The practices that make payables automation work are almost all about sequence and about honesty in the business case. Measure first, fix the free upstream things that cap the ceiling, put the record and the approvals in place, then buy capture and matching sized to what the measurement showed. Each step delivers on its own, which is what makes the sequence low risk.
Establish your ceiling before you buy
Count what share of last month's invoices had both a purchase order and a recorded goods receipt behind them. That number caps how much of your queue can ever clear without a person, and every touchless claim you are shown should be read against it.
Sequence by dependency and cost
Consolidate arrival channels and fix receipt recording first, because both are free and both raise the ceiling. Then approvals, because waiting dominates elapsed time. Then capture, which now has a record to deliver into rather than producing images with nowhere to go.
State the limits in the business case
Name what does not improve: judgement on exceptions, supplier disputes, and anything about invoices with no order behind them. A case that names its own limits is read as honest and is the one that gets approved.
Name what will not improve
Judgement on exceptions, supplier disputes, and anything about invoices with no purchase order behind them. Stating these in the business case makes the rest of it believable, and it prevents the disappointment that follows a case which implied everything would get faster including the parts that are conversations with other people.
Questions people ask about best practices accounts payable automation
What order do most organisations actually use?
Capture first, because it is the most visible and easiest to demonstrate. That is also why so many projects improve the part that was already cheap and leave the elapsed time unchanged.
How long should the measurement take?
An hour a day for a week, or a sample of fifty invoices. Either answers the question well enough to direct the spending, and it costs nothing.
What if purchasing will not engage?
Report the count of invoices arriving without an order, by department, monthly. Numbers presented as a shared measure change behaviour where reminders do not.