[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":123},["ShallowReactive",2],{"work-invoice-document-processing-pipeline":3,"work-next-\u002Fwork\u002Finvoice-document-processing-pipeline":120},{"id":4,"title":5,"accent":6,"body":7,"client":85,"cover":86,"coverAlt":87,"description":88,"duration":89,"extension":90,"featured":91,"industry":92,"meta":93,"navigation":94,"order":95,"path":96,"quote":97,"results":98,"seo":108,"services":109,"stack":110,"stem":117,"year":118,"__hash__":119},"work\u002Fwork\u002Finvoice-document-processing-pipeline.md","AI invoice and document-processing pipeline for a logistics operator","#1A4380",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":77},"minimark",[10,20,25,28,32,51,55,70,74],[11,12,13,14,15,19],"p",{},"A freight operator was keying around 4,000 supplier documents a month "," into its ERP by hand. We built an ",[16,17,18],"code",{},"ai-automation"," pipeline that extracts fields from invoices, delivery notes and customs paperwork, cross-checks them against purchase orders and posts straight-through cases to SAP, routing only exceptions to people. Roughly 80% of invoices now post without a manual touch. ",[21,22,24],"h2",{"id":23},"challenge","Challenge",[11,26,27],{},"Documents arrived as PDFs, scans and photographs from more than 300 suppliers, in four languages and dozens of layouts. Two accounts-payable staff spent most of their week typing, and month-end closes slipped because invoices sat in inboxes. Earlier attempts with template-based OCR broke every time a supplier changed its layout. The finance director wanted fewer late-payment penalties, an audit trail per document, and no change to the ERP itself.",[21,29,31],{"id":30},"what-we-built","What we built",[33,34,35,39,42,45,48],"ul",{},[36,37,38],"li",{},"Intake from a shared mailbox and an SFTP drop, with de-duplication and document-type classification (invoice, credit note, delivery note, customs declaration).",[36,40,41],{},"Layout-agnostic extraction: Azure Document Intelligence for tables and key-value pairs, with a GPT-4o pass to normalise supplier names, currencies, VAT lines and free-text references into a fixed schema.",[36,43,44],{},"A validation layer that matches each invoice to purchase orders and goods receipts, checks totals and tax arithmetic, and assigns a confidence score per field.",[36,46,47],{},"Straight-through posting to SAP Business One for high-confidence, fully matched documents; a review queue in n8n with side-by-side document and extracted fields for everything else.",[36,49,50],{},"Every decision logged with the source page and the rule or model that produced it, so auditors can trace any posted line back to the scan.",[21,52,54],{"id":53},"results","Results",[11,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,65,66,69],{},"Around 80% of invoices post automatically ","; the rest reach a reviewer within minutes with the mismatch highlighted. Typical processing time fell from about three days to same-day ",", and the field-level error rate after validation is under 1% on the monthly sample audit. "," The AP team was redeployed to supplier reconciliation and dispute handling, and month-end close now finishes two working days earlier. "," Related pillars: ",[16,63,64],{},"nlp"," for the multilingual normalisation and ",[16,67,68],{},"ai-integration"," for the ERP connector.",[21,71,73],{"id":72},"what-made-the-difference","What made the difference",[11,75,76],{},"We built the review queue first and the automation second. Staff corrected extractions from day one, which gave us a labelled evaluation set within a fortnight and a clear, measured path from \"review everything\" to \"review exceptions\", one supplier group at a time.",{"title":78,"searchDepth":79,"depth":79,"links":80},"",2,[81,82,83,84],{"id":23,"depth":79,"text":24},{"id":30,"depth":79,"text":31},{"id":53,"depth":79,"text":54},{"id":72,"depth":79,"text":73},"Freight & logistics operator (Netherlands)","\u002Fcovers\u002Fwork\u002Finvoice-document-processing-pipeline.svg","Abstract navy cover with a rising cyan course line","An automated pipeline that reads supplier invoices, delivery notes and customs documents, validates them against orders and posts to the ERP with human review only on exceptions.","10 weeks","md",false,"Logistics",{},true,12,"\u002Fwork\u002Finvoice-document-processing-pipeline",null,[99,102,105],{"value":100,"label":101},"~80%","of invoices posted with no manual touch",{"value":103,"label":104},"3 days → same day","typical processing time",{"value":106,"label":107},"\u003C1%","field-level error rate after validation",{"title":5,"description":88},[18,64,68],[111,112,113,114,115,116],"Azure Document Intelligence","OpenAI GPT-4o","Python","n8n","PostgreSQL","SAP Business One API","work\u002Finvoice-document-processing-pipeline","2024","SAetvMU-ntbJbTzLGbVk4GCrsK9EdW9Fra6hZnjkRZI",{"path":121,"title":122},"\u002Fwork\u002Fmulti-agent-market-research-system","Multi-agent research and reporting system for a consulting firm",1792973684069]