Automating the collection and booking of purchase invoices
A purchase invoice arrives by email as a PDF or a scan. Someone opens it, types the amount, date, supplier and line items into the accounting system, then files the document in the archive. At a few dozen invoices a month, this is work that comes back every day in exactly the same form.
How much this process costs you a year
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This process costs you
Realistically you will recover from PLN 0 to PLN 0 a year
Here is the math: salary times the employer cost multiplier 1.2 divided by 173 hours a month gives the hourly rate. That rate times the hours in a year gives the cost of the process. From the recovery we take a band of 40% to 70%, because part of the time recovered on paper comes back as supervising the automation and handling exceptions. This is a deliberately conservative range, not a promise.
Where the hours go
Retyping an invoice is not just entering an amount. You have to check the supplier's details, match the line items to the right cost accounts, note the payment deadline and file the document where accounting will find it later. At fifty invoices a month that is several hours, usually spread over a few days around month-end close.
A mistake in this process costs more than the invoice itself. A duplicate entry inflates costs, and a missed payment deadline means interest or a lost early-payment discount. Both mistakes usually only come to light at month-end close, when fixing them is harder.
What automation does
Invoices from scans, email and folders land in one system. Amounts, dates, tax IDs and line items are read by OCR/AI directly from the PDF, with no retyping.
The extracted data goes into the accounting system with a cost category assigned, and a duplicate of the same invoice is recognised by its number and supplier before a second entry is created. The payment deadline is visible and sends a reminder before it passes, and the original document lands in the archive without a separate step.
What it costs and when it pays back
Implementation usually costs 3,000-9,000 PLN. The price depends on the number of channels invoices come in through and how uniform their formats are. Fixed templates lower the cost of implementation.
Payback comes in the third to sixth month, calculated on the time of whoever currently enters purchase invoices by hand. Use the calculator above to work out how many hours a week this takes today.
Contractors working with these tools
This process is most often built with the tools below. Click to see vetted specialists with their rates, availability and references.
Frequently asked questions
Usually 3,000 to 9,000 PLN as a one-off, within the platform's automation range of 2,000 to 20,000 PLN. The price rises with the number of incoming channels and the variety of invoice formats.
Extraction from a well-scanned document is very accurate, but with an unusual layout or a poor-quality scan it may need correcting by a person. A well-built workflow flags such cases for checking instead of quietly saving the wrong figure.
No, it enters the data into the software your company or accounting firm already uses. Accounting decisions and tax settlements stay exactly where they are today.
An invoice like that goes to a person for checking instead of being saved with the wrong data. It is worth asking about this directly in the quote if foreign invoices make up a noticeable share of your monthly volume.