What to automate in property accounts payable, and what to keep manual

Most of what a property AP team does in a day is the same task done again: open the email, find the building, key the invoice. Some of it is judgement that only someone who knows the lease, the client and the supplier can make.

Good automation takes the first kind of work and leaves the second with your team. The hard part is drawing the line in the right place. Here is a step by step view.

Safe to automate

These steps are repeatable, checkable, and the same for every invoice:

• Collecting invoices and utility bills from shared inboxes, portals and scanned post into one queue.

• Reading the supplier, date, invoice number, amounts and VAT, and checking that net, VAT and total agree.

• Catching identical files and likely duplicates before anyone works on them.

• Comparing bank and VAT details with the supplier record you already hold.

• Posting approved invoices into the property ledger, or preparing the export file.

• Sending reminders for overdue approvals and missing statements.

Automate, with a person reviewing the uncertain ones

Matching an invoice to a building and coding it to a fund, schedule and heading can be automated for repeat suppliers, because their history and your records give strong evidence. It should stop for a person when the evidence is weak:

• The invoice is addressed to the agent or the RMC and the site is unclear.

• The supplier is new, or is billing for a site they have not worked on before.

• The description could fit more than one heading.

• A utility bill shows several totals and the right one is not obvious.

The test of a good setup is what happens next. The reviewer should see the document, what was proposed and why, and be able to correct it in a moment.

Keep with a person

• Deciding whether a cost is recoverable through the service charge. That depends on the lease, and leases differ.

• Approving spend. Authority sits with the agent and the client board, under the management agreement.

• Checking a change of supplier bank details. Call the supplier on a number you already hold before anything is paid.

• Handling disputed invoices and supplier queries.

• Major works consultation under section 20, and whether an invoice is within what was consulted on.

• Year-end judgements: accruals, apportionments and explanations to leaseholders.

How to tell the difference

Ask three questions about any step:

• Is it the same every time? If yes, it is a candidate for automation.

• Can the result be checked against something you already hold? If yes, automation can check its own work and flag what fails.

• Does it need knowledge of a lease, a client or a relationship? If yes, keep a person on it, and use automation to put the evidence in front of them.

Where to start

Start with the steps that take the most time and need the least judgement: intake, reading and posting. Then add matching and coding for your largest repeat suppliers, and widen it as the rules prove themselves.

Our invoice and utility bill automation for property managers is built on this split: rules and AI handle the repeatable steps, and anything uncertain goes to your team with the reason named. For the wider picture, see our guide to accounts payable for UK property management.