An automated invoicing system means one of two things and organisations lose weeks to the ambiguity. Generating invoices from contracts and schedules is a billing capability whose measure is cash collected. Processing invoices received is a payables capability whose measure is not paying twice or for things that never arrived. They overlap barely at all.
The sending end
Invoices generated from a contract, subscription, delivery or timesheet, issued without typing, chased when unpaid. Concerns are billing accuracy, recurring schedules and tax treatment. It lives in accounting or billing software and nothing in it relates to verifying a supplier's claim before paying it.
The receiving end
Invoices captured, validated, matched against orders and receipts, routed for approval, coded and paid on terms with a second-person release. Concerns are elapsed time, exception handling and fraud. It lives in payables software and nothing in it relates to producing a recurring billing schedule.
How to avoid the wasted fortnight
State the direction and your document volume in the first two sentences of any vendor contact. A vendor who continues regardless is telling you their fit is poor. This is a trivially cheap filter and it prevents the specific expensive mistake of buying a capable product for the wrong side of the transaction.
Questions people ask about automated invoicing system
Do accounting suites cover both?
To a degree, usually strongly on one side. Ask what the product was originally built for.
Which end should we automate first?
Whichever carries more document volume, since the effort and the saving are per document.
Where does e-invoicing sit?
It supports both ends, and on the receiving end it removes the reading step entirely.