Invoice Processing Agent
Every invoice read, checked and routed before your finance team opens their inbox.
Accounts payable teams spend their days retyping invoice details, matching them against purchase orders and chasing approvers, while the one fraudulent invoice hides among hundreds of genuine ones. A BoldAgent invoice processing agent runs behind your finance systems through the Developer API. It turns each invoice into structured data, runs the same checks every time, and leaves people to handle only the exceptions.
The life of one invoice
One invoice, minute by minute
There's no chat window in this use case. Invoices arrive, your system hands them to the agent, and the result goes back into your finance workflow. Here's one invoice, minute by minute.
- 09:02
Received.
An invoice PDF from Northwind Supplies arrives in the AP mailbox. Your integration sends it to the agent through the Developer API, with the vendor ID and receiving entity as context.
- 09:02
Read.
The agent extracts the invoice number, dates, line items, tax and totals into a fixed JSON structure.
- 09:03
Looked up.
Through API Connections to your ERP, it retrieves purchase order PO-7731, the goods-received record, and Northwind's vendor master record.
- 09:03
Verified.
In the sandbox, it recalculates every line, the subtotal, the tax and the total, and compares quantities with what was received.
- 09:03
Judged.
The Invoice Checks decision model reviews the facts and returns a structured result for each check.
- 09:04
Routed.
Everything matches and the amount is under the auto-approval limit. The agent returns
ready_to_pay, and your ERP schedules the payment.
From document to data
Any layout in, the same structure out
The agent's first job is to turn an invoice, in whatever layout the vendor uses, into the same structure every time. The Response format is set to structured output with a schema you supply, so your systems never have to parse free text.
NORTHWIND SUPPLIES LTD INVOICE
No: NW-20419
Bill to: Contoso Retail Pvt Ltd Date: 28 Oct 2026
PO ref: PO-7731 Due: 27 Nov 2026
Item Qty Unit price Amount
Shelving unit, steel 40 2,150.00 86,000.00
Mounting kit 40 310.00 12,400.00
Subtotal 98,400.00
GST 18% 17,712.00
TOTAL ₹116,112.00
Bank: Northwind Supplies Ltd · A/C ****4410{
"vendor_name": "Northwind Supplies Ltd",
"invoice_number": "NW-20419",
"invoice_date": "2026-10-28",
"due_date": "2026-11-27",
"po_reference": "PO-7731",
"currency": "INR",
"line_items": [
{ "description": "Shelving unit, steel", "quantity": 40, "unit_price": 2150.00, "amount": 86000.00 },
{ "description": "Mounting kit", "quantity": 40, "unit_price": 310.00, "amount": 12400.00 }
],
"subtotal": 98400.00,
"tax": 17712.00,
"total": 116112.00,
"bank_account_last4": "4410"
}The checks behind every decision
Six checks, every invoice, no shortcuts
Reading an invoice is the easy part. Deciding whether to pay it is where errors and fraud slip through. The agent applies the same checks to every invoice, without fatigue and without shortcuts on a busy month-end.
- 01
Is it a duplicate?
The agent searches the ERP for the same vendor, invoice number and amount. Duplicate invoices are one of the most common causes of overpayment.
- 02
Does it match the purchase order?
Item descriptions, unit prices and the PO reference are compared with the PO. A price that differs by more than your tolerance is flagged.
- 03
Was everything received?
Invoiced quantities are compared with the goods-received record. Paying for 40 units when 36 arrived is caught here.
- 04
Does the arithmetic hold?
Every line, subtotal, tax amount and total is recalculated in the sandbox, not estimated by the model. A single wrong digit in a vendor's spreadsheet is found every time.
- 05
Have the bank details changed?
The account on the invoice is compared with the vendor master record. A mismatch is the strongest single signal of invoice fraud.
- 06
Who needs to approve it?
The amount is checked against your approval matrix to find the right approver, if one is needed.
The Invoice Checks decision model turns these facts into a consistent verdict using choice, bool and score questions. Because it's a separate, versioned component, finance can tune a tolerance or threshold, test it against sample invoices in the test panel, and publish without touching the agent's instructions.
Three ways an invoice leaves the agent
Pay, approve, or hold
- ready_to_pay
Ready to pay.
All checks pass and the amount is within the auto-approval limit. The result goes straight back to your ERP for payment scheduling.
- approve_first
Approve first.
The checks pass, but the amount exceeds the limit, or there's a small variance within your tolerance. The invoice goes to the right approver with a one-paragraph summary of what was checked and what to look at.
- hold
Hold.
A duplicate, a material mismatch or changed bank details. The invoice is held, the reason is recorded, and nothing moves until a person investigates.
A webhook pushes each outcome to your own systems, so approvers are notified in the tools they already use.
The invoice that shouldn't be paid
Looks routine. Isn't.
On a Friday afternoon, an invoice arrives from a long-standing vendor. The amount is normal, the PO matches, and the line items are identical to last month's. On the surface, it's routine.
The agent compares the bank account with the vendor master record and finds that it has changed. There's no matching change request in the ERP.
Human approval pauses the process. A finance controller sees the invoice, the expected and actual bank details, and the vendor's history. They call the vendor on the number already on file, confirm the vendor didn't send it, and reject it.
This is the case the whole system is designed for: an invoice that looks right to a busy person and is wrong in a way only a careful, consistent check would catch.
Plugging into your finance stack
Reads from your ERP. Never posts or pays.
-
Developer API
Your integration, whether an email ingestion service, a document scanner or your ERP itself, sends each invoice to the agent over REST, with the file attached and vendor and entity details passed as context. See the API reference for endpoints and parameters.
-
Scoped API keys
An API key carries the permissions of the user who created it. Create the integration's key from a dedicated service user with access to only this agent, so the integration can do exactly one job.
-
API Connections
Register your ERP's read endpoints, such as Get purchase order, Get goods received, Get vendor and Search invoices, as actions with variables. The agent only reads; posting and payment stay in your ERP.
-
Sandbox sizing
Choose the environment size that applies to every sandbox run of this agent. Invoices with hundreds of line items benefit from a larger environment; most don't need one.
Proving it before go-live
Build the evidence from your own history
Finance teams rightly want evidence before trusting automation with payments. Build it from your own history.
-
Replay last quarter
Take a few hundred processed invoices where you already know the right outcome, including the duplicates, mismatches and any fraud attempts you caught. Turn them into an evaluation dataset with the expected verdict for each.
-
Set a strict threshold
Run the dataset against the draft agent and set a high pass threshold. Investigate every failure: was it the extraction, a check, or the decision model's guidance?
-
Compare every change
When you adjust a tolerance or update the instructions, re-run the dataset and compare it against the previous run before publishing.
-
Start in shadow mode
For the first weeks, let the agent's verdicts run alongside your existing process without acting on them, and compare the two.
Audit-ready by design
Auditors ask why. This setup can answer.
Auditors ask why an invoice was paid. This setup can answer.
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Trace Logging
Trace Logging records the tool calls made for each invoice, the ERP data returned, and the checks performed, so every verdict can be traced to its evidence.
-
Conversations
Conversations record the agent version that processed each invoice, so a decision can be judged by the rules in force at the time.
-
Audit logs
Audit logs show who changed the agent, the decision model or the API Connections, and when, filterable by module, user and date.
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Versioning
Versioning means a rule change is a new published version, never an untracked edit.
Get started
Five steps to automated accounts payable
- Define the output schema your ERP expects.
- Connect your ERP for purchase orders, receipts and vendor records.
- Build the Invoice Checks model and test it with sample invoices.
- Require human approval for holds and high-value invoices.
- Replay last quarter as an evaluation dataset before go-live.