The challenge
Supplier invoices arrived as PDFs in a shared mailbox, in many different layouts. The accounts team keyed each one into Business Central by hand and chased mismatches with purchasing.
Month-end was a scramble, with little visibility of how many invoices were still waiting.
Our solution
Power Automate picks up each invoice from the mailbox and sends it to an AI Builder document-processing model trained on a sample of the distributor’s real invoice layouts. Extracted fields are checked against purchase orders and goods receipts in Business Central.
Matching invoices become draft purchase invoices for an accountant to approve. Anything low-confidence or mismatched goes to a review queue in Teams, with the original PDF shown next to the extracted fields.
- Confidence thresholds send uncertain fields to a person
- Three-way match against purchase orders and receipts
- Approval in Teams with the original document attached
- Power BI view of the invoice pipeline and exceptions
Architecture
Inbox
- Shared mailbox
- PDF invoices
Extract
- Power Automate
- AI Builder
Validate
- PO & receipt match
- Review in Teams
ERP
- Business Central
- Power BI
Technology
- AI Builder
- Power Automate
- Dynamics 365 Business Central
- Dataverse
- Microsoft Teams
- Power BI
Outcomes
- Accountants review and approve invoices instead of re-typing them
- Exceptions surface early rather than at month-end
- A complete audit trail from email to posted invoice