AI Accounts Payable Automation

Where accounts payable time actually goes

Ask an AP team where the week goes and the answer is rarely the payment run. It is keying header and line detail from PDFs, deciding which GL account and location each line belongs to, chasing approvers who are on job sites or in meetings, comparing bills to purchase orders and receiving records, and answering vendors who want to know when they will be paid.

The specifics vary by business, which is why Tepia starts there. A multi location restaurant group codes food and supply bills to the right store and category. A property management company splits a single landscaping bill across twelve properties. A distributor matches supplier bills against purchase orders and warehouse receipts down to the line. A construction company tracks retainage and needs lien waivers on file before approving subcontractor pay applications.

Tepia adds AI to the parts of that work that are reading, matching and routing, and builds it around the accounting system and approval rules you already have. The finance team keeps ownership of every decision that moves money.

The AP workflow Tepia automates

Each step pairs an AI task with the control that stays in place, so the process gets faster without getting looser:

Teams typically see the biggest gain from coding and matching, because those steps used to touch every bill.

Accounting systems and data Tepia connects

AP automation only works if it fits the ledger and the operational data behind it. Tepia builds the integrations in both directions.

• Accounting: QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, reading vendors, accounts, dimensions and open POs and posting approved bills.
• Purchasing and receiving: your ERP, warehouse system or a custom app where receipts are recorded, so three way matching uses real receiving data.
• Operations: property, project or location data from systems such as Yardi or your own database, used to suggest the right allocation.
• Approvals: approval requests by email, Microsoft Teams, Slack or a mobile app, so a superintendent can approve from a job site with the bill image in hand.

Tepia keeps the accounting system as the system of record. Our QuickBooks integration and NetSuite integration pages describe those connections in more depth, and workflow and approval apps covers mobile approvals.

Fraud and control safeguards

Payables is a frequent target for business email compromise, where a fraudster impersonates a vendor and asks for payment to a new account. Tepia designs AP automation so that AI speed never opens that door.

• Bank detail changes: any change to remittance details is held and verified by calling a number already on file, never one from the request.
• Anomaly flags: a bill from a new vendor, an amount far outside that vendor’s history or a mismatch between remit to address and vendor record is held for review.
• Segregation of duties: the person who sets up a vendor cannot approve that vendor’s bills, and approval limits are enforced by the system rather than by habit.
• Audit trail: every extraction, suggestion, edit and approval is logged with user and time, and exportable for your auditors.
• Model boundaries: the language model reads and suggests; it cannot approve, post or release anything.

Tepia reviews these controls with your controller and external auditor before launch, so the automated process is documented as clearly as the manual one it replaces.

How Tepia approaches AI accounts payable automation

Tepia runs its six phase process alongside your controller and AP staff, coordinated by a US based project manager.

1. Discovery: a sample of several hundred recent bills, a walk through of coding rules, approval matrix and month end close, and a review of accounting system APIs. Deliverables are an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and User Stories such as a clerk splitting a utility bill across four locations.
2. Design: wireframes of the AP queue, bill detail with source highlighting, approval screens and exception views.
3. Development and Testing: capture and coding measured against historical bills first, then matching, routing and sync. Alpha on past months, Beta running in parallel with the current process, under functional, user acceptance and non functional test plans covering accuracy, duplicate detection and sync integrity.
4. Training: hands on sessions for clerks, approvers and the controller using real exceptions.
5. Launch: cutover at the start of an accounting period, vendor and coding history migrated, support reps through the first close.
6. Support: new entities, vendors and rule changes, plus a review after each quarter end.

Typically Discovery takes 1 to 3 months and development and QA 2 to 6 months. See our process.

AP automation software or a custom build

Packaged AP automation products handle standard workflows on common accounting systems well. If your bills are straightforward and your coding is by vendor and account alone, Tepia will recommend one and can help connect it.

Custom work earns its place when:

• Coding depends on operational data, such as property, job, grant or location, held in another system.
• Matching must use receiving data from your own warehouse or field app.
• Approvals follow project or site structures a packaged tool cannot model.
• You want AP inside an internal app your team already uses rather than another portal.

A hybrid is also common: keep your AP tool and add AI capture, coding or matching through its API. For other documents beyond bills, see AI document processing. Then talk to Tepia about your close.

Frequently asked questions