How to Achieve Touchless Accounts Payable in Workday

Accounts payable (AP) teams are feeling the heat. CFOs want faster closings, better cash visibility, and stronger controls – all without increasing headcount. Yet even with modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms like Workday, many AP departments are realizing that it might be time to replace their AP automation solution.

They’re struggling with the same old pain points:

• Manual data entry
• Delayed approvals
• Endless exceptions
• Lack of visibility

If this sounds familiar to you and your team, you’re not alone. A growing number of AP and finance leaders are discovering that the key to achieving efficiency, accuracy, and agility in today’s environment isn’t just automation, it’s touchless automation.

By combining Workday’s powerful ERP backbone with intelligent document processing, artificial intelligence (AI), and workflow automation, AP departments are transforming invoice processing from a high-touch, error-prone task into a seamless, straight-through process.

This article shows you how to make touchless accounts payable a reality.

How Traditional Invoice Processing Holds Workday Users Back

Despite its robust capabilities, Workday alone can’t deliver true straight-through invoice processing without intelligent automation layered on top. Here are some common obstacles that AP automation can solve:

Manual Data Entry

Even when invoices arrive electronically, many AP teams still type data into Workday. Manual intervention in invoice processing is inefficient, introduces errors, and makes scaling impossible. Manual entry also limits visibility into invoice status, making it difficult for finance leaders to track bottlenecks or forecast liabilities accurately. Over time, this creates operational drag that prevents organizations from fully realizing the return on investment (ROI) of their Workday ERP.

Fragmented Workflows that Create Bottlenecks

Invoice approvals handled via email or spreadsheets outside Workday lead to lost visibility, missed deadlines, and poor accountability. Without centralized workflows, invoices can easily fall through the cracks or get delayed waiting for the right approver. These inefficiencies not only lengthen cycles but also damage relationships with suppliers who depend on timely payments.

Limited Matching & Validation

Without automated two or three-way matching, even accurate invoices are flagged for manual review, increasing cycle times and frustration. Human reviewers must compare invoice data line-by-line against purchase orders and receipts, wasting hours on work that accounts payable automation could complete in seconds. Human intervention slows down processing and increases the risk of oversights.

Lack of Intelligent Exception Handling

Traditional systems treat every exception equally. AI-driven solutions, on the other hand, learn from patterns and automatically resolve common issues. Without intelligence built into the workflow, AP teams spend unnecessary time troubleshooting repetitive errors, such as missing purchase order (PO) numbers and duplicate invoices. The result is an endless cycle of rework that keeps staff trapped in tactical problem-solving instead of strategic analysis of reports generated by their Workday ERP.

Overwhelming Number of Supplier Inquiries

When suppliers must call or email for invoice status updates, AP productivity plummets. Manual intervention in touchless accounts payable processes creates friction and risk. Every inquiry steals valuable time from your AP team, diverting resources away from core accounting responsibilities. Over time, this reactive environment erodes supplier trust and contributes to longer payment cycles and higher cost of goods purchased.

Without intelligent automation, even Workday-powered finance teams can get stuck in a “semi-automated” rut that consists of modern tools and old habits.

Why Touchless Accounts Payable Is the Next Big Leap for Workday Users

The finance function is at a turning point. Inflation, supply chain disruptions, new fraud risks, and ever-increasing compliance pressure, combined with the previously mentioned invoice processing-specific challenges, have made AP efficiency and visibility a top priority.

However, according to the Institute of Finance and Management (IOFM), more than 60 percent of AP departments must manually handle most of the invoices they receive from suppliers – even when they use state-of-the-art ERPs like Workday. This means that the opportunity for process improvement is enormous:

• Processing cost reduction: from $15-$20 per invoice down to $2–$4
• Cycle time improvement: from weeks to days or even hours
• Error minimization: with built-in validation & AI-based matching
• Risk mitigation: through automation of compliance checks & audit trails

Touchless accounts payable processes empower AP departments that use Workday to shift from repetitive data entry to strategic value creation, providing insights that drive smarter business decisions.

8 Best Practices for Achieving Touchless Invoice Processing

Achieving touchless accounts payable in Workday is a journey from paper-based processes to intelligent, AI-optimized automation. Every step towards touchless invoice processing delivers measurable gains in efficiency, accuracy, and visibility. Here are Workday AP automation best practices for turning automation potential into measurable performance:

Assess Your Current State

Understanding where your AP operation stands today will help you identify your next steps toward true straight-through processing.

There are five maturity levels:

1. Manual: AP teams at this stage are running paper-based, reactive operations that involve a great deal of manual keying, scanning, and information chasing. They’re often overwhelmed with errors, missing invoices, and supplier inquiries, leading to staff burnout.
2. Digital: If you’ve introduced some automation, particularly when it comes to data capture, but still struggle with a mostly manual process, you’re at the digital level. You’ve started to modernize your processes, but without structured automation, manual work will continue to eat up your team’s time.
3. Workflow-Driven: At this level, routing runs on business rules and invoices are stored digitally, but key tasks still require time-consuming, error-prone human oversight.
4. Electronic: Have a solid setup with self-service portals, automated matching, and real-time dashboards? Despite this, is GL coding and exception resolution taking up a lot of your team’s time? Then, you’re at the electronic stage.
5. Straight-Through: The few lucky AP teams that have reached a high-performing AP operation are at this level. You’ll know you’ve achieved straight-through processing when you’re no longer bogged down by manual tasks and are, instead, focused on strategic initiatives.

To help you determine which level your team is currently at, we developed a free invoice processing maturity self-assessment.

Standardize Invoice Intake

Centralizing invoices into a single inbox or platform is critical. A unified submission channel ensures invoices are captured immediately, regardless of format or supplier source.

A unified channel also eliminates the confusion of multiple email addresses or manual hand-offs and reduces the risk of invoices being misplaced or duplicated. Over time, this simple step creates consistency enabling your intelligent capture tools and Workday workflows to operate at peak accuracy.

Invest in Intelligent Capture

AI-based capture tools that integrate directly with Workday ensure reliable extraction. Intelligent capture reduces dependency on templates and manual keying by learning from real-world invoice variations. As accuracy improves, staff spend less time correcting errors and more time resolving true exceptions.

The result is faster processing, cleaner data, and a stronger foundation for predictive analytics within Workday, making intelligent capture a must-have if you haven’t already invested in it.

Keep Approvals Inside Workday

Keeping approvals inside Workday can help you prevent process fragmentation and maintain full visibility. When approvers use email or offline spreadsheets, invoices fall outside of Workday’s audit trail, creating potential compliance risks and bottlenecks.

Centralizing approvals in Workday ensures every step is logged, transparent, and easy to report on during audits. It also simplifies delegation of authority and prevents delays when managers are out of the office, making it one of the biggest keys to accounts payable process improvement.

Leverage Exception Analytics

Consider using powerful dashboards to monitor, diagnose, and eliminate recurring issues. Exception analytics reveal patterns that manual oversight often misses, such as specific suppliers, cost centers, or approvers that consistently cause delays.

By identifying root causes, your AP team can refine rules, improve supplier training, and continuously reduce error rates. Over time, this proactive approach transforms exception management from firefighting to process optimization.

Cleanse Master Data Regularly

Accurate supplier and PO data are the foundation of automation. Even the most intelligent system can’t process invoices correctly if master data is outdated or inconsistent.

Regular data audits prevent mismatches, duplicate vendors, and invalid bank details that slow approvals and create compliance risk. Making data hygiene a routine practice ensures Workday remains a reliable single source of truth across the entire procure-to-pay cycle.

Empower Suppliers

Give vendors self-service visibility to reduce inquiries. A supplier portal connected to an AI-powered accounts payable solution allows vendors to securely check invoice status. This reduces the volume of AP inquiries and provides a better experience for suppliers.

Continuously Benchmark Performance

Use KPIs such as cost per invoice, exception rate, and time to approve to drive improvement. Benchmarking turns AP automation from a project into a performance discipline.

Tracking these metrics month after month can help your team identify trends, justify new technology investments, and celebrate progress. By sharing results with stakeholders, you can demonstrate the real business value of your Workday invoice processing automation strategy.

How MetaSource Accelerates Touchless Accounts Payable for Workday

MetaSource helps Workday users eliminate manual processing through AI-powered capture, intelligent validation, and seamless integration. Our touchless invoice processing solutions combine human-assisted accuracy with intelligent automation. MetaSource delivers:

• Hands-free data capture that extracts & validates invoices instantly
• Fewer exceptions through smart matching & duplicate detection
• Accelerated approvals using built-in workflows & escalation rules
• Enhanced visibility with analytics dashboards synced to Workday
• Security & compliance confidence with digital audit trails and secure cloud storage

With MetaSource, organizations cut AP costs and reduce invoice cycle times.

By combining Workday’s ERP strength with MetaSource’s accounts payable automation, AP departments can achieve the next frontier in efficiency: Workday touchless accounts payable automation that delivers real-time visibility, lower costs, and greater confidence in every transaction.

To get started today, schedule a demo with one of our experts. If you need some help pinpointing your current state and developing a plan for achieving straight-through processing, complete our Invoice Processing Maturity Self-Assessment.