10 processes finance teams can automate

What makes a finance process worth automating?

Look for high volume, clear rules, and a result someone can check quickly. Score each process on hours spent per month, how often it goes wrong today, and what a mistake would cost.

Two kinds of technology do this work, and it helps to keep them apart. Rules-based automation does the same thing every time, and is what you want when the logic is known. AI models handle messy inputs, such as reading an invoice laid out in a way you have not seen before, but they can be wrong, so their output needs a check. Most good finance automation uses rules wherever it can, and AI only where it has to.

The list below is a starting point, not a promise of savings. How much any of these saves depends on your volumes and how clean your data is, so measure the time each one takes today before you start.

Which 10 finance processes can be automated?

These suit most Irish finance teams, roughly in the order we would look at them.

Start with one, and pick whichever takes the most hours and is the easiest to check. Invoice capture is often that process, because the volume is high and a person can compare the draft against the original in seconds.

• 1. Invoice capture. Read supplier invoices from a shared inbox, pull out supplier, date, amounts and VAT, and create a draft for a person to approve.
• 2. Purchase order matching. Compare invoices with purchase orders and delivery records, pass the clean matches, and send exceptions to a named person.
• 3. Expense claims. Read receipts, check them against policy, and flag the exceptions for review.
• 4. Bank reconciliation. Match bank lines to ledger entries by rule, and leave only the unmatched items for someone to look at.
• 5. Credit control reminders. Send reminders on a schedule, based on the agreed terms, and stop them automatically once payment arrives.
• 6. Supplier onboarding. Collect details through a form, check the VAT number against the EU's VIES service, and route the record for approval. ¹
• 7. VAT return preparation. Gather the figures and flag unusual items, so a person reviews them before filing.
• 8. Month-end checklists and accruals. Track the tasks, draft recurring journals, and chase whoever has not finished.
• 9. Management reporting. Pull figures from your systems into a standard pack, with a first draft of the commentary.
• 10. Payroll checks. Compare each run against the last one and flag changes, before the submission to Revenue. ²

What should stay with a person?

Anything that moves money, commits the company, or requires judgement should keep a named person approving it.

If an automated decision has legal or similarly significant effects on a person, Article 22 of GDPR may apply, so credit decisions about individuals need particular care. ³ Sole traders and individual customers count as people for this purpose, and your invoices and payroll hold personal data throughout.

• Approving payments, and any change to a supplier's bank details. Bank detail changes are a well-known route for fraud, so confirm each one through a separate channel.
• Signing off and filing tax returns.
• Judgement calls on accounting treatment, provisions and write-offs.
• Difficult conversations with customers who owe you money.

What Irish rules should the design account for?

Records, late payment rules and data protection are the three to design around.

The retention point catches people out. Tax rules require you to keep some records for six years, while GDPR asks you not to keep personal data longer than needed, so write down what you keep and why. Also keep an audit trail of what the system did and who approved it, because an auditor or Revenue may ask.

• Records. Revenue requires VAT records to be kept for six years, and a shorter period needs its written permission. Your automation must keep the original invoice, and not only the extracted data. ⁴
• Late payment. Under the Irish regulations, a business payment is generally late after 30 days unless a contract sets another period, and terms beyond 60 days must be expressly agreed and not grossly unfair to the supplier. ⁵ Build reminders around the terms actually agreed.
• Interest and compensation. The same regulations provide for interest and for compensation of €40, €70 or €100 depending on the debt. Decide your policy on these before a system starts quoting them. ⁵
• Payroll. Businesses report pay to Revenue in real time under PAYE Modernisation, so any payroll check has to fit before each submission. ²
• Data protection. Tell people what you process, agree terms with your providers, and set retention periods that match the records rules. ³

How does eInvoicing change this?

It changes where to invest. Revenue plans mandatory eInvoicing and real-time reporting in phases, starting with large corporates for domestic business-to-business sales in November 2028. ⁶

Revenue also says all Irish businesses must be able to receive structured eInvoices from November 2028, not only the companies in phase one. ⁷ That matters for invoice capture. As structured invoices arrive, there is less to read and more to validate, so choose software that can accept them, and do not build an elaborate system around reading PDFs that will gradually fade away. Ask your accounting software provider what it plans to support, and read Revenue's eInvoicing hub as the plans develop. ⁸

• Phase one, November 2028: large VAT-registered corporates, for domestic business-to-business transactions. ⁶
• Phase two, November 2029: extends to VAT-registered businesses engaged in cross-border EU business-to-business trade. ⁶
• Phase three, July 2030: the EU's VAT in the Digital Age requirements for cross-border EU business-to-business transactions across member states. ⁶

Where should the data go?

Treat finance data as sensitive and keep it inside tools you control. It holds bank details, salaries and customer records, so it should not go into public AI tools.

If AI is reading your invoices, run it inside your own cloud account or a service with clear data processing terms, and find out where processing happens. The Data Protection Commission asks organisations to check where data goes and whether a provider re-uses it. ⁹ Our guide to private AI on your own account explains the settings.

Check what you already pay for first. Many accounting packages now include some of this, and a feature you already own beats a new project.

How do we start without disrupting the close?

Run one process alongside the existing method, and only switch when the numbers support it.

Decide in advance what happens when it fails. The bill still has to be paid and the return still has to be filed on time, so your team needs to know how to do the work by hand.

• Measure the current process for a month: hours, volumes, error rates.
• Clean up what it depends on, such as supplier records and the chart of accounts.
• Run the automation in parallel, with a person checking every output.
• Track how often that person changes something, and why.
• Reduce the checking only for the items that prove reliable.
• Avoid starting anything close to year end.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. European Commission: VIES VAT number validation
2. Revenue: PAYE Modernisation
3. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), EUR-Lex
4. Revenue: VAT records
5. S.I. No. 580/2012, Late Payment in Commercial Transactions Regulations 2012
6. Revenue: VAT Modernisation timeline
7. Revenue: Large corporates for Phase One of VAT modernisation
8. Revenue: eInvoicing hub
9. Data Protection Commission: AI, Large Language Models and Data Protection (July 2024)