Invoice Agent
Verifies supplier invoices against purchase orders, contracts, and freight rates.
Checks incoming supplier and freight invoices against purchase orders, goods receipts, and contract terms, then flags discrepancies and routes exceptions to the appropriate owner. Covers price, quantity, billing, and contract clause deviations across procurement and logistics workflows.
- +60–80 pts
PO touchless rate
Most PO-backed invoices get matched, approved, and queued for payment without anyone touching them.
Matches invoice lines to POs and goods receipts
Compares line-item prices, quantities, and payment terms on each supplier invoice against the corresponding purchase order and goods receipt recorded in the ERP.
Checks invoices against contract terms
Reads agreed prices, rebates, volume discounts, surcharges, indexation clauses, and payment terms from the contract management system and flags any invoice line that deviates from them.
Verifies freight charges against carrier rate cards
Checks carrier invoices against agreed rate cards and estimated freight costs in the ERP, identifying billing errors and rate violations before payment is issued.
Routes exceptions to the assigned owner
Calculates the financial impact of each discrepancy and writes the flagged exception to the ERP or workflow system, directing it to the relevant buyer, category manager, or logistics contact based on invoice type and deviation type.
- Trigger 1
Supplier or carrier invoice arrives
A new invoice lands in the AP inbox or is pushed to the ERP via email, EDI feed, or supplier portal in PDF, XML, or EDI 810 format.
- Trigger 2
Supplier periodic statement received
A supplier sends an account statement listing their view of open items, triggering a comparison against the AP ledger open-items list.
- Step 1
Extracts, validates, and registers the invoice
Reads the invoice header and every line item, normalizes currencies, units of measure, dates, and tax codes, and matches the supplier identity against the master data record in the ERP. Checks the referenced PO number to confirm it exists and belongs to this supplier, and screens the invoice number for duplicates already recorded in the ledger. Invoices that clear these checks are registered in the ERP against the referenced PO. Invoices that reference an unknown PO or carry a duplicate number are flagged before any matching work begins.
- Step 2
Runs three-way match and contract validation across every line
For each registered invoice line, compares billed price, quantity, and unit of measure against the corresponding PO line and the goods receipt recorded in the ERP. Simultaneously validates the charged price, discounts, rebates, volume-tier reductions, surcharges, indexation clauses, and payment terms against the active contract or framework agreement in the contract management system. For carrier invoices, checks billed charges against the agreed carrier rate card and the estimated freight cost in the ERP. Identifies the specific cause of each mismatch: price drift since the PO was raised, partial or missing goods receipt, unit-of-measure discrepancy, unapplied volume discount, or superseded contract pricing.
- Step 3
Resolves clear cases and routes or works remaining exceptions
For discrepancies with an unambiguous cause confirmed by ERP or contract records (a price change already agreed in writing, a goods receipt logged after invoice processing, a volume tier the system can verify), applies the correction directly and clears the line. For remaining exceptions, calculates the financial delta and writes the flagged item to the AP workflow or ERP dispute module, directing it to the buyer, category manager, or logistics contact based on invoice type and deviation type. Where a supplier has overbilled, opens a formal dispute record, contacts the supplier to request a credit note, and tracks the response against the disputed invoice amount. Escalates disputes that exceed the defined age threshold to the assigned owner for direct intervention.
- Resolution
Invoice posted and queued for payment
The matched and validated invoice, cleared either by automated verification or by the assigned approver after exception review, is posted to the ERP with the correct GL account, cost center, and payment terms. The invoice enters the next scheduled payment run and the full comparison result is stored as an audit record in the AP system.
Overcharges caught before payment
so that the business does not fund billing errors, carrier rate violations, or contract deviations, reducing financial leakage across freight and supplier spend.
Exception routing without manual triage
so that buyers, category managers, and logistics teams receive only the disputes that need their judgment, instead of reviewing every invoice line themselves.
- Read/write access to the ERP
- Connects to the ERP (e.g. Infor LN/M3/CloudSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, IFS Cloud, or SAP S/4HANA) to read purchase orders, goods receipts, agreed carrier rates, and estimated freight costs, and to write back flagged deviations and reconciliation status. Without this connection the agent cannot perform invoice matching, freight verification, or contract checks.
- Inbound invoice feed
- Receives supplier and carrier invoices in structured form from the accounts payable inbox, EDI gateway, or invoice capture platform (e.g. Basware, Tungsten, Tradeshift). The agent cannot process or match invoices it has not received in a machine-readable format.
- Contract and rate card repository
- Reads negotiated contract terms, including agreed prices, rebates, volume discounts, surcharges, payment terms, indexation clauses, and carrier rate cards, from the contract management system (e.g. Icertis, Coupa Contract Management, or a document store connected to the ERP). The invoice-to-contract verification use case has no reference data without this access.
- Dispute and exception routing access
- Writes flagged exceptions, calculated financial impacts, and dispute records to the workflow or ticketing system used by buyers and category managers (e.g. ServiceNow, the ERP workflow module, or an AP automation platform such as Coupa or Basware). Without write access here, flagged items cannot be routed to the correct owner for resolution.