Invoice and document processing
Every invoice read, checked against your rules and systems, and posted automatically when it is clean, with only the exceptions sent to a person.
Back-office teams still type documents into systems by hand.
It is expensive and slow
The average cost to process one invoice is $9.40, and the average invoice takes 9.2 days, which means late fees and missed early-payment discounts. Best-in-class teams that automate get the cost down to $2.78.
Ardent Partners 2025, via apexanalytixExceptions eat the time
About 14% of invoices hit an exception, such as a wrong amount, a missing PO or a duplicate, and those are where most of the effort goes.
Traditional automation is rigid
Template-based OCR breaks every time a supplier changes their layout.
What the agent does
- 01
Collects new documents
On a schedule, say every hour, or whenever your system sends one, a code step fetches new invoices from your inbox, folder or AP system.
- 02
Reads each one
An extraction agent runs on every document in parallel and returns the same fields every time: supplier, invoice number, date, line items, tax, total and PO number. It reads any layout, with no templates.
- 03
Checks it
Code steps confirm the line items add up, look for duplicates, and match the PO and receipt in your systems. Your approval limits and preferred suppliers live in a knowledge base the agent checks against.
- 04
Posts the clean ones
Clean invoices post straight to your accounting system.
Checked before anyone sees an answer
The guardrail
Nothing posts on the agent’s reading alone. Code steps re-add the line items, check for duplicates and match the PO, and an invoice that fails any check is held back from your accounting system and sent to review.
Where a person steps in
Exceptions go to the Human Review inbox with the problem highlighted and the fields editable; the reviewer fixes and approves in one screen. For the first week everything is reviewed, so the team can check accuracy.
What is recorded
Every document, decision and cost is logged, and you are emailed if a run fails.
The steps, in order
Extraction with human review can run on real invoices within a day or two; posting to your accounting system is the last step. The same setup works for claims, applications, contracts and onboarding forms.
| Step | What you do in Studio | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| 1Define the fields | Create the extraction agent and its output schema, which is the fields you key in today. | 30 min |
| 2Add your rules | Create a knowledge base with approval limits, supplier rules and coding rules. | 30–60 min |
| 3Test on real invoices | Run 30 past invoices in the Playground and save them as a test suite with the correct answers. | 1–2 hours |
| 4Build the workflow | Trigger, fetch, Agent (for each), validate, Branch, Human review. | 1–2 hours |
| 5Run in shadow mode | Send everything to Human Review for a week so the team can check accuracy. | 1 week |
| 6Connect and switch on | Connect the inbox or folder fetch, PO matching and posting to your accounting system, then let clean invoices post automatically. | Depends on your systems |
A worked example
A company processing 2,000 invoices a month. The inputs are assumptions about a typical business; replace them with your own numbers.
| Line | Assumption | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices processed | 2,000 a month | 24,000 |
| Cost of processing today | The average of $9.40 per invoice | $225,600 |
| Processing cost saved | You get halfway from the average to best-in-class, about $6.09 per invoice, which saves $3.31 on each. How far you move is an assumption | ≈ $79,400 |
| Faster processing | From about 9 days toward same-day for clean invoices, so fewer late fees and more early-payment discounts | Not counted |
| Total value | ≈ $79,400 | |
| Krazimo Studio cost | ≈ $1,700–$2,000 a year: the Starter plan at $99 a month (5,000 runs, about 2 per invoice) plus model usage of a few cents per invoice | |
Staff stop keying data and only handle the roughly 14% of invoices that need judgement, with the problem already highlighted.
See it working
on your own information.
Tell us about your business and we will walk through this use case with you in Studio.