Supplier invoices arriving by email are OCR'd, matched three-way against purchase orders and delivery notes, routed for threshold-based approval, and posted to the accounting system — in about thirty seconds each. Duplicates and price discrepancies are flagged before anyone pays them.
Typical results
98%
Auto-matched to POs
0
Duplicate payments
23 hrs/wk
Bookkeeping saved
Figures reflect typical results for this kind of automation.
The challenge
Eleven hundred invoices a month arrived across four clinic inboxes, and each one was typed by hand into the accounting system. Matching against purchase orders happened rarely and late, duplicates slipped through to payment, and quiet supplier price increases went unnoticed for months. Month-end close routinely ran a week behind.
Before and after
Processing time per invoice
−96%Bookkeeper hours on invoices
−88%Duplicate & overpayment incidents
−100%The automation
We routed all supplier emails to a central inbox where an OCR pipeline extracts supplier, line items, totals, and terms from every attachment. Each invoice is matched three-way against its purchase order and delivery note; quantity gaps, price discrepancies, and duplicates are flagged instantly. Clean invoices under the threshold auto-approve, larger ones route to the right manager for one-tap approval, and everything posts to the accounting system coded by branch and category.
How it works
- 01
Invoice arrives
Supplier emails land in a dedicated inbox and attachments are pulled automatically, whatever the format.
- 02
OCR extracts everything
Supplier, line items, totals, and payment terms are parsed from each invoice in seconds.
- 03
Three-way match
The invoice is checked against its purchase order and delivery note; gaps and price discrepancies flag instantly.
- 04
Smart approval routing
Clean invoices under the threshold auto-approve; larger ones route to the right manager for one-tap approval.
- 05
Posted to the books
Approved invoices post to the accounting system, coded to the correct branch and expense category.
Starts from
- Supplier invoice emails
- POs & delivery notes
Delivers
- Threshold-based approvals
- Posted to accounting
- Duplicate & price alerts
The impact
An invoice takes about thirty seconds from inbox to books, and around 98% match their purchase orders without human touch. Bookkeeper time on invoices falls from 26 hours a week to three, duplicate payments drop to zero, and flagged price discrepancies recover supplier overcharges that used to go unnoticed.
Questions about this automation
How does the three-way match work?
After OCR extracts the supplier, line items, totals and payment terms, each invoice is compared with its purchase order and the delivery note. Quantities and unit prices must agree within set tolerances. Gaps, price changes and invoices that duplicate an earlier one are flagged before payment, with the mismatched lines highlighted.
Who approves invoices, and when is approval skipped?
Clean invoices under a set amount approve automatically. Larger invoices, or ones with a flagged discrepancy, go to the right manager for one-tap approval by email or chat, based on branch and expense category. Approved invoices post to the accounting system already coded, and every decision is logged for month-end.
What does a clinic group need to get started?
A central inbox for supplier invoices, access to purchase orders and delivery notes, an accounting system with an API, and approval thresholds for each branch. Most invoice formats work, including scanned PDFs. This is a multi-step build, usually rolled out in stages, beginning with extraction and matching before automatic posting is switched on.