Given a choice of what to automate first in payables, most organisations pick capture because it is the most visible and the easiest to demonstrate. Workflow, meaning the record and the approval path, usually returns more and sooner, because elapsed time is dominated by waiting rather than by typing, and waiting is what routing addresses.
Why workflow first
Time your own process and the pattern is nearly always the same: minutes of work spread across days of elapsed time, with the largest gap between an invoice being ready for approval and being approved. Routing to named approvers with automatic cover and escalation attacks that gap directly, and it works even while invoices still arrive on paper.
What workflow automation actually is
An invoice record with a status, an owner and an age. Rules that route it to the right approver by cost centre and value. Cover during absence and escalation after a period. And the approval captured with a name, a date and the amount, held in the organisation's record rather than in somebody's mailbox.
Why capture is better second
Capture needs somewhere to deliver. With a record and an approval path already in place, it pays back immediately; without them it produces accurate data and nowhere to act on it, which is how organisations end up with images in one system and a tracking spreadsheet in another that disagree within a month.
Questions people ask about accounts payable invoice workflow automation
What if we key everything by hand?
Then capture has a strong labour case too. Measure both: keying minutes against approval waiting days, and start with whichever is larger.
Can workflow work with paper invoices?
Yes, once they are scanned at arrival. The workflow operates on the record, and the record can be created from a scan.
How long does workflow take to implement?
Weeks rather than quarters, because it is mostly configuration of routing rules and approver lists.