Manual invoice processing is one of the most time-consuming tasks in finance. Here's exactly where Aqilla's AI-enhanced automation feature – E2D – gives that time back.
For most finance teams, supplier invoices follow a familiar and frustrating path: arrive by email, get downloaded, get typed into the accounting system, get checked, get sent for approval. Repeat — dozens or hundreds of times a month. Even with solid processes in place, it can take 5–10 minutes per invoice and introduces error risk at every manual step.
Aqilla's E2D feature automates the repetitive parts of this workflow, so your team spends less time on data entry and more time on the work that actually requires their judgement. Here are the five places E2D makes the biggest difference.
Eliminating manual data entry entirely
The data entry time and cost: A finance team processing 100 invoices a month at 7 minutes per invoice spends roughly 11 hours every month on data entry alone — before a single invoice has been reviewed or approved.
E2D reads each supplier invoice as it arrives into your inbox and automatically extracts everything your AP workflow needs: supplier name, invoice number, document date, due date, currency, line items, VAT amounts, and totals. All of it is mapped directly into a draft purchase invoice inside Aqilla, ready for review.
Your team doesn't type a single field. They review, confirm, and move on. The difference in day-to-day workload is significant.
Processing invoices faster — without a separate tool
The hidden cost of OCR tools: Invoice capture tools solve data entry but create a new problem — data is processed externally, then be imported into your accounting system.
E2D is built natively into Aqilla. Suppliers send invoices to a dedicated email address linked to your Aqilla account. The invoice is captured, processed, and presented as a draft purchase invoice — all within the same system you're already working in.
No export. No import. No reconciliation between platforms. Invoices move from email inbox to AP workflow twice as fast as manual entry, and without managing a separate tool.
Reducing errors — and the ones that slip through get caught
What's at stake: Invoice data entry errors aren't just an inconvenience. Duplicate payments, incorrect VAT claims, and mismatched totals can create complications. E2D extracts data directly from the invoice document, eliminating transcription errors. But more importantly, it doesn't just extract and hope for the best — it rates every field it processes with a confidence score.
High-confidence fields pass through without interruption. Anything below the threshold is highlighted for attention before the invoice is processed. Your team only reviews what actually needs reviewing — which in practice is a small fraction of the total volume.
Getting full visibility across all incoming invoices, at a glance
The visibility problem: When invoices arrive, it becomes genuinely difficult to know what's been processed, what's outstanding, and what's at risk of late payments.
E2D centralises all incoming invoices into a single Purchase Invoice Inbox inside Aqilla.
Every invoice is automatically categorised by status so your team always knows exactly where things stand.
You can see at a glance how many invoices are queued, which ones need attention, and what's already been handled. No more chasing colleagues, no more searching email threads for a PDF that may or may not have been processed.
A complete AP workflow — inside one system, not spread across several
The multi system problem: The average finance team uses 3–5 tools to complete a single AP workflow: email, OCR tool, accounting software, etc. Each tool is another login, another subscription, another reconciliation task.
E2D brings the workflow into Aqilla. Invoice capture, data extraction, supplier matching, confidence review, draft invoice creation, cost code assignment, and handoff to the approval workflow all happen in a single system.
For teams that have been relying on a third-party OCR tool, E2D is a direct replacement — at 60% less cost on average — with the added benefit of removing the OCR integration entirely. At £40/month + £0.20 per invoice, it's typically the most cost-effective change a finance team can make to their AP process this year.
And because E2D is built and maintained entirely by Aqilla's own engineering team, improvements arrive faster and the roadmap isn't dependent on a third-party vendor's release cycle.
What E2D gives your team back
Hours of manual data entry — removed from the monthly workload
Reconciliation overhead — eliminated by keeping everything inside Aqilla
Invoice visibility — consolidated into a single, real-time inbox
Error risk — reduced by AI-enhanced confidence score
OCR tool subscription — replaced at significantly lower cost
See how E2D works
Whether you're already an Aqilla customer or evaluating your accounting software options, E2D is built to make a difference.
