Short answer: get as many suppliers as possible to send e-invoices, and have everything else (PDFs, scans, photos) read by software that fills in the bill for you. Then a person checks the result instead of typing it. For a simple invoice, checking takes seconds. Typing takes minutes.
The video above is the one-minute version. The rest of this guide covers the detail: how long typing really takes, the steps of processing a supplier invoice, how the entry is recorded, and the four ways to stop typing.
How long does manual entry take?
A simple supplier invoice, with two or three lines, a known supplier and obvious coding, takes one to five minutes to key in. A long one, such as a 26-line telecom bill or a builder's materials invoice, takes twenty to thirty minutes, because every line needs an account and a tax code and the total has to agree at the end. More on this in how long invoice entry really takes.
| Invoices a month | At 4 minutes each | Checking at about 30 seconds each |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | about 7 hours | about 1 hour |
| 300 | about 20 hours | about 2.5 hours |
| 1,000 | about 67 hours | about 8 hours |
The right-hand column assumes the invoice has already been read for you and a person only checks it. Long or unusual invoices take longer in both columns.
How to process a supplier invoice, step by step
- Receive it in one place. A dedicated mailbox such as invoices@ beats invoices scattered across personal inboxes.
- Check it. Is it genuine, addressed to the right company, and not a duplicate of one you already have?
- Read it. Supplier, invoice number, date, due date, each line, VAT rate per line, and total.
- Code it. Assign each line to an account, tax rate, and project or cost centre if you use them.
- Approve it. Someone confirms the business owes the money. See how purchase approvals work.
- Record it as a bill in the accounting software, with the PDF attached.
- Pay it on its due date.
- Reconcile it. Match the payment on the bank statement to the bill.
Steps 3 and 4 are the typing. They are also where most of the errors come from, and every later step depends on them.
How to record a supplier invoice
When the bill is recorded:
- Debit the expense or asset account with the net amount (for example, office supplies €200)
- Debit input VAT with the VAT (€46 at 23%)
- Credit accounts payable with the total (€246)
When it is paid:
- Debit accounts payable €246
- Credit the bank account €246
Your accounting software makes these entries for you when you save a bill and record its payment. The work is in getting the lines, accounts and tax codes right.
Four ways to stop typing
1. E-invoices
An e-invoice (Peppol, EHF, XRechnung, Factur-X and similar) arrives as structured data, so nothing has to be read. Several EU countries are making them mandatory between business. See the e-invoicing country pages for dates. Ask your regular suppliers whether they can send one now. Expect a long tail of PDFs for years, from small and foreign suppliers.
2. Built-in scanning
Most accounting software can read a document you upload or forward, for example Autoscan in Zoho Books. This works well for simple bills and receipts. Limits vary by plan, and the depth of line-item capture varies by product. Check yours before relying on it. Our Autoscan explainer shows what to check.
3. Capture tools
Dedicated capture tools read scans and PDFs into fields and publish them to your accounting software. Many capture the header by default and charge extra for line items. That is fine for one-line bills and slow for multi-line invoices you code line by line. See our comparisons of Dext, AutoEntry and Hubdoc.
4. Line-level AI
AI reads every line of the invoice, proposes the account and tax rate for each one from the supplier's history, checks that the lines, VAT and total add up, and flags anything it isn't sure about. You check the supplier, the date and the total, then register the bill. The difference from scanning is explained in invoice OCR vs AI invoice capture.
What still needs a person
- The decision to pay. Approval stays with someone who knows the business owes it.
- New suppliers and new kinds of cost, until the coding pattern is established.
- Anything flagged: totals that don't add up, a VAT rate that looks wrong, a possible duplicate.
Automation removes the typing. It does not remove the judgement.
Where Invoreg fits
Invoreg reads each supplier invoice line by line, from a PDF, a scan or a phone photo. It fills in the lines with their accounts and VAT, flags anything uncertain, and registers the bill in your accounting software with the PDF attached. Watch a first invoice being registered, or try it yourself: the first 20 invoices are free.