Simplify your PO matching and processing with AI: Introducing Vic.ai’s Autonomous PO Matching

Forget about 2-way and 3-way PO matching. In fact, forget about staring across multiple windows for hours on end. The average six days it takes to process PO-derived invoices is about to get a lot shorter. Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Vic.ai’s Autonomous PO Matching. Now, using Vic.ai’s proprietary AI, PO invoices will be automatically 2 and 3-way matched and processed without the need for templates or rulemaking. Just upload your invoices, import your POs, and Vic.ai’s Autonomous PO Matching will take care of the rest.

What makes Autonomous PO Matching different?

Even with automation, PO matching is a tedious process. With Vic.ai, PO invoices can now be autonomously matched to their associated POs removing the need for customers to manually identify and compare line by line. In turn, this decreases error rates and improves accuracy. This includes complex documents such as multi-line invoices and POs, matching multiple invoices to a single PO, or even interpreting handwritten receipts.

Unlike existing automation tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Vic.ai’s proprietary AI solution learns from your historic data, removing the need for templates and manual updates each time a vendor changes an invoice or a new vendor is onboarded. You no longer need to manually program your automation.

In addition, while template-driven automation covers the major vendors, it doesn’t cover the 20% of vendors with less volume, leaving teams with additional manual work. By removing the need for templates, Vic.ai’s Autonomous PO Matching solution can cover invoices from all vendors, not just the most popular ones.

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By bringing both PO-derived invoices and expense invoice processing under one central solution, Vic.ai saves customers time and increases efficiency. 

Milwaukee Tool, an industry leader in developing innovative solutions for professional construction users, has been collaborating alongside Vic.ai as the pilot partner for Autonomous PO Matching.  

“Innovation is core to our ethos at Milwaukee Tool, from the products we build to the way our internal teams operate. We constantly look for ways to improve our operations and we see AI as a path to a more robust finance organization. We are excited to push the envelope on autonomous PO matching in partnership with Vic.ai,” said Conor Clair, Senior Finance Manager of Accounting. “It presents us with a great opportunity to incorporate AI into our business and augment our decision making.”

Before Vic.ai’s Autonomous PO Matching, PO matching required a heavy hands-on approach, even where software automation has been applied. Up to 24% of AP teams' time is spent on exception handling, and inaccuracies or incomplete data can result in delayed processing, late payments, and penalties. While Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and RPA can digitize financial information and perform simple tasks, they have their limitations.

When it doesn’t work, AP teams have to:

• Stop workflows: Manually search for where mismatches are happening
• Tab across screens: Spend hours looking across multiple windows.
• Risk inaccuracies: Stare and compare creates a higher probability for error and mistakes
• Depend on vendors: Waste time waiting to hear back from vendors when requesting updates or fixes

And when RPA does work, it still requires continuous human intervention:

• Substantial initial setup: A customer must create a template for each of their vendors, which can range from several hundred to several thousand.
• Continual setup: When a customer begins using a new vendor, they must add a new template.
• Continual monitoring: if a vendor changes their invoice format, the template breaks.

With Autonomous PO Matching, AI enables customers to spend less time training and more time monitoring. There is no initial setup, no continual setup or continual monitoring. Our proprietary AI solution gets up to speed based on your historical data, picks up new vendors automatically, and learns as invoices change.

Unlike RPAs, which break down if invoices and POs don’t follow prescriptive templates and number match-ups, Vic.ai matches on descriptions and allows for tolerances. This means that it can understand variability in line item amount or description from invoice and PO before Vic.ai escalates for human intervention. The result? Superior match rates.

And finally, customers can process PO-derived and non-PO  (expense) invoices on the same platform. Vic.ai automatically processes all types of invoices which means employees can see all invoices in one user interface while spending less time routing invoices and POs to separate systems.

How it works

Vic.ai’s Autonomous PO Matching processes your PO-derived invoices faster and more accurately than conventional automated solutions. Our proprietary AI gives you:

• World-class data extraction: Get superior invoice interpretation with Vic.ai’s algorithms and computer vision.
• Matching excellence: Increase match rates due to exceptional invoice data interpretation.
• Fine-tuned controls: Select tolerance settings that align with your preferences. 
• Approval flows at mismatch: Simplify mismatch resolution with automatic flagging of line items outside of tolerance for further approval.

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Ready to automate your automation?

With Vic.ai Autonomous PO Matching, our AI does the setup, automation, and continuous learning for you. Save your team time and reduce errors by using AI for your PO-matching and invoice processing needs.

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