Why choose Integra for invoice processing?
As a CFO you might well be experiencing a "perfect storm" of efficiency targets, shrinking budgets, increased audit scrutiny, rising overhead costs and recruitment challenges in transactional finance.
Integra IDP is our Intelligent Document Processing platform that breaks this cycle in Accounts Payable. Unlike traditional OCR, our platform uses AI to ‘read’ and understand your documents, even complex multi-page invoices. It solves the headache of manual data entry errors and backlogs that lead to late payment penalties and frustrated suppliers, and it reinforces your protection against fraud. By automating the mundane, you liberate your skilled staff for high-value analysis and active supplier management.
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Key Capabilities
Automated invoice capture eliminates most manual data entry:
Reducing processing costs by 80% and releasing capacity through reduced ‘touch time’ - please visit our Integra IDP (Instream) Return on Investment page.
Reducing invoice-to-pay timescales, thereby improving backlog management, automatically scaling to manage peaks and troughs through the monthly and annual cycles – all contributing to enhanced supplier management and Prompt Payment compliance
Reducing error rates – supporting supplier management and Prompt Payment whilst protecting your organisation from financial risk and reputational damage
Reducing operational noise – the Integra IDP Platform (Instream) gets on with the job with the minimum of management input freeing you from distraction
Managed Human-in-the-loop (HITL) Service is an option for reducing system noise:
All safe AI machine-learning systems have a need for human-in-the-loop teaching for confirmation and correction to build confidence around data-points. Whilst some AP teams choose to handle this themselves, there is an option with Integra IDP for this noise and distraction to be handled by our expert team of indexers as part of your per-transaction fee, who will clarify and teach the AI on your behalf.
Fraud & Duplicate Detection:
Built-in protections such as Duplicate Invoice Detection, Supplier Validation, Bank ID validation etc. all contribute to your "duty of care" in regard to public money assisting with your organisation’s safeguards against fraud and reputational damage.
Intelligent matching against purchase orders and contracts:
3-way matching against Integra's procurement records catches discrepancies before payment reducing the risk of duplicate or fraudulent payments which lead to disruption and reputational damage.
Future proof your P2P with e-invoicing
In the UK e-invoicing will be mandatory for all VAT invoices in 2029. You have the opportunity to future proof with Integra IDP’s Instream platform, whilst allowing email and B2B invoices to continue to flow through for AI driven processing alongside e-invoices from networks such as Peppol and DBNAlliance. For more details please visit our Integra e-invoicing page.
Built for and trusted by public bodies:
From proven governance around GDPR and ISMS through to a detailed understanding of Public Sector VAT regulation, Integra’s intelligent invoice automation platform helps you navigate automation whilst achieving the optimal implementation of financial performance and compliance. Your reputation is in safe-hands with Integra.
Integration with Integra's ledgers:
Instream accesses Integra master data such as supplier details, POs etc. giving your invoice processing up-to-date accuracy (for example, only valid suppliers), organisation accuracy and context (for example which suppliers are valid for which organisation) and defence against fraud and payment errors (for example, valid POs, valid bank details for a supplier etc.)
Postings flow directly into the general ledger, eliminating rekeying, reconciliation errors, and the month-end bottlenecks that delay your management accounts.
Secure Document Archive:
The platform provides a secure, searchable cloud-based archive that enables your staff and suppliers to safely search out source documents as PDFs with the associated data, for example, processing status, time stamps, etc. This delivers a significant time saving for your team and your suppliers by eliminating “hunt the invoice”.
Integra IDP (Instream) supports Document Retention policies in line with your GDPR requirements reducing the risk of inadvertent data protection breaches.
Scalable across complex organisational structures:
This is a highly scalable platform proven to accurately and securely process millions of documents each year for public sector bodies and global enterprises.
Complex Workflows for NHS Trusts, Local Authorities, Shared Services or other public bodies can be configured to meet the necessary reporting, standing order, data governance and approval requirements. This means you can be confident that the platform will back your reputation regardless of scale or organisational complexity.
Complete transparency and audit trail:
Every Integra IDP (Instream) action across the workflow is audited meaning that internal audit, external audit, and Freedom of Information responses can be surfaced in a straightforward and transparent manner.
The audit trail means that everyone involved in invoice processing knows that their actions will leave a reportable fingerprint. This is a substantial deterrent to fraud.
Dashboards, reporting and notifications give finance leaders visibility:
Integra IDP comes with dashboards and reporting that reflect your organisational structure and workflows. Typically these are used to show operational performance, for example, document flows and supplier performance such as suppliers whose invoices are failing automation tests through missing POs or invoice errors. Dashboards facilitate forensic investigation of performance through drill-down. Clear and reliable metrics allow you to make operational adjustments and improve supplier management
Real time notification is used where appropriate to prompt, for example, corrective action, such as, a rejected invoice or invalid PO. This means that your team acts on problems rather than hunting for them.
Carbon Reduction & Digital Transformation:
By digitising the end-to-end accounts payable process, you eliminate paper trails and paper archive. This reduces archive costs and directly supports your organisation’s Net Zero targets while providing a clear, digital audit trail for external auditors.
FAQs
See AllIf it hasn’t seen documents for as supplier, Instream Co-pilot tales a look at the document in the same way that a human would. It picks out the important information and uses this to start the learning process. From then on, Instream builds its own learning guided by a human (Human-in-the-Loop) when this is required, for example to fill-in a gap or clarify ambiguity.
Human touchpoints are handled within the platform’s easy to use forms whilst email can be configured for external communications and notifications. Many our customers also use our HITL Managed Service for day-2-day operation of the platform, for example, teaching and correcting the AI. [link to Managed Service page] This means that the vast majority of invoices are onboarded, processed and posted into your finance system without any human involvement.
Hallucination is a real issue in generative AI. However, Integra IDP (Instream) avoids this risk entirely by using machine learning (AI) to understand your documents without ‘guessing’ or ‘creating’ any values. Our solution reads what is there and then augments that with ‘real’ information from your other business and finance systems using rules that you agree. Any ambiguity is resolved by a human and not by AI guessing.
Just as importantly, there are no mysterious AI ‘black boxes’ where the computer reasoning is hidden from you. Each step of the process can be reported and justified.
Yes, we take the issue of data sovereignty very seriously. Your data is stored in a unique instance and is not shared with other customers or AI models.
Basically yes! Monthly availability averages 99.99%.
Onboarding invoices is an often-underestimated function of IDP. Invoices arrive by email, API, via e-invoicing platformor simply by uploading via SFTP. The issue with many documents is that a PDF might contain, for example, a number of different documents, scanned images of varying quality in all manner of orientations and unstructured content such as handwriting, visual objects such as stamps to name just some. Our solution is highly capable when it comes to onboarding: it seeks to understand the host email chain, separate attachments, tidy up documents and much more besides before attempting to understand the content of the document. This greatly improves the rate of automation.
The modular platform nature of our platform allows the ongoing application of new technologies. Once new technologies have been evaluated they are adopted in a controlled manner usually as an option to run alongside the current techniques. This means that new developments in document imaging and AI can be safely adopted into your business process.
We deploy the platform with many core capabilities that together make up our solution’s Global AP (Accounts Payable). These are the core building blocks of your system. As users of the Integra finance system you will find that a further set of integrations and configurations are deployed that are Integra-native and built on the experience of our customers. Even if you don’t have an Integra finance system you will find that configuration blocks exist for a wide variety of host finance and ERP systems such as Microsoft Dynamics365, Oracle, SAP etc.
However, your organisation will have specific requirements for shared services, multi-company structures, email, e-invoicing, query resolution and more besides so all you need to do is tell our experienced consultants and these requirements will be documented, reviewed and then configured into your system. Our consultants will apply their experience to guide this process and to deliver the required results, so you don’t have to do any configuration in order to benefit from a richly functional and well-tuned solution for your organisation. Our consultants may also take the opportunity to pre-train your system’s AI with test invoices so that your automation gets a head start.
Strategic Acquisition
Integra IDP is fully integrated to the Integra Finance System. As part of the ADVT Group, Integra IDP was born out of the Instream platform, which was a strategic acquisition for the group in 2024. Many former Cloud Trade customers have adopted Instream (Integra IDP) as their new intelligent invoice automation of choice, since it became part of the Integra overall Finance solutions.
Outside of Integra, as well as intelligent invoice automation (with integration to any finance or ERP system) the Instream platform also offers: secure document storage, document categorisation, Intelligent Document Services (e.g. Post Room – digitising paper), correspondence & customer service document processing, HR document onboarding, freight and logistics processes and a wide range of bespoke use-cases for global enterprises.
Instream
