The accounting expertise disaster is altering how companies deal with their funds. With the US market needing 340,000 new accountants and 45% of corporations struggling to draw expertise, extra corporations are turning to specialised expense administration suppliers to deal with their accounting operations.
However this is the catch: These service suppliers face the identical expertise scarcity.
We not too long ago labored with one such supplier who processed over 50,000 payments and invoices month-to-month for his or her purchasers. As extra corporations got here to them for assist, they bumped into the identical impediment: they could not rent sufficient folks to maintain up with the workload. It received to a degree the place they needed to flip down new purchasers.
Let me take you thru how the service supplier applied automated bill processing and located a strategy to bulk-process payments and invoices with out consistently including extra employees.
What occurs when rising quantity breaks doc processing
The expense administration supplier in query makes a speciality of serving to organizations optimize their working expenditure. As a Enterprise Course of Outsourcing (BPO) companion, they deal with every part from utility and telecom bills to IT prices—processing payments, validating costs, and offering detailed analytics. They assist AP groups in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and authorities organizations cut back the workload whereas delivering price financial savings via higher expense administration.
Nevertheless, as this supplier’s enterprise grew quickly, dealing with near 50,000 utility payments and invoices month-to-month grew to become greater than only a processing problem. It uncovered elementary operational constraints that threatened their capacity to scale and ship worth to purchasers.
This is what occurred:
1. Guide processing grew to become a bottleneck: Their workforce relied on guide knowledge entry and will solely course of about 100 invoices per individual per day. It created a rising backlog and restricted their capability.
2. Expertise scarcity worsened issues: Discovering and retaining certified in-house accounting analysts to supervise the method and guarantee accuracy grew to become more and more troublesome and costly. This made it more durable to scale their workforce and meet rising calls for.
3. Consumer service suffered in consequence: Processing inaccuracies and inefficiencies meant delays, errors, and, finally, sad purchasers. Additionally they struggled to fulfill shopper deadlines, resulting in potential penalties.
4. Revenue margins had been squeezed: Elevated labor prices and SLA penalties lower into their profitability, making it more durable to spend money on progress and innovation.
5. Development alternatives had been restricted: They could not effectively onboard new purchasers or tackle new enterprise alternatives. It put them on the again foot in opposition to rivals with higher methods.
They wanted to keep up a big workforce of knowledge entry clerks always to key within the sheer quantity of payments and invoices. Whereas they had been in a position to outsource a few of it, the inherent limitations of guide processing remained.
The tipping level was when the service supplier began turning down new enterprise as a result of their operations couldn’t scale to serve them.
Why utility bill processing will get difficult at scale
Check out a typical utility invoice. It’d look like a easy doc to course of. However, it may well shortly turn out to be a headache whenever you’re processing 1000’s of them each month, particularly when aiming for the accuracy and element wanted for efficient expense administration.
Every bill comprises vital knowledge factors that should be extracted and validated: account numbers, service addresses, meter readings, utilization knowledge, cost descriptions, and cost phrases.
This is a fast glimpse into how difficult the utility invoice processing workflow was:
- Each utility firm is totally different
- A whole lot of utility corporations, every with distinctive bill codecs—some even utilizing 7-8 totally different layouts
- Some utility corporations ship every day payments, others month-to-month
- Single invoices can run from 1 to 372+ pages
- Every format wants particular dealing with
- Info is not simple
- A number of meter readings for various companies (electrical energy, fuel, water) may very well be scattered throughout the doc
- Service addresses for multi-location purchasers is likely to be unfold throughout pages, or buried inside tables
- Cost descriptions lacked consistency (“Buyer Cost” in a single invoice and “Cust. Chg.” in one other)
- An identical costs would possibly seem a number of instances on a single bill, requiring guide revisions
- Accuracy necessities are strict
- Meter readings should match their corresponding costs
- Information wants validation earlier than system import
- Errors may result in incorrect shopper experiences, flawed monetary insights, and missed optimization alternatives
- Processing delays result in SLA penalties
These complexities meant guide processing or fundamental OCR options, which frequently battle with inconsistent layouts and complicated knowledge relationships, wouldn’t be sufficient. They wanted an answer that would not solely deal with excessive quantity but in addition adapt to the intricate particulars and variations of their purchasers’ utility payments.
How the service supplier applied automated bill processing for prime volumes
The expense administration supplier knew they wanted to automate bill processing earlier than progress grew to become inconceivable. Nevertheless, with 50,000+ month-to-month invoices, complicated validation necessities, and strict shopper SLAs, they could not afford any drops in accuracy or service high quality throughout the transition.
That is when their CFO found Nanonets. Our one-shot studying, customizable validation flows, hands-on assist for complicated vendor setups, and skill to deal with multi-page tables satisfied them that we may meet their particular wants:
- Distinctive doc layouts
- Complicated knowledge extraction wants like a number of meter readings and repair addresses
- Excessive-volume processing with constant accuracy
- Validation necessities for his or her system import
Working with the supplier, we took a scientific method to automation. Somewhat than disrupting their total workflow directly, we began with a vendor-by-vendor method to validate accuracy and construct confidence.
Right this moment, their automated workflow processes a good portion of their 50,000 month-to-month payments and invoices. Right here’s the way it works:
1. Doc consumption
- Their workforce collects invoices all through the day via a number of channels (mail, shopper emails, utility firm portals, and bodily invoices)
- On the finish of every workday, they place all collected invoices into a delegated SharePoint folder
- The SharePoint folder construction can go as much as 3 ranges deep (e.g., most important folder → vendor folder → date folder)
- Nanonets checks the SharePoint folders each 3-5 minutes for brand new recordsdata
- When new recordsdata are detected, Nanonets routinely imports them
Word: Backup strategies embody direct add via the Nanonets interface, electronic mail forwarding to a devoted mannequin electronic mail tackle, and different cloud storage choices (Google Drive, Dropbox)
2. Preliminary processing
- As soon as imported, Nanonets’ AI mannequin begins extraction instantly
- System identifies and processes:
- A number of meter readings as desk constructions
- Complicated cost descriptions
- Service addresses throughout pages
- Fee phrases and dates
- Constructed-in validation checks the payments for:
- Subject completeness
- Date format accuracy
- Quantity validity
- Required info presence
Word: Their workforce adopted an end-of-day batch add method, permitting our system to course of every part in a single day. This ensures all paperwork uploaded throughout the day are processed and prepared for evaluation the subsequent morning.
3. Error dealing with and high quality management
Error dealing with includes automated checks, adopted by guide evaluations for corrections.
A few of the automated checks achieved by Nanonets:
- Flags lacking fields
- Identifies mismatched meter readings
- Catches incorrect cost descriptions
- Tracks accuracy charges by vendor
The processing workforce then evaluations error logs and output every day for:
- Cost descriptions within the fallacious columns
- Service addresses throughout a number of places
- Meter readings matching their costs appropriately
When points are discovered, the workforce investigates the foundation trigger, corrects extraction errors instantly within the Nanonets interface, and updates the AI Mannequin’s coaching recordsdata if wanted to enhance future accuracy. This steady suggestions loop helps keep excessive accuracy charges throughout all distributors.
Word: Day by day error reporting was applied to stop points from bleeding via the whole week.
4. Submit-processing and output
As soon as paperwork go validation:
- System applies customized formatting guidelines to extracted knowledge
- Standardizes cost descriptions throughout distributors
- Information is exported in customized CSV/Excel format
- Recordsdata are organized by vendor and date
- Information is imported into the service supplier’s billing system
Word: The workforce processes 15,000-20,000 pages month-to-month this manner, which may scale to 30,000+ pages.
5. Steady enchancment
We work with the service supplier to keep up and enhance processing high quality. Their workforce identifies areas for enchancment and gives suggestions, whereas we repeatedly improve the AI mannequin’s accuracy. This includes:
- Common mannequin updates primarily based on their processing workforce’s suggestions
- Targeted enhancements in complicated areas like cost descriptions
- Gradual onboarding of latest distributors to make sure secure efficiency
- Utilizing our analytics dashboard to watch and optimize efficiency
This collaborative method helps keep excessive accuracy charges whereas steadily increasing processing capabilities.
The affect of automation on bulk bill processing
Inside three months of implementing Nanonets, the supplier noticed important outcomes. They scaled their automated processing from zero to 12,000 pages month-to-month, demonstrating the system’s capacity to deal with their high-volume wants.
For utility invoices from identified distributors, the AI mannequin achieved processing speeds of 173-174 invoices in simply 5 minutes — a process that may’ve required hours of guide knowledge entry.
However the affect went past simply pace.
Processing effectivity
- Nanonets can now course of 46 out of fifty distributors shared by the shopper
- Just one consultant file required per vendor for AI mannequin coaching
- Automated doc consumption via SharePoint integration
- Bulk in a single day processing of 500 invoices every day
Operational enhancements
- Employees free of guide knowledge entry to deal with higher-value duties like shopper reporting and evaluation
- Sooner turnaround on shopper deliverables and assembly SLAs
- Extra constant processing high quality, with fewer errors and guide corrections
- Higher dealing with of complicated invoices with a number of meter readings and repair addresses
The trail ahead
The supplier’s journey into automated bill processing remains to be in its early phases. With solely ~20% of their complete invoice quantity at present automated, there’s important room for progress. However extra importantly, it has laid the muse for a big transformation of their operations.
Their subsequent steps deal with:
Increasing automation protection
- Processing telecom invoices (estimated 10,000 month-to-month)
- Scaling to deal with ~30,000 payments and invoices month-to-month
- Persevering with to onboard new invoice codecs from totally different utility corporations effectively
- Constructing on their profitable utility bill automation
Technical integration
- Implementing API integration by summer time 2025 to allow direct knowledge move between Nanonets and their expense administration resolution
- Automating error corrections the place potential to scale back guide evaluation time
- Constructing a extra strong integration between Nanonets and their in-house software program
Managing utility payments and invoices for a number of purchasers?
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Managing utility payments and invoices for a number of purchasers?
See how automation may also help you develop with out including headcount. Guide a demo to see how we may also help automate your expense administration service.