Accounts payable invoice automation (APIA) tools automate the capture, validation and processing of invoices. These solutions attempt to automatically match invoices to purchase orders (POs) and contracts, or automatically code those invoices that would not have a PO. Payment management, ranging from OK to pay to complete invoice payment, is also included. The expanded scope of APIA includes advanced capabilities, such as automated multiway matching, fraud detection and cash management.
Gartner defines intelligent document processing (IDP) solutions as specialized data integration tools enabling automated extraction of data from multiple formats and varying layouts of document content. IDP solutions ingest data for dependent applications and workflows, and can be provided as a software product and/or as a service. Organizations receive and process documents in multiple formats to enable activities such as onboarding new suppliers, receiving applications for loans or insurance claims. This results in large numbers of documents, the content of which is designed for people to comprehend rather than machines to process. Extracting data from content is essential for document processing and the automated activities this supports. IDP solutions fulfill this role, augmented by and potentially replacing people.