ProCareTest needs to know whether an invoice has been paid or not. So that's another example of, you know, what are the things you should consider when you're thinking about integration with an account accounting system. Now, in an optimum process, you don't have to push any buttons to sync the data. Like for example, with prequered S. Once the invoice is matched, approved and coded, it's ready to go and it's in your accounting system with the bill so you can pay. There's no need to kind of push buttons, export data, and kind of manage all that. So when you think about integration, make sure it is no touch integration. And the system is automatically sending the data based on predefined triggers. So now if you're a CFO or a controller at a growing company and you want to actually implement what I just walked you through, click on the link in the description to request. A demo will show you exactly how procuredesk can automate your AP and purchasing process so that your team is not chasing invoice approvals. You have a system where automatically everything gets captured, it gets matched to a PO and it is sent to the accounting system. So again, click the link below to book a demo. And if you want to watch another video about how you can make your life easier as someone working in procurement, then watch this one next.
