Matching to payment prepInside your ERPFree audit first

Invoice processing, run end to end

Your AP operation, inside your ERP, run by a named team in India and the Middle East.

Accounts payable team processing invoices at their desks
About the service

What is invoice processing outsourcing?

It means handing the whole accounts payable loop to an outside team. Invoice capture, matching, exception chasing, approval routing and payment preparation. Not software you still have to staff.

Most AP teams do not run short of time because of the invoices that work. A clean invoice matched against a clean purchase order takes seconds. What eats the week is the minority that do not match. A price moved. A delivery came in partial. Nobody raised the goods receipt. The invoice arrived with no purchase order at all. Every one of those needs a person to ring the supplier, find whoever ordered it, and decide whether the difference is acceptable.

What never moves

Approval rights, payment release and bank authorisation stay inside your organisation. Any change to a vendor's bank details is flagged to you for out of band checking, never actioned by us.

Ardent Partners put numbers on that in 2025. Exception rates average 14 percent, and for the first time in nineteen years of running the study, exceptions ranked as the number one challenge in accounts payable, named by 53 percent of teams. The average invoice costs $9.40 to process and takes 9.2 days. The top fifth of performers do it for $2.78 in 3.1 days.

Buying more software rarely closes that gap on its own. Capture and matching are already good. What no tool does is chase a supplier, chase an approver, or judge a tolerance breach. That work needs people whose only job is to clear it. That is what we take on, in your system, under your approval rules.

Coverage

Where we deliver

The regions we sell into, and the data protection rules that govern each engagement.

  • Australia and New Zealand

    Our working day overlaps ANZ mornings. The Australian Privacy Principles govern cross border handling.

  • Canada

    PIPEDA, and Law 25 in Quebec. Bilingual EN/FR supplier correspondence on request.

  • United Kingdom

    UK GDPR, with an IDTA covering transfers to India.

  • GCC, UAE and Saudi Arabia

    Our Middle East team gives local hours cover. Saudi PDPL and UAE data protection law are written into the DPA.

  • United States

    Committed overlap hours in the contract, not best efforts. SOC 2 Type II is on our certification roadmap.

  • Europe

    GDPR first. Strongest fit today in the Netherlands, the Nordics and Ireland.

What the team actually does

Five areas of work, handled end to end by the analysts assigned to your account.

Invoices arriving from email, supplier portals and EDI into one queue
Capture and coding

Invoices arrive by email, supplier portal, EDI and post. We pull the header and line detail and propose the GL coding.

Digital mailroom intake
Header and line capture
GL coding proposed
One queue, every channel
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Invoice matched against a purchase order and goods receipt
Two and three way matching

Invoices matched to purchase order and goods receipt before an approver ever sees them, on your tolerances.

PO and receipt matching
Your tolerance rules
Duplicate detection
Tax and currency checks
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Analyst resolving an invoice exception with a supplier
Exception handling

Price gaps, short deliveries, missing receipts and no PO invoices get chased with the supplier until they clear.

Named analyst owns each one
Supplier chased to closure
Internal owner tracked down
Nothing parked in a queue
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Payment run staged for approval with duplicate checks applied
Payment preparation

Runs staged, duplicates and tolerance breaches caught, early payment discounts flagged before they lapse.

Payment runs staged
Fraud and duplicate checks
Discount windows flagged
You release, always
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Supplier statement reconciliation at month end
Reconciliation and close

Supplier statements reconciled, accruals reported, and a clean document trail ready for audit.

Statement reconciliation
Accrual reporting
Month end close support
Indexed audit trail
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What we need from you

Four things. None of them take your team more than a few hours.

Sample of invoices prepared for the free spend audit
Send a sample

A month of invoices and your current volumes, so we can measure where you are today.

One month of invoices
Current volumes by channel
Your ERP and AP tools
Any known problem areas
Finance lead named as the single point of contact for the pilot
Name one owner

One person on your side who can answer process questions while the pilot runs.

A single point of contact
Answers process questions
Signs off the SOPs
Joins the weekly call
Scoped, least privilege ERP access being provisioned
Provision access

Read and post rights in your ERP, scoped by you and revoked by you at any time.

Least privilege roles
Named users only
Your joiner leaver process
Revoked by you, any time
Approval limits and matching tolerances agreed and documented
Agree the tolerances

Your approval limits and match rules, written down once and applied consistently.

Approval limits
Price and quantity tolerances
Escalation path
Written down once
How engagement starts

How we take AP off your desk

Four to six weeks from first conversation to a team running your invoice queue, with a paid pilot before any long term commitment.

Free spend audit

We measure the AP operation you have today. Volumes, channel mix, cycle time, exception rate, and where the manual hours actually go.

Invoice volume and channel mix
Cycle time and exception analysis
Written baseline report, yours to keep
Paid pilot on real invoices

A fixed fee pilot on a live slice of your queue, measured against the baseline we agreed, so the decision to carry on rests on evidence.

Documented process and SOP build
ERP access under your own controls
Success criteria agreed up front
Embed and scale the team

Your named analysts move to steady state, with governance calls, SLA reporting, and capacity that moves with volume instead of with your hiring cycle.

Named analysts with backup cover
Monthly SLA and savings reporting
Volume flexes without rehiring
Comparison

In-house team, Procuriva, or a large BPO

An honest read on where each option wins. If your volume is low or your spend is unusual, keeping the work in house is the right answer and we will say so.

In-house team
ProcurivaOur model
Big-4 / large BPO
Time to stand up
Months, with hiring and ramp up
Weeks, including a measured pilot
Months, with procurement and onboarding
Cost model
Fixed salaries plus overhead
Per invoice, or a dedicated monthly seat
Large fixed contract, annual commitment
Cover for leave and attrition
Yours to backfill
Contractual, backup analysts named up front
Pooled team, cover varies by tier
Volume flexibility
Rehire, or pay overtime
Flexes per invoice, or at agreed notice
Change request, then repriced
Process documentation
Often tribal knowledge
SOPs written during the pilot, yours to keep
Standardised to their model
Minimum commitment
Permanent headcount
A fixed fee pilot
Typically multi year
Who you actually get
Your own team
The people who scoped it run it
Partners pitch, junior staff deliver
Approval and payment authority
In house
Stays in house, always
Stays in house
Best fit
Low volume, or unusual spend
Mid-market, roughly 200 to 2,000 staff
Enterprise, global multi tower scope

Frequently asked questions

The questions finance, IT and legal teams ask before an AP engagement starts.

What is invoice processing outsourcing?

It is handing the whole accounts payable loop to an outside team: invoice capture, coding, two and three way matching, exception chasing, approval routing, payment preparation and reconciliation. The provider runs the process. You keep the approval and payment authority.

How is outsourcing different from AP automation software?

Software captures and matches invoices. It does not ring a supplier about a price difference, chase an approver who is on leave, or decide whether a tolerance breach is acceptable. Outsourcing gives you people to do that work. Most teams end up wanting both, which is what we run.

What does the team actually do day to day?

Pull invoices from every channel, code them, match them against purchase orders and goods receipts, work the exceptions until they clear, move invoices through your approval workflow, stage payment runs, and reconcile supplier statements at month end.

How much does it cost to outsource accounts payable?

Two models: a price per invoice, or a monthly fee for a dedicated analyst. We quote after the free audit, because the honest number depends on your volume, your channel mix and how many invoices need exception work. Anyone quoting before seeing those is guessing.

What is not included in the price?

We tell you up front rather than at renewal. Setup and process documentation sit inside the fixed fee pilot. Ongoing fees cover the agreed scope and volume band. Anything outside it, such as a new entity, a new ERP or a large one off backlog, is quoted separately before work starts.

How do we work out whether it is worth it?

Compare your fully loaded cost per invoice against our quote. Fully loaded means salaries, benefits, overhead, software and the time approvers spend chasing. The free audit measures your current figure so the comparison is real rather than assumed.

Is it safe to send our invoice data to an offshore team?

Access is scoped by you, granted to named people, and revoked through your own leaver process. We contract on standard clauses, name every sub-processor, and work to GDPR, UK GDPR, PIPEDA, the Australian Privacy Principles and Saudi PDPL. ISO 27001 alignment is in progress and SOC 2 Type II is on the roadmap. We state status honestly rather than showing badges we do not hold.

What certifications should we ask an AP provider for?

Ask for ISO 27001 or SOC 2 Type II, then ask two follow ups most providers dodge: which legal entity is certified, and what the audit scope covers. A badge on a website tells you nothing without those answers.

How do you prevent invoice fraud and duplicate payments?

Duplicate detection runs on every invoice before approval routing. Any change to a vendor's bank details is treated as an exception, never actioned by us, and escalated to your nominated contact for out of band checking. The analyst who maintains vendor data is never the analyst who processes that vendor's invoices.

Will we lose control of payment approvals?

No. We prepare and route, you approve and release. Nobody on our side can move money or authorise a payment. Your delegation of authority stays exactly as it is.

What happens to our AP staff?

Most clients redeploy them onto vendor management, controls, analysis and the supplier relationships that need judgement, rather than cutting headcount. We will tell you honestly what your volume supports instead of promising a headcount number to win the work.

Which ERP and accounting systems do you work in?

SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Coupa, Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, Zoho and Tally. We work inside your system rather than asking your team to learn ours, so there is no migration and no new licence.

Can you handle our unusual invoice formats and complex matching?

Yes, and this is what the pilot is for. Odd formats, multi line matching, partial deliveries, consignment stock and multi currency tax treatments get documented during the pilot and written into the SOPs before we go to steady state.

How long does the transition take?

Four to six weeks from first conversation to a team running your queue. Roughly two weeks for the audit, then a fixed fee pilot on a live slice of invoices, then steady state. Your side of the work is a sample of invoices, one named contact, scoped system access and your approval rules.

What happens if we want to bring AP back in house?

You keep the SOPs and process documentation we write, because they are yours throughout, and your data stays in your systems. Transition out support is written into the contract from day one rather than negotiated when you want to leave.

Do we get a dedicated team or a shared pool?

Named analysts assigned to your account, with named backup cover for leave and absence. You know who is doing the work and who to call. Cover is a contractual term, not something you discover when someone is on holiday.

See your AP baseline. Free, in two weeks.

No obligation. You keep the report either way.