The example brief
In this illustrative operations team, supplier invoices arrive by email and are manually logged before approval. The bottleneck is not just reading the PDF: it is knowing which invoice has an owner, which needs clarification and which is already recorded. The first scope would stop at an approved accounting entry or handoff. It would not initiate supplier payments.
The workflow we would scope
We would preserve the original document and extract candidate supplier, invoice reference, amount, currency and date fields. An agreed matching rule would flag possible duplicates. Each invoice would move to a reviewer based on the business’s approval rules, with the source document beside the proposed values. Accepted records would retain a reference to the approval decision.
Where a person stays involved
Unreadable scans, uncertain currencies, mismatched totals and unfamiliar supplier details would stay in an exception queue. A changed bank account would require the business’s separate verification process. No approval should be inferred from a model’s confidence or the absence of a reply. The reviewer needs a way to correct, reject or request more information.
What a pilot would need to prove
Test a clean invoice, a credit note, a repeated attachment, a multi-page document and inconsistent totals. Confirm that two simultaneous deliveries of the same invoice do not create duplicate entries. Simulate an unavailable destination system and check that the item remains pending rather than marked complete. Reconcile a sample of accepted records against their source documents.
How success would be measured
Measure time spent preparing invoices, reviewer corrections, duplicate alerts and queue age. Include rejected and unresolved items in the report. Compare similar document types and volumes across the pilot. The proposed design does not claim a reduction in processing cost or an accuracy percentage; those would need observed evidence.
Further reading
These links provide context for the proposed workflow; they are not evidence of a completed client engagement.