Processing vendor invoices into Dynamics 365 Finance using OCR

This article was co-authored by Rahul Thite, principal consultant at Wipro.

Vendor invoice processing in Dynamics 365 Finance can be a time-consuming process without automation. AP users need to create the pending invoice manually and update the information for vendor invoices (e.g. Invoice number, Due date etc.). If approval is required, user manually needs to send the invoice for approval in D365. Approver can see the invoices which are waiting for the approval in D365. Once the invoice is approved by the approver, the AP team member needs to post it manually in D365.

For organizations with large numbers of vendor invoices, the time and effort required of the AP team can quickly become a problem. To avoid errors and protect against fraud, the AP team needs to spend increasing amounts of time on invoice processing rather than focusing on the other key areas in Finance that could provide a tangible organizational benefit.

The good news for D365 Finance users is that the challenges described above can be addressed with vendor invoice automation. There are a range of ways to automate your AP process, and the new built-in invoice capture feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is a useful option for Accounts Payable (AP) teams to explore. 

Invoice capture: The basics

Invoice capture is an automated process that extracts critical data from incoming invoices using AI and ML technologies. One key technology is Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which scans and recognizes text from scanned or digital images of invoices.

D365 Finance offers invoice capture tools that take you through the following steps: