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Solution · Finance & accountingCost invoices collect themselves all month long, not on the fifth in a panic
Cost invoices to the accountant without the binder
A robot collects purchase invoices: from the mailbox, from supplier portals, from photos taken with a phone on the day of purchase. It reads the data, keeps a register, chases missing invoices from recurring suppliers and hands the accountant a complete set before she has to ask.
Executive summary
Cost invoices arrive from everywhere: by email, in supplier portals, on paper from a driver’s hand; they get collected once a month in a panic, some go missing, and the accountant still calls on the fifth with a list of gaps.
A cost mailbox, the portals and phone photos feed one register; the robot reads the documents’ data, watches completeness against recurring suppliers and hands the accountant a package in her format.
The hunting disappears, corrections after late invoices become rare, and the owner sees the month’s costs live for the first time, not three weeks after its close.
the cost mailbox; phone photos; supplier portals; the register in SharePoint; the accountant’s package and a cost view in Microsoft Teams
Business problem
The monthly document hunt
Every small firm knows the ritual: the deadline for sending documents to the accountant approaches, and the hunt begins. Fuel invoices are in emails, the lease in a portal, the wholesaler sent paper with the driver, and the electricity bill “probably went to the old mailbox”. Hours go into searching, and something still slips through.
The slipping costs concretely: an invoice that missed its month is a return correction or a tax cost lost for good. The accountant calls with a list of gaps, the owner promises to “look in the evening”, and a relationship that should be a partnership becomes a recurring exchange of chasers.
The second cost is quieter: the firm does not know its costs as they happen. Everything becomes clear only when the accountant closes the month, in practice halfway through the next one. Decisions, from the price list to hiring, are made on six-week-old numbers, because fresher ones simply do not exist.
The funny thing is that suppliers are mostly predictable: the lease, electricity, telecoms, wholesalers and fuel arrive monthly, for years, from the same places. That watching needs no human head; it needs a list of recurring suppliers and someone who does not forget. Which is to say, a robot.
How it works today
Below is what the work looks like before anything is automated.
- PersonInvoices arrive by five roads; nobody collects them as they come
- WaitingCollection starts just before the accountant’s deadline, in a panic
- Risk of errorSome documents vanish: the old mailbox, the glove box, a jacket pocket
- PersonThe accountant calls on the fifth with a gap list; the owner promises to look
- Risk of errorLate invoices return as return corrections or lost tax costs
- Risk of errorThe month’s costs are known halfway through the next; decisions run on stale numbers
Why the current process costs more than it appears
The bill that never shows up in a budget.
- The owner’s hours on the monthly hunt are the firm’s dearest hours spent searching for PDFs.
- Every lost invoice is a lost tax cost; at VAT and income tax rates that is real money.
- Return corrections cost money at the accountant’s and strain a relationship that should be a partnership.
- Decisions on six-week-old numbers are driving by the rear-view mirror alone.
Cost of inaction
The first two rows you can count at home after one month: the hunting hours and the list of documents that missed their period. The third row is the largest and unnamed: a firm steered by six-week-old numbers makes different decisions than the same firm with live costs.
The model assumes the accountant remains the accountant: the automation does not do the books, it delivers her a complete set on time, in the format she likes. Accounting offices are usually this implementation’s first allies.
A model organisation with realistic proportions – the numbers exist so you can run the same maths on your own data; they are not a client result.
A services and trading firm: around 140 cost invoices a month from five sources (email, three portals, paper), an external accounting office, Microsoft 365.
Documents collected on the month’s last weekend; the package emailed; on the fifth, the call with the gap list.
A handful to a dozen documents go missing monthly; a return correction happens quarterly.
The owner knows the month’s costs around the fifteenth of the next.
Email invoices drop into the register by themselves; the robot logs into supplier portals for the recurring documents; paper is photographed with a phone on the day of purchase; data is read automatically, duplicates are caught, and the recurring supplier list watches completeness: no electricity invoice by the 10th is an alert, not a surprise; the accountant’s package goes out in her format before the deadline.
In the modelled case the hunt disappears, corrections become rare, and the owner sees costs accruing at any moment of the month. Model numbers, not the firm’s records.
Proposed solution
We start with a map of sources: where your invoices come from and which suppliers are recurring. Out of it comes the completeness list: the robot knows that every month there must be the lease, electricity, telecoms, fuel and the wholesaler, and chases every gap at the source, before the accountant chases you.
Collection runs down every road at once: the cost mailbox catches emails with attachments, the robot logs into supplier portals and fetches documents, and paper is photographed with a phone in the minute of purchase instead of riding in a glove box. Every document is read: seller, number, dates, amounts, VAT; duplicates are caught, and the register grows all month instead of being born on its last Sunday.
Before the deadline the accountant receives the complete set in the format she likes: a package of named PDFs with a summary, or a direct drop into her system if it has an interface. The owner has a live cost view in Teams: how much, on what, against last month. The question “how much did we spend on fuel this month” stops requiring a call to the accounting office.
UiPath Orchestrator: fetch schedules, the document queue, retries and an audit trail; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft Teams and Outlook 365; UiPath Document Understanding for invoice reading
The cost mailbox, supplier portal fetching, document reading and the register, completeness checks against recurring suppliers, the accountant’s package and the accruing cost view
The register and archive in SharePoint; phone photos via a simple form; delivery to the accounting office by email or into its system, if it has an interface
How the automated process works
- AutomationEmails with invoices drop into the register by themselves; supplier portals are polled on schedule
- PersonPaper is photographed with a phone in the minute of purchase; the glove box era ends
- AutomationEvery document is read: seller, number, dates, amounts; duplicates caught
- AutomationThe recurring supplier list watches completeness; a missing document is an alert at the source
- SystemThe accountant’s package goes out before the deadline, in her format, with a summary
- PersonThe owner sees accruing costs in Teams at any moment of the month
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- Collection from every source, data reading and the register with the archive
- Completeness checks against recurring suppliers, with alerts
- The accountant’s package on time and the accruing cost view
People decide
- Bookkeeping and tax filings; those remain the accountant’s domain
- Photographing a paper invoice on the day of purchase; one team rule
- Decisions: approving unusual documents and disputes with suppliers
Before and after
Systems and integrations
The stack is short on purpose: one engine, one execution layer, one place where a person decides.
Inputs
- the cost mailbox
- supplier portals (credentials)
- phone photos of paper
- the recurring supplier list
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- the register and archive with data read out
- the accountant’s package in her format
- gap alerts and the cost view in Microsoft Teams
Human touchpoints: gap alerts; the monthly package to confirm; the cost view; a supplier list review quarterly
Technologies used
fetch schedules, the document queue, retries, a trail for every document
Areading seller, numbers, dates and amounts from invoices and receipts
Athe cost mailbox, alerts, the package to the office
Athe register and archive with search and permissions
Aa direct document drop, if the system has an interface; otherwise the email package
BIllustrative economic model
Numbers you can check against your own data.
The model counts the time and the lost documents; it does not count the value of decisions made on fresh numbers, which usually outweighs the rest. Volumes belong to the scenario; your own numbers go into the calculator alongside.
Run the maths on your data
An illustrative estimate based on your inputs. It models freed capacity, not promised savings.
Business benefits
- The monthly document hunt disappears from the calendar
- The accountant gets the complete set before the deadline; the fifth-day calls stop
- Lost costs and corrections become rare
- Paper stops vanishing, because it lives as a photo from the minute of purchase
- The owner sees costs live and decides on fresh numbers
The management view
- Cost documents become a process, not a monthly scramble
- An archive with read-out data answers in a second: what, when, from whom, for how much
- The accounting relationship returns to a partnership, because the chaser exchange ends
Board-level KPIs
documents delivered before the deadline · gaps caught by an alert at the source · return corrections · monthly collection time · the delay of cost knowledge
Security and governance
The automation has exactly the permissions it needs. Not one more.
- The robot works on the firm’s cost documents; register access by role
- Supplier portal credentials live in a credential vault, not in a spreadsheet
- Every document has a trail: source, fetch time, data read out
- The archive has a retention period matching document storage requirements
- Data stays in your Microsoft 365 tenant; the robots run in the EU region of UiPath Automation Cloud
Why now
Suppliers are moving en masse to e-invoices and portals; sources multiply while manual collection scales the other way.
The digitisation of tax reporting raises the price of lateness and gaps; order at the source is becoming cheaper than corrections.
Accounting offices reward clients who deliver complete sets on time; increasingly, openly, in their price lists.
Relevant executive roles
Gets the collection weekend back and sees costs as they accrue
Receives a complete set on time, in the format she likes; the chasers stop
Photographs paper in the minute of purchase and forgets it; the rest happens by itself
Common questions and objections
Which is why the first step is a conversation with her: the package takes whatever format she points to, from named PDFs with a summary to a direct drop into her system, if it has an interface. Accounting offices tend to be this implementation’s warmest supporters, because it ends their monthly hunt for your documents.
Which is why the phone photo is in the process: one team rule, “photograph in the minute of purchase”, and paper stops vanishing. Data reading works on photos as on PDFs, and the original goes into the binder at leisure, because its content has long been in the register.
True, and that is why a robot does the fetching, with a credential vault, retries and an alert when a portal changes. Even if one needs a manual click once a quarter, the other nine sources run by themselves, and the completeness list catches every gap regardless.
When this is not the right solution
- A dozen invoices a month from two sources: a folder and discipline suffice
- In-house accounting with its own OCR and workflow: this would duplicate an existing process
- Expecting automatic bookkeeping and filings: we deliver the accountant a complete set, we do not replace her
A question for the next management meeting
How many hours and how many lost tax costs did it cost us last year that documents get collected once a month, in a panic?
Implementation approach
Scope without ambiguity, before anything is signed.
We deliver
- The cost mailbox and supplier portal fetching
- Document reading, the register with an archive and duplicate detection
- The recurring supplier list with gap alerts
- The accountant’s package in her format, before the deadline
- The accruing cost view and two weeks of parallel running
We need from you
- The list of invoice sources and recurring suppliers
- Supplier portal credentials (they go into a credential vault)
- The package format agreed with your accountant
Stages
Discovery
Sources, volumes, recurring suppliers, the accountant’s format
Rules
The completeness list, the minute-of-purchase photo rule, package deadlines
Build
The mailbox, portals, reading, the register, alerts, the package, the view
Parallel run
One full month beside the current collection; completeness compared
Go-live
The package takes over the delivery; a supplier list review after the quarter
A quick win. The mailbox, reading and register work from the first week; supplier portals join one by one, largest volumes first.
Sunday, month’s end: the owner with a laptop, hunting the electricity invoice across three inboxes. The fuel one is in a jacket. The other jacket.
Write down your invoice sources and send us the list with monthly volumes. We return a completeness list design and the arithmetic of the hours you will stop spending on the hunt.
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