Accounts payable automation software: A 2025 buyer’s guide

Imagine your team just wrapped up a major vendor order. The goods arrived on time, you logged the purchase order (PO), and everything went smoothly. Then, accounts payable (AP) receives three separate invoices, each with a different format—and the clock is ticking on early payment discounts. Now, you’re chasing approvals, toggling between systems, and cross-checking line items manually. 

Sound familiar?

AP automation software is designed to solve this exact pain point. By streamlining invoice capture, match, approval, and payment processes, AP automation can reduce friction between procurement and finance. This saves time, helps reduce errors, and surfaces real-time insights for better decision-making.

What is accounts payable automation software?

AP automation software digitizes and streamlines the process of receiving, approving, and paying supplier invoices. It also helps businesses reduce manual errors, speed up reconciliation, ensure policy compliance, and gain clearer visibility into their financial commitments.

These tools typically include features like invoice capture, automated approval routing, integration with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and procurement solutions, and payment scheduling.

How AP automation fits into the procurement lifecycle

AP automation serves as an essential piece of the procurement puzzle. After someone in your organization makes a purchase, you need to match invoices to POs and review, approve, and pay them—ideally without time-consuming back-and-forth approvals or data silos.

AP tools close the loop by syncing with procurement software to track every transaction, from request to payment. Solutions like Amazon Business also complement this flow by providing built-in support for consolidated invoicing, e-invoicing, Pay by Invoice, and reconciliation APIs. With over 300 integration partners, Amazon Business makes it easier to centralize purchasing while aligning spend with your financial systems and compliance needs.

Together, these tools help teams push accurate data directly into their AP systems. 

Benefits of adopting AP automation

Manual AP processes can slow teams down, introduce errors, and limit visibility. However, automation can mitigate this by helping procurement and finance to work better together, speeding up workflows, tightening controls, and making audits less painful. Here’s are some ways automation software can benefit your team and improve your organization’s long-term resilience:

• Faster invoice approvals and fewer errors: Automated three-way matching between POs, invoices, and receipts lets teams quickly approve payments without chasing details. For example, a mid-market organization could reduce approval time significantly by adopting invoice capture and routing workflows.

• Reduced reconciliation and manual entry: Digital invoicing eliminates the need for spreadsheet tracking or manual uploads. With Amazon Business, features like consolidated invoicing and reconciliation APIs push purchase data into your AP system, saving you hours of admin work each week.

• Greater financial visibility and control: Real-time dashboards and AP analytics give decision-makers a clearer picture of cash flow, upcoming liabilities, and discount windows. The up-to-date information these dashboards provide supports smarter forecasting and results in fewer payment surprises.

• Easier compliance with budget and audit requirements: Audit trails, role-based access, and approval workflows—all of which AP automation software typically provides—help you stay aligned with internal controls and external requirements. Systems like Amazon Business also support SRP policies to keep purchasing within set guidelines.

• Seamless integrations across procurement and finance tools: Modern AP software integrates with ERP and procurement solutions like SAP, Oracle, Coupa, and QuickBooks. Amazon Business furthers this connection by syncing invoice and payment data into over 300 finance systems to support end-to-end spend visibility.

   

Are you convinced yet? Read on to discover some features to look for you as you shop for AP automation solutions.

6 essential AP automation features that simplify procurement and payment workflows

The right features can make or break your automation strategy. 

Here are six core capabilities your team should prioritize:

1. Invoice capture

Are you tired of tracking down emailed PDFs or scanning paper receipts? Invoice capture tools (also known as e-invoicing) automatically pull data from invoices, reducing human error and the risk of lost documents. 

Amazon Business supports e-invoicing and consolidated billing, making it easier to ingest and organize invoice data at scale.

2. Automated invoice processing

Manually routing invoices wastes time and increases the chance of delays. Automated processing, on the other hand, uses rule-based logic to route invoices to the right approvers. 

When you integrate automated systems with tools like Coupa or Procurify, this feature helps midsize teams cut cycle times while staying within policy.

3. ERP integrations

Your AP automation software should plug directly into your existing ERP or finance stack. 

To make this easier to achieve, Amazon Business integrates with over 300 systems—including SAP Ariba, NetSuite, and Oracle—to push transaction and invoice data directly into your workflows. These integrations ensure your systems talk to one another, helping you avoid duplicate entries and data mismatches.

4. Custom workflows

Every organization has different approval hierarchies and compliance needs, so you should look for solutions that support your needs. In particular, conditional routing, escalation paths, and multi-layered approvals can provide flexibility, reduce bottlenecks, and enforce internal controls, especially during end-of-month crunch time.

5. Spending transparency

Without a clear picture of where your money is going, it’s hard to optimize your finances. 

To combat this, modern spend analytics—such as real-time dashboards and automated reports—help procurement leaders analyze spend across categories and suppliers. Amazon Business also enhances visibility with built-in analytics and Business Prime features like Spend Visibility and Guided Buying.

6. Three-way matching

Verifying invoices against POs and receipts ensures that you’re only paying for what you actually ordered and received. Three-way matching automates this process, reducing overpayments and fraud risk. 

Pairing three-way matching with account management tools like Pay by Invoice and Amazon Business’s order history tracking also reinforces expense accuracy and audit readiness without manual digging.

How to choose the right accounts payable automation software

Choosing the right AP automation solution isn’t just about speeding up payments—it also involves optimizing your procurement process by aligning with your purchasing process, improving vendor management, and reducing friction across finance. 

Here’s how to evaluate your options with clarity and confidence:

Define your business and procurement requirements

Start by mapping out your AP and purchasing workflows. To do this, ask yourself the following questions:

• How many invoices do I process monthly?

• Do I use purchase orders consistently?

• What level of vendor communication and compliance tracking do I need?

Clear answers here will help you narrow your focus to tools that can handle your volume, complexity, and vendor landscape.

Prioritize must-have features

Look for software that supports the following functionality:

• Automation for invoice capture and matching

• Integration with your ERP or procurement platform

• Role-based approvals and compliance controls

• Real-time spend visibility

Amazon Business, for example, offers invoice-level reconciliation data that flows into many of the tools you may already use, like Coupa, SAP Ariba, and Procurify.

Assess integrations and interoperability

Choose a system that connects with both your financial software and procurement stack. You get bonus points for finding one that offers pre-built integrations with supplier solutions, so purchase data syncs directly into your AP workflow.

Evaluate ease of use and vendor support

User-friendly interfaces, low onboarding friction, and responsive customer support can make or break an implementation. To get an idea of the strength of their support and ease of working with them, ask vendors about their average go-live time, training resources, and account management model.

Pilot, audit, and verify

Before full deployment, run a pilot with a few vendor categories to test the accuracy of automation, approval routing, and invoice reconciliation. This phase helps you surface any data mismatches or gaps in compliance. Then, you can scale with confidence.

How to measure your AP automation software’s ROI

Once your AP automation system is live, the next challenge is proving that it’s delivering value. That means backing up your investment with hard numbers and sharing those results with key stakeholders across procurement and finance.

The key is tracking the right metrics from day one and leveraging tools that give you full visibility, from B2B purchasing behavior down to line item transaction details. When you have granular, real-time data, you can shift from prediction to precision, confidently identifying cost-saving opportunities and performance gains.

Here are a few ways to assess and report ROI effectively:

Focus on measurable outcomes

Instead of vague improvements, focus on tangible gains like time savings, cost reductions, and workflow efficiency. By using pre-automation benchmarks, you can compare these tangible outcomes before and after rollout.

Use visual, stakeholder-friendly reporting

Whether you’re reporting to finance or operations, clarity matters. Dashboards, monthly recaps, and year-over-year comparisons help stakeholders connect the dots between automation and results. 

Amazon Business analytics-driven tools support this goal with detailed reporting at the PO and line item level.

Track ROI with the right AP metrics

While the “best” metrics might vary by organization, here’s a suggested list of starter benchmarks to measure and prove value quickly:

• Invoice processing time (before vs. after automation)

• Average cost per invoice

• Rate of early payment discounts 

• Error rate on invoice approvals

• Number of eliminated manual touchpoints

• Supplier inquiry volume and resolution time

• Percentage of automatically reconciled spend

Amazon Business customers can layer on Spend Visibility, which is available through Business Prime, to get even more precise views across spend categories, vendor trends, and purchasing behaviors—all of which support ROI reporting and budget planning.

You can also try using an online accounts payable ROI calculator to get an idea of your potential yearly savings before implementing new software.

Streamline, simplify, and scale with confidence

As your organization grows, so do the stakes. Managing AP across multiple departments, tools, and vendors can be overwhelming and costly. Manual data entry, delayed approvals, compliance risks, and lack of visibility all add friction to an already complex process.

That’s why more finance and procurement leaders are turning to automation to take control of their spend and reduce inefficiencies. Pairing the right AP automation software with flexible purchasing options and integrated solutions, like Amazon Business, allows teams to streamline workflows, improve accuracy, and stay audit-ready without adding more manual tasks.

Schedule a call today to see how Amazon Business can integrate with your AP workflows and simplify your purchasing at scale.