An AI Use Case You CAN Start Today

Who is this for?

Businesses where the AP staff still manually key in data from PDF and paper invoices
Businesses processing more than 100 invoices on a monthly basis

What Problems Are We Solving?

Manual Keying Errors. Manual data entry inevitably leads to errors in amounts, vendor details, or GL codes, which then require even more time to find and correct.
Hours Of Time Lost. Skilled people in the finance team spending hours manually processing invoices.
Managing Physical & Digital Invoice Files. Staff time is spent scanning paper, saving PDF attachments, and manually linking them to transaction records in your accounting system.
Delayed Spend Visibility. A backlog of unprocessed invoices means you lack a real-time, accurate view of company liabilities and departmental spend.
Skilled Accountants on Clerical Tasks. Your skilled finance staff are tied up with low-value data entry instead of strategic activities like spend analysis or improving vendor relations.
Approval Bottlenecks & Delays. Invoices get stuck in email inboxes or require manual chasing for approval, risking late payment fees and straining supplier relationships.
Risk of Duplicate Payments. Manual processes increase the risk of paying the same invoice twice, a common and costly error that a more controlled, automated system would flag.

What Does Manual Processing Cost?

The time your team spends on manual data entry has a direct and indirect, recurring financial cost. Below is a conservative model based on common industry benchmarks and client experiences to help you quantify the impact on your business.

1️⃣ The Direct Cost:

Our calculations are based on standard market rates, where a skilled professional takes an average of 7.5 minutes to manually enter, code, and verify a single invoice, with an average loaded staff cost of AU$60 per hour.

Weekly Invoice Volume	Weekly Time Cost	Annual Financial Impact (Direct Labour)	What This Cost Could Fund Instead
Very Low (20 invoices/week)	0.5 hours per day	~AU$6800/year	New software subscriptions or team training
Low (50 invoices/week)	1.25 Hours daily	~AU$17,000/Year	Freeing up a team member for significant higher-value analysis
Moderate (100 invoices/week)	12.5 hours	~AU$34,100 / year	A significant digital transformation project or upgrade to critical systems.
Medium (200 invoices/week)	25 hours	~AU$68,250 / year	The full salary of an additional financial analyst to provide strategic insights.
Higher (400 invoices/week)	50 hours	~AU$136,500 / year	An entire business intelligence project or comprehensive finance automation initiative.

2️⃣ The Indirect Cost:

The above calculation only covers direct labour. The true cost of manual processing also includes:

Error Correction: Industry reports suggest finance teams can spend 3-5 hours weekly just fixing manual data entry mistakes.
Delayed Payments: Which can lead to late fees and damage supplier relationships.
Strategic Opportunity Cost: Your skilled finance staff’s time is spent on data entry, not on value-adding financial analysis.
Compliance & Fraud Risk: Manual processes increase the chances of duplicate payments and make audits more difficult.

Who Are Exceleris?

We’re Exceleris, and for years, we’ve partnered closely with finance teams, helping them optimise their financial systems and processes.

Our reputation is built on a deep understanding of accounting operations and a commitment to helping our clients achieve maximum efficiency from their technology.

Our work has been recognised with industry awards for innovation, such as being named a 2022 Innovation Partner of the Year by financial software provider, Certinia.

This close partnership with clients gave us a unique insight. We noticed a recurring, significant pain point across countless businesses: the sheer amount of time and resources lost to manual invoice processing.

We saw skilled accountants spending days wrestling with spreadsheets, manually keying in data from PDF invoices, and chasing discrepancies. It was clear this wasn’t just an occasional inconvenience; it was a systemic drain on productivity, a source of financial risk, and a barrier to timely, accurate reporting.

We realised that simply advising on process workarounds wasn’t enough. The need for a truly integrated and intelligent solution to automate invoice capture was so profound and widespread that we felt compelled to act.

So, driven by our commitment to client success and our passion for practical innovation, we decided to build it ourselves. We set out to create a specialised tool that would seamlessly address these accounts payable challenges, finally allowing your finance team to escape the drudgery of manual data entry and focus on higher-value work.

Crucially, we are accountants and finance professionals first. Largely everyone at Exceleris has an accounting background, so we understand your world, your processes, and your challenges intimately. We don’t just provide a tool; we partner with your finance team to help them adopt the best-practice automation they need, bridging the gap between financial operations and technology.

Introducing Automated Invoice Processing

“It pays for itself in the first 5 minutes and you get to enjoy it for the rest of your life!”

– Sandy Fesq, Finance Director, Fesq & Company

Exceleris directly addresses the challenges of manual invoice processing. You get a specialised tool that works with your existing accounting environment, significantly improving your financial operations.

How Does It Work?

1️⃣ Invoice Arrival: Invoices arrive as PDFs in a monitored email inbox. There is no need for your team to manually download, save, or upload files.

2️⃣ Automatic Data Capture: Our system uses AI-driven OCR to automatically read the invoice, extract the key data (supplier, date, amounts, line items), and create a draft payable transaction in your accounting system with the source document automatically attached.

3️⃣ Intelligent Coding & Verification: The system suggests the correct GL code based on supplier history and your rules. For invoices related to a purchase order, it can automatically perform a three-way match of the details.

4️⃣ Review by Exception: Your AP team reviews a simple queue of transactions. The majority, which are correctly captured and matched, just require a quick approval to be posted. The system flags only the true exceptions that need human attention, which is what one client described as the key to a process that took a “five minutes per invoice” down to a “five to ten second job.”

Our tool is designed from the ground up to streamline your accounts payable process. This means:

Works With Your Existing Systems: Our solution is designed to work alongside your current accounting software or ERP. It captures and validates invoice data before cleanly passing it to your system, eliminating disconnected processes. We provide proven integration paths for major ERPs and accounting systems, from simple file transfers to direct API connections.
No Extra Work For Your Internal IT team: As a modern cloud-based tool, we manage the technical upkeep and use modern APIs to ensure the connection to your systems is as light-touch as possible for your IT department.
Intelligent Data Capture: Our AI-driven OCR uses “fingerprinting” technology to learn the layouts of your recurring supplier invoices. For any new formats or complex documents the system is uncertain about, we have a human-in-the-loop verification process. This ensures high accuracy from day one and allows the system to learn continuously, so your team isn’t left fighting exceptions.. As Oswaldo Moreno of Think Tank found, with the Exceleris solution, “all the information is already there.”
Focused on Accuracy & Audit Trail: By minimising manual keying, our tool reduces costly data entry errors. Each transaction is linked directly to the source invoice document, providing what one Finance Director described as a “perfect… auditing point of view.”

Designed for Efficiency: The core aim is to save your finance team significant time. By automating the most laborious parts of invoice capture, skilled staff can focus on higher-value financial analysis. A process that once took a skilled operator five minutes per invoice was reduced to a “five to ten second job.”

What Are The Benefits?

Automate Tedious Data Entry: Slash hours spent manually keying invoice data into your accounting system
Eliminate Manual Keying Errors: Minimise costly mistakes from manual data entry and ensure greater accuracy in your payables
Suggest GL Codes Intelligently: Reduce coding errors and save time as the system learns to suggest the correct GL codes based on vendor history and your business rules
Streamline Invoice Approvals: Eliminate email chains and manual chasing by routing invoices automatically to the correct budget holders based on your defined business rules (e.g., by amount or department)
Link Source Documents Automatically: Keep a clear audit trail by automatically linking the source invoice file to the transaction in your system
Accelerate Month-End Close: Ensure all supplier invoices are processed promptly, providing an accurate view of liabilities for a faster, smoother month-end close
Gain Real-Time Spend Visibility: Access an accurate, up-to-date view of liabilities and departmental spend as invoices are processed
Free Up Your Finance Experts: Allow skilled accountants to focus on high-value work like spend analysis and cash flow forecasting, not manual data entry
Improve AP Process Control: Reduce the risk of duplicate payments and enhance financial controls with a more structured, automated workflow

Can I See A Case Study?

Watch Sandy Fesq, from Fesq & Company, describe the transformation they experienced after implementing Payables Automation.

Getting Started: Your Path to AP Automation

To understand how automated invoice processing can transform your finance operations, follow these simple steps.

1️⃣ Book A Consultation & Demo

Schedule a no-obligation discussion with our specialists. We’ll explore your current invoice processing workflow, your transaction volume, your existing accounting environment, and your key objectives.

2️⃣ Receive Your Consultation Report and Initial Proposal

Following our consultation, you’ll get a tailored report. This document will provide:

A clear Cost of Inaction Analysis and potential Return on Investment (ROI).
The cost of the implementation and ongoing subscription.
Recommendations on how to eliminate unnecessary hours spent on manual processes.
A robust business case and financial justification for automation.

3️⃣ Review & Agree Next Steps

If the outlined benefits and business case align with your company’s needs, we will finalise the scope and timeline for implementing the Exceleris automated invoice processing tool.

“We can see that a process that took three people to do… is just gonna be done by one…4.5 person-days of work is going to less than half a day” Oswaldo Moreno – Think Tank

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1: How much does this solution cost? A: The investment includes a straightforward annual subscription (typically between $6.5k -9k/year) and a one-off setup fee based on your requirements. We provide a full, transparent breakdown of costs in the Consultation Report after our initial discovery call.
Q2: How long does implementation take? A: Our standard implementation is typically completed within three months. We aim for minimal disruption and manage the technical configuration, requiring your team mainly for discovery, testing, and training.
Q3: Does this work with different invoice layouts from all our suppliers? A: Yes, the tool is designed for flexibility. It uses advanced OCR and learning capabilities to accurately process varied invoice layouts and formats from your different suppliers.
Q4: How secure is our invoice and financial data? A: Security is paramount. Our solution operates on secure cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS/Azure) and all data is handled with strict security protocols, including encryption in transit and at rest, to ensure your financial data is protected.
Q5: My existing accounting software/ERP has a payables module. Why do I need this? A: While most systems have a payables module for tracking liabilities, they often lack the specialised OCR and AI capabilities for automatically capturing data from external invoice documents. Our tool is purpose-built to fill this specific gap, automating the time-consuming front-end data entry and feeding clean, validated data into your existing system.
Q6: What ongoing support can we expect? A: You receive ongoing technical support directly from the Exceleris team as part of your subscription. As our team is composed almost entirely of accounting and finance professionals, you get support from experts who not only understand the tool but also deeply understand your financial processes and challenges.