Vendor invoice arrives.
Nothing else needs you.
Zero-touch AP isn't a tool — it's a process redesign that then picks tools. The work is mapping every place a human currently has to look at an invoice, replacing those touches with rules and matches your existing systems already support, and routing only the genuine exceptions to a person. The result is the same accounting outcome with the people-time removed.
Every stage where a human currently has to look.
Below is the journey of a vendor invoice from arrival to fully posted and scheduled for payment. Each node represents a stage where most AP teams insert a human review today — and where automation lives or dies based on whether the upstream data, rules, and decisions are clean enough to trust. Tool choices come after we know what each node actually needs. Hover any node to see the failure mode and the fix.
Discovery first. Design second. Tools last.
I won't recommend a stack in the first call. The deliverable for this engagement is a workflow design that fits your existing systems, your vendor mix, your accounting platform, and your team — not a generic AP automation pitch. Each phase has a defined output you sign off on before the next begins.
- Interview AP team, controller, and the most-touched approvers
- Map every channel invoices currently arrive on, with volume per channel
- Document existing accounting stack, ERP, PO system, approval routing, payment rails
- Identify the top 3 vendors and the top 3 invoice types — they're where 80% of touches live
- Catalog every reason an invoice currently kicks out of clean flow
- Score each exception by frequency, cost-to-resolve, and whether it's preventable upstream
- Separate the "must always be a human" exceptions from the "currently human, shouldn't be"
- Deliver: exception register that becomes the routing logic in the redesign
- Future-state workflow diagram showing the zero-touch path and every exception branch
- Decision rules in plain English — match tolerances, approval thresholds, vendor-specific logic
- Audit trail design — every decision the system makes is traceable, every override logged
- Deliver: workflow spec + decision-rule book your team and the tool of choice can both consume
- Stack pick benchmarked against your existing accounting platform — minimum surface area added
- Build-vs-buy per stage (capture, validate, match, route, post) with reasoning
- Total cost of ownership over 3 years, including the human-time savings against the licence cost
- Risk register — where the design has fragility and what to monitor
- Sequenced rollout — start with your top 3 vendors (the ones generating 80% of touches), prove it, expand
- Pilot success criteria — defined hours saved, defined exception rate, defined audit pass
- Migration plan — how to run new and old in parallel without losing visibility during the transition
- Ongoing support recommendations — what your team owns, what stays with me, retainer options if you want one
Four weeks. Discovery to design-ready.
This is a design engagement, not a build engagement. You finish with a workflow specification, a tool recommendation grounded in your actual stack, and a roadmap you can hand to me or any implementer to execute. No commitment to build past Week 4.
Process Discovery + Exception Mapping
Interviews, channel mapping, top-vendor focus, exception register. You see your own workflow written down in a way nobody on the team currently has.
See the map
Workflow Redesign
Future-state workflow with explicit decision rules, exception routing, and audit trail design. Reviewed with your controller and AP lead before tools are even discussed.
See the future
Tool Recommendation + TCO
Stack pick tied to your existing accounting platform, build-vs-buy per stage, 3-year TCO. You see exactly why the recommendation, not just what.
See the cost
Roadmap + Pilot Plan
Top-3-vendor pilot scope, success criteria, parallel-run migration plan, ongoing support model. Build-ready specification at the end of week 4.
Build-ready
Tell me what hits your inbox every Monday.
A 30-minute call where you walk me through a real Monday morning of invoice processing — what arrives, who touches it, what kicks out, what slows you down. I'll come back with the questions that surface the structural issues before we ever talk software.