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Friday, 6 November 2026
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Agent Playbooks

How to put an AI agent on accounts payable

Paying suppliers is repetitive, rule-based and digital, which suits an agent. It is also a favourite target for fraud. How to get the speed without the risk.

The Infercline Desk · Friday, 6 November 2026 Sign in to save
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Accounts payable is the work of receiving supplier invoices, checking them, getting them approved and paying them on time. In most businesses it means reading invoices that arrive by email in every format, typing details into the accounts system, matching them to orders and deliveries, chasing approvals and answering suppliers who ask when they will be paid. It is high volume, rule-based and mostly digital, which makes it one of the better first jobs for an AI agent.

It is also where criminals look first. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported 21,442 complaints of business email compromise in 2024, with losses of about 2.77 billion US dollars. Business email compromise often means a fake or hijacked supplier email asking for payment to a new bank account. In the UK, UK Finance reported that authorised push payment fraud, where a victim is tricked into sending money themselves, cost 450.7 million pounds in 2024. Any agent on accounts payable must make this fraud harder, not easier.

Start by mapping the current process. Write down where invoices arrive, who checks them, what they check against, who approves which amounts and how payments are released. Most teams find steps that exist only in someone's head. Those need writing down before any agent can follow them.

The agent's first job is reading. It can open invoices from email, whatever the layout, and pull out the supplier, invoice number, date, line items, tax and total. This is where agents beat older automation, which needed a template for each supplier. The agent then enters the details as a draft in your accounts system. Accounting software vendors are building this in: Xero says its JAX agent is designed to automate data entry and bank reconciliations, and Intuit announced AI agents for QuickBooks in July 2025, including an accounting agent.

The second job is matching. The agent checks the invoice against the purchase order and, where you have one, the delivery record. This is often called a three-way match. Where everything agrees within your tolerances, the agent marks the invoice ready for approval. Where something does not match, such as a different price, a missing delivery or a duplicate invoice number, it flags the problem with a short note explaining why.

The third job is chasing. The agent can send approval requests to the right person, remind them, and answer routine supplier questions about payment status from the records. Supplier queries take up a surprising share of finance teams' time, and most of them have a simple answer in the system.

Payment release should stay with people. The agent can prepare the payment run, but a person approves it, and changes to supplier bank details must never be accepted on the agent's word. Any request to change bank details should be confirmed by phone, using a number you already hold rather than one in the email. This rule matters more with an agent, not less, because agents read text and can be misled by it. The OWASP Gen AI Security Project ranks prompt injection, where hidden instructions in content push an AI to act against its owner's intent, first among AI application risks. A fraudulent invoice could contain such instructions.

Set clear limits in the system, not just in the agent's instructions. Give the agent permission to read invoices and create drafts, not to approve its own work, release payments or edit supplier bank details. Keep a log of every change it makes. Review a sample of its matches each week, especially the ones it passed without flagging.

Measure the right things. Track the time from invoice received to invoice approved, the share of invoices processed without a person retyping anything, the number of exceptions and how fast they are cleared, late payment charges, and duplicate payments caught. Compare against the months before the agent started.

Why it matters to your business

Accounts payable affects cash, supplier relationships and fraud exposure all at once. Faster, cleaner processing can help you pay on time, avoid late fees and keep suppliers on side. But a careless set-up that lets software change bank details or release payments could hand criminals an easier route to your money. The value comes from speed on the routine work and tighter control on the risky steps.

What to do on Monday

  1. Write down your current accounts payable steps, including who approves what amount and how bank detail changes are confirmed.
  2. Check whether your accounting software already includes an AI agent for reading invoices, and test it on last month's invoices.
  3. Set system permissions so that the agent can create drafts and flags but cannot approve, pay or change supplier bank details.
  4. Adopt a firm rule that any bank detail change is confirmed by phone on a number already on file.
  5. Pick three measures, such as days to approval, exceptions and duplicates caught, and record this month's figures as your starting point.

More on this topic: AI agent guides

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