Supplier invoices into SAP or Dynamics as draft postings

The question this file answersWho opens every supplier PDF and keys vendor, amount and VAT into the ERP, and at what cost per invoice?

Fits: finance teams receiving 500–5,000+ supplier invoices a month (finance playbook) as PDF, scan or portal download into a shared mailbox, keyed by hand into the ERP.

Not for: firms whose suppliers already send structured e-invoices straight into the ERP — the keying is not your cost, and the matching desk is a different file.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the finance playbook — not a client's day. Between 500 and 5,000 invoices a month reach a firm as PDFs, scans and portal downloads, mostly into one mailbox. Someone opens each file, types vendor, amount, VAT and coding into the ERP and starts approval; matching against the purchase order is a separate desk. By IOFM's 2023 survey, each invoice handled this way costs €12–15. It hurts after long weekends, when the mailbox holds three days, and whenever a supplier changes its layout once the person who knew it has left.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

The first working day after a bank holiday. The AP clerk does not open a mailbox with three days of PDFs; they open a review list — a vendor not yet in the master, a VAT total that does not reconcile, a possible duplicate. The rest were read overnight and sit in the ERP as draft postings, coded as that vendor was coded last time. The clerk's day moves to that list, vendor queries and new-supplier set-ups. The ERP shows how many drafts arrived without a hand. IOFM's 2023 survey has a manual invoice at €12–15 against €3–5 automated — a survey range, not a promise about your desk.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~50–70%

less manual invoice capture and entry — Ardent Partners / IOFM (2023)

Before: someone opens every PDF and keys vendor, amount and VAT into the ERP — IOFM (2023) puts that at €12–15 an invoice. After: the same survey puts automated capture at €3–5 — the exceptions and the approval still reach a person.

Where this number comes from

IOFM survey (2023): average cost per invoice drops from €12–15 (manual) to €3–5 (automated); Ardent Partners "AP Automation" (2023): best-in-class AP reaches 80%+ touchless processing. Industry figures, not our measurement. Playbook range 50–70%. This file is the capture-and-entry step; three-way matching is a separate file drawing on the same sources.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

Capture only — matching is a separate file — and your ERP stays: SAP, Oracle, Dynamics or the one you run. Between the mailbox and the ERP:

each attachment from mailbox or portal is recognised as invoice, credit note, statement or noise
header and lines are read — vendor, number, date, net, VAT, total
the vendor is checked against your master and coding proposed from its history
a draft posting is created in the ERP through its API or your AP team's existing import
anything failing a check — unknown vendor, VAT that does not add up, a duplicate number — goes to a person with the image and the reason.

We start with the suppliers who send most.

What stays human — and what this will not do

New vendors. Tax-coding arguments. Split invoices. Anything the vendor master does not already know — and the approval itself.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

A dirty vendor master — duplicates, missing VAT numbers — is the commonest reason the check fails; the first weeks show it, and cleaning it is your data work. Scanned and photographed invoices read worse than native PDFs, and those are the ones that fail and go to a person. Without an API for draft postings, writes go through import files, adding IT time and delay. Split invoices, tax-coding disputes and new vendors are outside the playbook's 50–70%; that range is for capture and entry of invoices the master already knows.

How long it takes, and what we need from you

Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we take a month of invoices, sort them by supplier and by format, read the ugly ones, and check whether your ERP takes draft postings through an API or only by import. Pilot, 3–5 weeks — medium complexity in the finance playbook (€10–20K): the highest-volume suppliers, drafts only, the AP clerk reviews every exception and a sample of clean ones. Production: the remaining suppliers, then credit notes. From you: mailbox access, the vendor master, a month of past postings.

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

This is about you if…

Do supplier invoices arrive as PDFs and scans in a shared mailbox, not as structured e-invoices?
Does one person key vendor, amount, VAT and coding into the ERP for each of them?
Is your vendor master reasonably clean — one record per supplier, VAT numbers filled in?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map a finance process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Finance.

Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.

All process files