Originally aired November 18, 2025 on Extropy On AIr.
Accounts payable isn’t flashy, but when it breaks, the whole business feels it through late payments, missed discounts, month-end bottlenecks and risk. In the fifth episode of our Esker partner series, Kevin Zirkle of Extropy Advisors and Shelly-Ann Campbell of Esker explain how AP automation moves teams from reactive and manual to predictive, compliant and people-friendly, with a global logistics firm that reached 89% touchless processing.
Listen: Extropy On AIr podcast page | Spotify
Key takeaways
- AP pain isn’t just inefficiency. Manual entry, untraceable approvals and poor visibility create real financial risk.
- Esker automates the full invoice-to-payment workflow and lets finance teams change thresholds and approval paths without IT.
- AI handles extraction, matching, approver suggestions and fraud detection, while users stay in control.
- One global logistics firm reached 89% touchless processing and cut cycle time from 16 days to four.
- AP automation strengthens cash control, audit readiness and team productivity, and often pays for itself within a year.
What are the biggest AP pain points today?
Shelly-Ann hears the same issues again and again:
- Manual invoice entry and routing
- Email approvals with no traceability
- Inconsistent application of spend policies
- Long cycle times and late fees
- Little insight into liabilities and accruals
The bigger problem, she says, is risk, especially when CFOs are under pressure to tighten cash and improve controls. Kevin sees many AP teams scrambling every month just to close the books, often because of broken processes rather than volume.
How does Esker automate accounts payable?
Esker digitizes and automates the entire invoice-to-payment workflow:
- Multi-channel invoice capture from email, scans, supplier portals and EDI
- AI-powered data extraction and validation
- Two-way and three-way match automation
- Dynamic approval workflows with built-in escalation
- Fraud alerts and duplicate detection
- Real-time dashboards for finance and AP teams
- Integrated audit trails and compliance reports
All of it is built for non-technical users. As Shelly-Ann puts it, most AP people aren’t technical, and the finance team shouldn’t need IT to adjust a threshold or change an approval path. She adds that compared with complex suites and basic ERP modules, Esker aims for faster deployments, easier configuration, lower total cost of ownership and seamless integration with any ERP. Kevin notes that most clients aren’t replacing their ERP, so augmenting it is what matters.
How does AI make AP smarter?
AI runs throughout the Esker platform. In AP, that includes:
- Invoice field extraction that learns and gets smarter over time
- PO matching that organizes data to match as much as possible, even when line items don’t match exactly
- Approver recommendations based on past invoice history
- Anomaly detection that surfaces irregular patterns, duplicates and fraud risk for an AP specialist to review
Most importantly, users stay in control. Kevin calls it automation with accountability, and says that visibility makes AI far less intimidating for companies just getting started.
What results can AP automation deliver?
Shelly-Ann shared the example of a global logistics firm with more than 100,000 invoices flowing through six regional AP teams. After deploying Esker:
- 89% of invoices were processed touchlessly
- Cycle time dropped from 16 days to four
- Late payment penalties fell by 70%
- Audit prep time decreased by 60%
- Supplier satisfaction improved thanks to better communication and payment clarity
- Esker flagged duplicate invoices that had slipped through the old system
Kevin sees this as the heart of AP automation: managing by exception, with insight, control and trust in the system.
How does Extropy help Esker AP customers?
With new technology come process changes. Shelly-Ann sees Extropy helping clients define approval thresholds and matrix logic, map exception workflows, align AP policy with real business needs and tune KPIs over time. Just as important, Extropy makes sure automation fits real human behavior. If managers always delay approvals at month end, for example, alerts and escalations can keep invoices moving. Kevin adds that Extropy looks at the full operating model, not just the platform, because go-live is a starting point, not the destination.
Why should CFOs care about AP automation?
Shelly-Ann gives three reasons:
- Cash control. Faster approvals and better visibility mean better cash positioning.
- Audit readiness. Every invoice has a traceable path showing when it arrived, who approved it and when it was posted and paid. No more “he said, she said.”
- Team productivity. AP professionals can focus on supplier relationships and process improvement instead of chasing emails.
Kevin adds that many AP automation projects pay for themselves in less than a year through time savings and early payment discounts.
What is the future of accounts payable?
- Touchless processing of up to 95% with the right policies, rules and workflows in place
- Predictive cash flow modeling that shows cash going out and, with Esker on the receivables side, cash coming in
- Supplier scoring based on accuracy and behavior, as companies diversify their supply base
- Sustainability and ESG tracking built into the process
With AI and a continuous improvement mindset, Shelly-Ann says, AP becomes a strategic lever, not just a compliance function.
In their words
Every AI-driven suggestion is visible, explainable, and most important, overwriteable.
Shelly-Ann Campbell, Esker
CFOs who invest in AP modernization are signaling that financial control and innovation can coexist.
Shelly-Ann Campbell, Esker
About the speakers
Kevin Zirkle is Director of Business Development at Extropy Advisors, where he works across Extropy’s partner ecosystem, matching organizations with the right technology and the right people to move transformation from the whiteboard into production.
Shelly-Ann Campbell is S2P Strategic Solution Manager at Esker, where she works with organizations on accounts payable and source-to-pay automation.
FAQ
What are the biggest accounts payable pain points today?
Many AP teams still deal with manual invoice entry and routing, email approvals with no traceability, inconsistent spend policies, long cycle times and late fees, and limited insight into liabilities and accruals. The bigger issue is risk, especially when CFOs are under pressure to tighten cash and improve controls.
How does AI improve accounts payable?
AI extracts and validates invoice data and gets smarter over time, matches POs even when line items don’t match exactly, recommends approvers based on past invoices, and detects anomalies like duplicates and fraud risk. In Esker, every AI suggestion is visible, explainable and can be overridden by the user.
What is the business case for AP automation?
AP automation improves cash control through faster approvals and better visibility, makes every invoice traceable for audits, and frees AP teams to focus on supplier relationships and process improvement. Kevin Zirkle notes that many AP automation projects pay for themselves in under a year through time savings and early payment discounts.
Keep exploring
- More from our partner series on Extropy On AIr
- Next in the Esker series: AI, Insight & the Future of Finance with Esker
- Previous in the Esker series: Redefining Source-to-Pay with Esker: Visibility, Control, and Connection
- Start of the series: The Human Advantage: Introducing Esker + Extropy
- Why Extropy
Is your AP team still chasing approvals by email? Book a discovery call with our team.
