How much faster is invoice processing with AP software?

Efficient invoice processing and approval are critical for healthy accounts payable operations. Delays can disrupt cash flow, damage vendor relationships, and force finance teams into reactive, low-value work. By streamlining AP workflows, companies gain more accurate cash flow projections, capture early payment discounts, and free up resources for strategic tasks.

In this short guide, we’ll go over:

• Typical invoice processing benchmarks
• How AP automation cuts down invoice processing time
• How Ramp Bill Pay cuts the average invoice processing time to under 2.5 minutes

How long does invoice approval usually take?

Most manual AP teams need 5–10 days to process and approve invoices. In organizations with complex approval hierarchies or paper-based workflows, this timeline can stretch to several weeks as invoices stall in processing. Approval times can also vary by industry:

• Technology companies: 5–7 days, thanks to higher digital adoption and streamlined approvals
• Manufacturing: 7–12 days, often slowed by complex receiving and multi-location operations
• Healthcare: 8–14 days, with specialized coding and regulatory checks extending timelines
• Retail: 6–9 days, balancing high invoice volumes and seasonal swings

Several common factors contribute to these delays:

• Manual data entry introduces errors that require correction
• Paper invoices get physically routed, creating bottlenecks when approvers are unavailable
• Multi-department approval chains leave invoices sitting in inboxes
• Limited visibility prevents teams from proactively managing delays
• Inconsistent invoice coding practices create confusion and rework

How automation cuts invoice processing and approval time

Modern AP automation brings together several core technologies to reduce processing time, simplify approvals, and minimize errors across the invoice lifecycle:

• Intelligent data capture: OCR and machine learning extract information from any invoice format, eliminating manual entry
• Automatic coding: Accounting rules categorize expenses and assign GL codes based on history and predefined rules
• Smart routing: Invoices go to the right approvers based on thresholds, departments, or expense types
• Real-time notifications: Approvers get alerts via email, mobile, or messaging platforms
• Mobile and Slack approvals: Decision-makers can review and authorize payments from anywhere, removing bottlenecks

When used together, these features create a more efficient and reliable process:

Beyond time and error reduction, these tools help teams track vendor invoice status in real time and focus attention where it’s actually needed. Modern AP automation typically provides real-time dashboards showing invoice status, bottlenecks, and processing metrics. Stakeholders can check payment status instantly without email chains or phone calls, and exception management tools flag only problematic invoices for review, letting the majority flow through automatically.

With more invoices processed in less time—and with far fewer errors—finance teams can better manage payment cycles and reduce delays. But the real change is clearer when you track these gains over time.

Optimizing AP performance with automation

Automation gives finance teams the data they need to improve continuously. By tracking a few key metrics, teams can identify bottlenecks, monitor improvements, and make informed decisions about where to focus next.

Here’s how core AP metrics typically shift with automation:

Across a full AP workload, those per-invoice efficiencies create measurable gains in capacity and throughput. Processing time can drop from 15–20 minutes per invoice to just 2–5 minutes and manual steps can go from 15+ touchpoints to just 3–5 exception-handling interactions. For a company processing 1,000 invoices monthly, automation typically saves 3–5 minutes per invoice and reduces manual tasks by up to 80%. That's 50–80 hours of potential productivity recovered every month.

To get the most out of these tools, teams should regularly review processing time, approval delays, exception rates, and early payment discount capture. A process audit can help surface where the biggest time sinks are and which steps benefit most from automation.

By continuously tracking and refining these metrics, finance teams can ensure automation investments translate into real operational gains—not just in efficiency, but in predictability, accuracy, and long-term scalability.

How Ramp cuts invoice processing time in half

For teams looking to put AP automation into practice, Ramp Bill Pay offers a streamlined system that accelerates every step of the invoice workflow.

Ramp Bill Pay processes invoices in under 2.5 minutes on average. That speed comes from how the platform handles intake, coding, approvals, and communication—reducing friction at every stage. Here’s how it works:

1. Invoice ingestion: Ramp gives you full visibility into all your invoices by supporting multiple intake methods—email forwarding, CSV import, direct upload, and accounting system syncs
2. Automated processing: Ramp uses OCR and historical logic to auto-fill invoice details and apply the right coding based on your chart of accounts, reducing manual work at scale
3. Smart routing: Approval chains are triggered based on department, amount, or custom policy rules—no manual forwarding needed
4. Approval and review: Approvers receive requests via Slack, email, or mobile with all context included—no extra back-and-forth
5. Payment processing: Ramp centralizes all your payment methods in one place—so you can schedule payments in bulk, process them by batch, and automatically notify vendors when payments go out
6. Sync to accounting: Approved invoices and payment details are synced to your ERP with audit-ready records

Where Ramp especially stands out is in how it supports approvers. Approvals don’t require switching platforms or chasing down extra context. With Slack-based workflows, real-time notifications, and mobile-friendly interfaces, approvers can review and sign off without delays.

In fact, the majority of Ramp Bill Pay customers get their invoices approved the same day—accelerating the entire payment process. That’s not just because the process is faster—it’s because Ramp gives decision-makers everything they need up front:

• Who requested payment
• What was purchased
• The budget impact

With complete information visible at a glance, approvals move forward in a single click—cutting down the back-and-forth that typically slows down AP.

How Quora improved bill processing time from 5–8 minutes to just 1–2 minutes

Quora’s finance team was juggling a fragmented bill pay process: invoices were emailed to a shared inbox, downloaded manually, stored in Google Drive, then manually entered and linked in NetSuite—often with approvals happening over email. The process was slow, error-prone, and created unnecessary work for a lean team.

With Ramp, Quora automated the full AP workflow. Ramp auto-ingests invoices from email, codes them using vendor history and Quora’s chart of accounts, routes them for approval based on custom rules, and syncs them directly to NetSuite. Approvers receive clear, consolidated requests via Slack or email and can approve with one click—no login required.

Adopting Ramp Bill Pay led to Quora reducing their bill processing time from 5–8 minutes to just 1–2 minutes per invoice. What used to take multiple steps and manual inputs now happens in a few clicks, giving the team time back for more strategic work—and helping them stay lean without sacrificing control.

“In the old world, there were multiple entry points, and sometimes bills were put into the wrong places. There were 10+ steps to go from PDF processing to NetSuite, to payment and reporting,” says Richard, Finance Manager at Quora. “With Ramp and Netsuite together we’ve reduced that to 3 simple steps. It’s more efficient and a huge time saver. Our monthly close for cash and credit cards has gone from being probably a two to three-hour exercise to 15-20 minutes.”

Make invoice processing faster (and easier) with Ramp

Manual bill pay slows finance teams down with unnecessary steps, disconnected approvals, and scattered data. Ramp helps eliminate that friction. By automating everything from intake and coding to approvals and sync, Ramp gives finance teams the tools to move faster—with full control and visibility.

Whether you're processing 100 invoices a month or 1,000, Ramp cuts processing time down to just a few minutes per invoice—freeing up hours every week for higher-impact work.

Let’s show you what faster AP could look like for your team. Get started with Ramp Bill Pay.