Q3 Product Launch: Elevating AP Efficiency with Dynamic Approvals

At Vic.ai, we believe in the power of steady, intentional progress for technology innovation, and our latest release is designed to do just that — help your team operate more efficiently and sustainably throughout the entire invoice lifecycle. These enhancements aren’t just about adding new features; they’re about empowering you to work smarter and make a bigger impact. We’re proud to bring these innovations to you, knowing they’ll contribute to better workflows and improved operations, one invoice at a time.

This quarter, we’ve focused on enhancing a vital yet often challenging aspect of the AP process: approvals. With our new dynamic role-based approval flows, we’re streamlining the setup and maintenance of approval workflows for our customers. By integrating directly with your HR system (also known as HRIS), Vic.ai can automatically assign individuals to approval flows based on their role and seamlessly update these workflows as your organization evolves. This means less time spent managing approvals and more time focused on the select invoices that need human review.

Eliminate AP bottlenecks with role-based dynamic approval flows

The importance of efficient invoice approvals

The accounts payable process might feel tedious, but it’s built that way for a reason. 

Each step is designed to ensure that the right invoices are paid, the amounts are accurate, and the goods or services billed have actually been received. Approvals are a key part of this process — they ensure that invoices are thoroughly checked before payment, safeguarding financial accuracy and accountability. This step helps catch errors, detect fraud, and ensure everything aligns with company policies. By bringing the right people into the approval process, customers confirm that what they’re paying for matches what was delivered and that all payment terms are properly met.

According to Ardent Partners, 50% of AP departments struggle with the approval process, and it’s hard to keep approval processes up-to-date, especially in large, multi-entity organizations.  

Automating approval flows is transformative for modern invoice processing, bringing both efficiency and precision to what can otherwise be a time-consuming task. With automated workflows, invoices are approved swiftly, minimizing the risk of late payments and penalties. Automation also reduces human error and ensures a clear, trackable process, allowing your team to focus on more strategic work. At Vic.ai, we understand the importance of smooth operations, so we’ve taken it a step further — making AI-powered autonomy the foundation of our solutions.

With the release of role-based dynamic approval flows, customers can now choose how to set up their approval flows — by individual or by role. Vic.ai’s new dynamic, role-based approval flows automatically update with organizational changes, simplifying approval setup and reducing delays. 

How Vic.ai invoice approval flows work

Vic.ai seamlessly integrates with all major HR systems, ensuring broad coverage for our customers. By connecting directly to a customer’s HR system, Vic.ai uses real-time data to manage approvals based on role, department, or project. The approval flow automatically updates whenever there’s a change, keeping approval processes up-to-date without any extra effort.

Working smarter, and faster

Alongside our dynamic role-based approval flows, we’ve rolled out feature updates to boost efficiency throughout the invoice lifecycle. From enhanced ingestion capabilities to advanced filters and new PO mismatch roles, these updates are designed to streamline every step in the process.

Vendor tag filters

Managing many vendors can be challenging, especially in larger organizations where accountants are assigned specific vendors, and new ones are frequently added. Before this release, accountants had to manually add each vendor to their filters and continuously keep them updated.

Our new Vendor Tag filters enable AP processors to handle their workload more efficiently. Vendor lists are automatically set to Vendor Tags, removing the need to manually filter by vendor. These filters on our Invoice Processing and Bill Pay pages allow accountants and payors to focus on the vendors they’re responsible for, enabling faster invoice processing and bill pay. Vendor tags are used to group vendors based on any vendor attribute. They are automatically created and set through the integration or during the implementation process.

Matching up PO mismatch customer needs

We continue to refine our PO matching capabilities, with a focus on automating the process, whether by refreshing our data and matching when a PO is changed, or adding a new mismatch approval role. 

Automatic PO re-matching

Sometimes, POs are created after an invoice comes in, or need to be edited after it’s issued, slowing down the PO matching process. Before this release, customers could manually retrigger the matching process after updating a PO.

Changing a PO shouldn’t result in more downstream work. Now, when a customer creates or syncs a new purchase order, Vic.ai automatically matches the invoice to the PO. If a customer changes an existing PO, our AI will automatically re-match the lines. This happens when a PO is added or changed in a customer’s ERP or procurement system, triggering a new sync with Vic.ai — refreshing our data, and re-triggering our PO matching.

New PO mismatch approval role: Site Owners

Site owners, such as warehouse managers, are on the front lines of receiving goods. If warehouse managers can't handle PO mismatch approvals, it can lead to significant delays in inventory processing and disruptions in the supply chain. Managing purchase orders at different locations are now easier with the new PO mismatch approval role specifically for Site Owners, such as warehouse managers. Vic.ai imports the site owner data from our customer’s ERP to create this role. 

Before this release, a site owner would have had to be manually assigned to a specific mismatch approval flow. Now, PO mismatch approvals can be sent directly to the person in charge of that site, ensuring accuracy of inventory records and payments.

Expanding our global currency coverage

Suppliers can be anywhere. The ability to process invoices in all major currencies is crucial to delivering value to our customers. Our AI can now predict and process invoices in 165 globally recognized currencies.  

Earlier this year, we rolled out our new GenAI model, Vic Accounting LLM (formerly known as Pagefields LLM) to further increase the accuracy of our predictions for header field items such as company and vendor predictions. We’ve now trained the model to predict the 3-letter currency code for all 128 global currencies. This means that for companies with strict rules on which currency a vendor can use, our system now includes a validation feature in the Vic.ai UI. If the AI's prediction does not match the company’s predefined currency rule for that vendor, the system will flag the discrepancy.

Ensuring accurate payments by deleting erroneous invoices

If payors find an error on an invoice after approval, they need to be able to delete it to avoid payment. With our new bill deletion functionality, payers can maintain the integrity of the payment process by deleting inaccurate bills, either individually or in bulk. This ensures that an erroneous bill isn’t accidentally paid, while recording the deletion leaves a clear record for future reference.

Payors can select one or multiple bills for deletion. Deleted bills will require commentary and be dated for inclusion in the audit log and approval history. They will also be viewable as a filter option for full transparency. Payors can also undo a deletion if it was made by mistake. 

Onwards and upwards

We’re excited about the impact these new features and updates will have on your AP processes. They will help simplify workflows, increase efficiency, and give you more control over your operations. The Vic.ai team is ready to support you on your autonomous accounting journey. Contact us to book a discovery meeting to learn how AI can be applied to your unique AP process to improve productivity and accuracy.