How AP teams can prevent invoice fraud with AI

Perhaps this sounds familiar: An invoice arrives from a supplier your company has worked with for years. At first glance, the amount looks reasonable, the branding is familiar, and the updated banking details are supported by an email thread that includes a name the AP team recognizes. Then a voice message arrives, confirming that the payment is urgent.

Everything appears to check out. But the invoice, email thread, and voice message could all have been created or manipulated with AI. That’s what makes today’s invoice fraud harder to spot. 

In fact, the Finance Leaders’ Fraud Report 2026 found that business email compromise affects 45% of respondents, while impersonation fraud rose from 35% in 2025 to 40% in 2026. Deepfake audio and video fraud also appeared in the findings for the first time.

AP teams are already seeing the impact. 

Nineteen percent of the survey respondents also said their organization experiences fraud or attempted fraud frequently, while another 33% encounter it occasionally. Sixty-two percent reported financial losses within the past three years, yet only 22% felt very well protected by their current processes.

So how can AP teams improve protection without manually investigating every invoice?

The answer starts with the invoice process itself. When AI, automation, policy, and visibility are built in from capture through approval, AP teams have more opportunities to spot issues before payment.

Invoice fraud often enters through routine work

Fraud doesn’t always arrive as an obviously suspicious document. It can take advantage of the same steps AP teams complete every day.

Invoices may arrive through email, PDFs, paper, vendor portals, and other channels. The information then needs to be captured, coded, matched with the right purchase, routed for approval, and recorded for reporting and audit purposes. When those steps are spread across different inboxes, spreadsheets, and systems, important details can be missed between handoffs.

Manual work also creates a volume problem. As the number of invoices rises, AP professionals spend more time re-keying information, searching for missing details, following up on approvals, and resolving exceptions. That leaves less time to investigate the activity that genuinely looks unusual.

The From Survival to Scale ebook notes that 56% of finance leaders and 57% of CEOs agree that their finance team is understaffed. Simply adding more checking to an already stretched process isn’t a sustainable answer.

AP teams need controls that work as the invoice moves through the process, not only after someone has decided it looks suspicious.

Five ways to strengthen the invoice process with AI and automation

1. Standardize how invoice data enters the process

A stronger process begins with consistent intake.

When invoices arrive through several channels, employees may need to download attachments, re-key data, or search through email threads for supporting details. Those manual steps add work and make it harder to know whether every invoice has been handled the same way.

AI-powered capture can extract information such as supplier name, invoice number, date, amount, tax details, and line items. It can then categorize and validate that data before the invoice moves forward.

That gives the AP team cleaner, more consistent information to work with. It also reduces the risk that a missing field, typing error, or altered detail will pass unnoticed because someone is moving quickly through a queue.

2. Check invoice details against trusted records

A professional-looking invoice shouldn’t be the only gauge of authenticity. AP teams need to verify the information behind an invoice, not rely on how convincing the document appears.

AI and automation can compare invoice information with supplier records, purchase orders, contracts, and records of goods or services received. Two-way and three-way matching can identify differences in quantities, prices, supplier details, and other information before approval. The process can also look for duplicate invoices, unusual changes, and information that doesn’t match previous activity.

These capabilities matter as fraud becomes more personalized. Supplier and banking changes still require clear procedures and independent verification. Automation helps by making those changes and mismatches easier to identify before payment is released.

3. Build policy and approvals into the workflow

Controls are easier to apply consistently when they’re part of the regular invoice process.

Automated workflows can route invoices based on amount, supplier, cost center, purchase type, or other business rules. Higher-value payments and unusual requests can require additional approval, while routine invoices can move through the appropriate path without relying on someone to forward an email manually.

This reduces the chance that invoices will reach the wrong approver, sit unnoticed in an inbox, or bypass a required review because someone is unavailable.

The same workflow can preserve invoice data, approval decisions, changes, comments, and supporting documents. Instead of reconstructing what happened later, AP and audit teams have a clearer record of how the invoice moved from capture to payment.

4. Focus people on the exceptions that need judgment

Most invoices follow familiar patterns. The challenge is separating that routine work from the exceptions that genuinely deserve an AP professional’s attention.

AI can review larger volumes of data and help surface unusual amounts, duplicate documents, unexpected supplier activity, policy exceptions, and patterns that may not stand out during an invoice-by-invoice review.

Routine invoices can move with less intervention, while the AP team spends more time on exceptions that require experience and judgment.

Solis Mammography has seen the value of looking beyond an individual invoice. Its AP team uses reporting to aggregate information and identify changes that deserve attention. As Jesse Cox, AP and T&E manager, explains:

“Things start to pop out. Like why is this vendor’s invoice suddenly $100,000 when they’re always $1,000?”

A sudden change doesn’t prove fraud, but it gives the team a clear reason to pause and verify what happened. Solis has also used targeted workflows to reduce the volume of invoices requiring manual review, helping approvers spend more time on a smaller number of meaningful exceptions.

5. Keep invoice information visible and connected

Fraud can be difficult to spot when each person sees only one part of the process.

An approver may see the invoice but not the supplier’s previous activity. AP may see the payment request but not the original purchase. Audit may need to search several systems to reconstruct what happened.

Connected invoice management gives AP teams a clearer view of invoices, approvals, supplier activity, exceptions, and payment status. Integration with ERP or accounting systems also reduces duplicate entry and helps keep financial records aligned.

Dashboards and reporting can then show what’s pending, what’s overdue, where invoices are stalling, and what activity differs from established patterns.

At Solis Mammography, the SAP Concur platform gives the team one source of truth for invoice, expense, and travel information. That reduces administrative work and helps AP view supplier payments alongside the organization’s broader spend instead of rebuilding the picture across separate systems.

Stronger control doesn’t have to slow AP down

The purpose of automation isn’t to add another layer of technology around an inefficient process. It’s to help AP teams improve control while moving invoices with less manual effort.

Businesses using Concur Invoice achieve measurable results¹:

• 2.5x faster invoice processing compared with manual AP workflows
• 20% savings in invoice processing costs compared with manual AP workflows
• 35% more invoices processed and 8.75x greater efficiency than users of other automated AP solutions
• 13% more vendors engaged than users of other automated AP solutions

These results show why fraud prevention and efficiency shouldn’t be treated as competing priorities. A consistent, automated process can help the team review more activity while directing human attention to the invoices that need it most.

What to look for in AI-powered AP

Many invoice management providers promise AI. The important question is what that AI does throughout the process.

AP leaders should look beyond basic document scanning and consider whether a solution can:

• Capture, code, and validate invoice data
• Compare invoices with supplier and purchasing records
• Identify duplicates, anomalies, and policy exceptions
• Route invoices using configurable approval rules
• Integrate with existing ERP and financial systems
• Provide clear reporting and a complete audit trail
• Adapt as policies, fraud tactics, and business requirements change

The technology should support the entire invoice process rather than solve one isolated step. It should also make it clear why an invoice was flagged and give AP professionals enough information to decide what happens next.

The AI-Powered Accounts Payable Automation Buyer’s Guide includes key evaluation criteria and 10 questions AP leaders can use when comparing providers, covering invoice capture, integration, reporting, implementation, and fraud detection.

For a closer look at how Concur Invoice brings these capabilities together, read 6 Reasons Concur Invoice Is Right for You.

Stay ahead of invoice fraud

Stopping invoice fraud can’t depend on every AP professional recognizing a sophisticated fake at a glance. Protection needs to come from the process, with reliable data capture, checks against trusted records, consistent approvals, and clear exceptions that tell the team where to look.

With AI and automation embedded throughout Concur Invoice, AP teams can close manual gaps, investigate questionable activity earlier, and strengthen control without holding up every payment.

Together, those capabilities can help your team stay ahead of fraud, too.

Reach out to see what’s possible. 

1. SAP Concur ROI Research, Global & Regional Findings, Phronesis Partners, 2024