The reality for most finance teams using Orderwise is straightforward: invoice volumes keep climbing whilst headcount stays the same. What worked when processing 50 invoices monthly becomes unsustainable at 500, and downright unmanageable at 5,000.
Manual invoice processing isn’t just time-consuming. It’s become the bottleneck preventing finance teams from focusing on what actually matters—strategic financial management rather than data entry.
The Hidden Costs of Manual Invoice Processing
Most Orderwise users don’t realise how much manual invoice processing actually costs their business. Beyond the obvious time spent keying in data, there are approval delays, missing early payment discounts, duplicate payments, and the constant struggle to locate historical invoices during audits.
Here’s what happens in most finance departments today: an invoice lands in someone’s inbox, they either print it out or save the PDF to a folder, spend time typing all the details into Orderwise, send an email to whoever needs to approve it, then wait. And wait. Eventually they follow up, chase the approval, process the payment when it finally comes through, and file the invoice away somewhere—hopefully where they can find it again during the audit. This whole dance can easily stretch from several days to several weeks, depending on how responsive people are and whether there are any hiccups matching it to a purchase order.
The problem compounds as businesses grow. What starts as a manageable task for one person quickly becomes a full-time job for several people. Most finance teams have simply learned to live with this. It’s just how invoices get processed.
What Happens When You Actually Automate Everything
Real automation doesn’t just speed up one part of the process—it changes how the whole thing works. When Orderwise users set up PaperLess properly, invoices basically handle themselves.
An invoice arrives by email and gets captured without anyone needing to touch it. The AI reads everything—who it’s from, what the invoice number is, every line item, all the tax amounts. It’s surprisingly accurate. The system then pulls up the matching purchase order from Orderwise, checks everything matches, and flags anything that looks wrong. If it’s all good, it goes straight through for approval.
The approval bit is clever too. Based on rules you’ve set up, invoices get routed to the right people automatically. Those people get a ping on their phone, can review everything they need to see, and approve it in seconds from wherever they happen to be. Once approved, the invoice posts itself into Orderwise. The whole journey from “invoice received” to “posted in Orderwise” happens on its own.
All the invoices stay stored and you can pull them up instantly from inside Orderwise. Finance teams finally get proper visibility over what’s happening without spending their entire day pushing paper around.
Why Orderwise Chose PaperLess as Their AP Automation Partner
Orderwise evaluated numerous AP automation solutions before selecting PaperLess as their integration partner. Several factors influenced this decision, but the most significant was PaperLess’s ability to deliver genuine end-to-end automation rather than simply digitising existing manual processes.
The way PaperLess connects to Orderwise matters quite a bit. It’s a proper native integration, built specifically for how Orderwise handles data. Everything flows between the systems naturally—supplier records, purchase orders, goods receipts, invoice history, all of it—without needing complicated middleware or worrying about connections breaking.
Getting it up and running takes about two hours. Compare that to the weeks or even months some AP systems need for implementation. For businesses that can’t afford to have their finance team tied up in a lengthy project or deal with major disruptions, this makes a real difference.
Beyond just invoices, PaperLess handles expenses too. Employees can snap photos of receipts with their phones and submit expense claims digitally. For mileage, they just enter the number of miles and the system calculates everything based on current rates. Purchase order requisitions flow through approval workflows efficiently, giving finance teams complete control over spending before it occurs.
Perhaps most importantly, PaperLess delivers what Orderwise users actually need: a solution that eliminates manual work whilst maintaining the control and visibility finance teams require.
What Companies Are Actually Seeing
The real test of any automation is what happens after you switch it on. Businesses using PaperLess with Orderwise consistently tell us their finance operations have changed completely.
Invoice processing times fall by around 75% on average. Invoices that used to sit around for days or weeks now get done in hours, sometimes minutes. This isn’t just about saving time—it means you can actually catch early payment discounts, suppliers are happier, and your finance team can finally breathe.
Data entry errors drop by roughly 90%. The AI captures invoice data more reliably than manual typing ever could, and automatic matching stops the duplicate payments and posting mistakes that happen when people are rushing.
The approval bottleneck disappears completely. Instead of invoices languishing in someone’s inbox until they get back to the office, approvers can deal with them in moments from their phone, wherever they are. The approval cycle shrinks dramatically whilst you still keep proper controls in place.
Perhaps the biggest change is how finance teams feel. When automation takes care of the repetitive stuff, people actually have time for the analytical and strategic work that adds real value.
Company Inbox: This Changes Everything
Company Inbox deserves its own mention because it’s where the magic really happens.
Set it up to watch specific email addresses where invoices come in. When an invoice arrives, Company Inbox grabs it, reads all the data, finds the matching purchase order in Orderwise, routes it through your approval workflow, and posts it—all without anyone lifting a finger.
This goes beyond just automating data entry. It’s a completely different way of thinking about invoice processing. Invoices stop being tasks on someone’s to-do list. They become transactions that happen automatically, only coming to a person’s attention when something needs deciding.
For businesses dealing with hundreds or thousands of invoices every month, this is transformative. Your finance team stops spending their days processing invoices and starts spending their days managing the exceptions and doing actual financial management. It’s the difference between being buried in the work versus being in control of it.
Mobile Approval: Finance That Moves at Business Speed
Modern businesses don’t operate on traditional office schedules. Approvers travel frequently, work remotely, or simply aren’t chained to desks. Yet invoice approvals shouldn’t wait for someone to return to the office and check their email.
PaperLess mobile approval capabilities ensure invoices keep moving regardless of where approvers happen to be. Notifications arrive on mobile devices the moment invoices require attention. Approvers review invoice details, check supporting documentation, and approve or reject invoices—all from their phones in seconds.
This mobility matters more than it might initially appear. Invoices that previously waited days for approval now complete in hours. Cash flow improves when payments aren’t delayed by approval bottlenecks. When you pay suppliers faster, they notice. Better relationships often lead to better payment terms down the line. And your finance team? They’re no longer spending half their day chasing people for approvals.
The mobile app works just like the desktop version—approvers aren’t giving up any features just because they’re on their phone. Everything they need to make a proper decision is right there, they just get to do it from wherever’s convenient.
Purchase Order Matching: Preventing Errors Before They Occur
Three-way matching between purchase orders, goods receipts, and invoices represents one of the most critical controls in accounts payable. It prevents overpayments, catches pricing discrepancies, and ensures businesses only pay for what they actually receive.
Think about what three-way matching involves when you’re doing it manually. You’ve got to dig out the purchase order, pull up the goods receipt, line everything up against the invoice, check all the quantities and prices tally, then investigate anything that doesn’t match. Now imagine doing that hundreds of times a month. It’s exhausting.
PaperLess just does it. The system grabs the relevant purchase orders from Orderwise on its own, runs them against incoming invoices, and highlights anything dodgy. When everything matches perfectly, it approves itself based on whatever rules you’ve set. When something’s off, it sends it to the right person to sort out.
This automation doesn’t just save time—it improves accuracy. The system catches discrepancies human reviewers might miss whilst processing every invoice consistently according to company policies. Finance teams maintain control without drowning in manual matching tasks.
Expense Management: Extending Automation Beyond Invoices
Invoice processing represents the largest component of accounts payable automation, but it’s not the only one. Invoices aren’t the only paperwork drowning finance teams. Employee expenses and mileage claims pile up too, especially if you’ve got people out on the road regularly.
PaperLess Expenses works the same way as the invoice side. Employees take photos of receipts on their phones instead of stuffing paper into envelopes. They fill in their expense claim digitally, receipts already attached. The system checks everything against your company policies, sends it through whoever needs to approve it, and processes the payment—nobody’s typing anything in manually.
For mileage, employees just punch in how many miles they drove. The system does the maths using current rates. No more fiddling with calculators or double-checking someone’s working out.
You can see what’s happening with expenses as it happens. Pending claims, who’s approved what, where money’s being spent across the company. If someone breaks a policy rule, it gets flagged automatically. The whole thing runs faster and smoother for everyone.
PO Requisition: Control Spending Before It Happens
The most effective way to control accounts payable isn’t processing invoices more efficiently—it’s ensuring only appropriate purchases occur in the first place. Purchase order requisition and approval establishes this control whilst maintaining the flexibility businesses need to operate effectively.
Getting purchase requisitions sorted is straightforward. People raise them through either the web interface or the mobile app—whichever’s easier. The requisition then goes through your approval structure based on whatever rules you’ve configured: spending amount, which department it’s for, cost centre, project, whatever matters to you.
Approvers see the full picture when they’re reviewing: what’s being bought, why it’s needed, what it’ll do to the budget, plus any documents that back it up. They can approve or reject with a note explaining why. Once it’s approved, it turns into a purchase order in Orderwise automatically.
This keeps spending under control without slowing everything down. Requisitions move through the approval chain quickly but properly. Finance teams can see what’s about to be spent before invoices even arrive, so they’re managing budgets proactively instead of firefighting.
The Integration That Works: PaperLess and Orderwise
How well the integration works makes or breaks AP automation. Bad integrations mean you’re still doing manual work, entering things twice, or constantly reconciling systems—which defeats the whole point.
PaperLess and Orderwise connect properly. It was built specifically for how Orderwise handles its data. Supplier records, purchase orders, goods receipts, invoice history—it all flows naturally between the two systems without any manual bridging.
Getting it set up takes about two hours, not the weeks or months you see with big enterprise systems. This speed matters enormously for businesses that can’t afford weeks of disruption or consultant fees. PaperLess begins delivering value almost immediately rather than becoming a project that drags on for months.
The integration maintains Orderwise as the system of record whilst extending its capabilities. Users continue working in familiar interfaces for their primary tasks whilst PaperLess handles the automation components. This approach minimises training requirements and change management challenges.
Transparent Pricing That Actually Makes Sense
Here’s what drives people mad when shopping for AP automation: you see a decent price, get interested, then discover all the extras. Per-invoice fees. Per-user charges. Transaction caps. Premium features that cost more. Suddenly that “affordable” solution is anything but.
PaperLess doesn’t work like that. Unlimited invoices and unlimited transactions come as standard. Process 100 invoices a month or 10,000—same price. No surprises. No bills that spike when you’re busy. No rationing your automation to stay under some arbitrary limit.
This matters a lot if you’re growing. Invoice volumes will increase—they always do—but your AP automation costs won’t. The system handles whatever you throw at it for the same money.
The transparent pricing makes PaperLess seriously cost-effective when you actually compare properly. You need to work out the real total cost for everything your business needs: all your invoices, all your users, all the features. Plenty of solutions look cheaper at first glance but cost far more once you factor in all the transaction fees and upgrades.
Worth another look even if you’ve already evaluated other options. The unlimited processing, everything included as standard, and straightforward pricing often makes PaperLess the better value—even against solutions that seemed cheaper initially. Finance teams regularly find they can automate more for less money than they expected.
Complete Audit Trail: Visibility and Compliance
Finance teams need to know what happened, when it happened, and who did it. Audit trails aren’t just for when the external auditors turn up—you need them for internal controls, sorting out disputes, and improving how things work.
PaperLess logs everything. Every single action on an invoice, expense claim, or purchase requisition gets recorded with timestamps and who did it. You can piece together exactly what happened with any transaction whenever you need to.
This visibility extends beyond simple audit trails. Real-time dashboards show the current state of AP operations—how many invoices are pending approval, where bottlenecks exist, which suppliers have outstanding invoices, and how performance compares to targets. Finance leaders gain the insights needed to manage operations proactively rather than reacting to problems after they occur.
The system also stores all source documents securely with invoices retrievable directly from within Orderwise. This eliminates the filing cabinets, shared drives, and email folders that previously served as document storage whilst making retrieval instant rather than time-consuming.
Why Now Is the Right Time to Automate
A few things have lined up to make 2026 a good time for Orderwise users to automate. Finance teams are under more pressure to deliver results with the same or fewer people. Transaction volumes keep climbing. Manual processes that used to be merely annoying have become genuinely unworkable.
The technology’s reached a tipping point too. AI reading invoices is now accurate enough to actually trust it hands-off. Mobile tech means people can approve things from anywhere without security worries. Setting up systems that used to take months now takes hours.
But the biggest thing? The numbers stack up undeniably now. You typically get your money back within months, not years. Automation cuts labour costs, catches those early payment discounts you’ve been missing, stops duplicate payments. It’s not a question of whether it pays for itself anymore—it’s how fast.
Companies automating now pull ahead of competitors still doing things manually. They run leaner, keep suppliers happier, and their finance teams actually do finance work instead of admin.
Taking the Next Step
Implementing AP automation sounds like a big project, but it doesn’t have to be. PaperLess was built to be accessible for any size business without needing a massive IT team or months of implementation.
Best starting point? See it working. Watch how invoices move through the system, how mobile approvals work, how it all connects to Orderwise. Makes it real instead of theoretical.
Orderwise partnered with PaperLess specifically to give their customers access to proper, proven AP automation that works seamlessly with what they’ve already got.
Hundreds of finance teams have already made the switch from manual processing to automated workflows. They’re handling more invoices with fewer people, keeping better control, and doing the work that actually adds value. Not whether to automate—just when.
Want to see what PaperLess can do for your AP operations? Book a free demo to see it running with your Orderwise system.
The future of invoice processing isn’t typing in data and chasing approval emails. It’s automation that works while your finance team does what they’re actually good at.
