Rho to Add AI-Powered AP Automation to All-in-One Finance Platform

Rho has unveiled new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered accounts payable (AP) automation capabilities.

These capabilities will be added to the company’s all-in-one finance platform later this month, Rho said in a Wednesday (Aug. 2) press release.

“As companies grow, their finance teams are under immense pressure to scale their operations in parallel,” Rho Senior Vice President of Product and Design Rishav Chopra said in the release. “Today’s announcement supports our commitment to delivering a world-class, integrated platform that experienced finance teams trust to help them get more done.”

With the company’s new AP automation capabilities, customers will be able to configure one-click workflows, process thousands of payables in seconds, better manage cash flows and compliance, and centralize their financial operations, according to the press release.

One new feature takes invoices that are sent to a designated AP inbox, transforms each invoice into a bill, creates a corresponding liability in the client’s integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and allows clients to authorize bill payments one at a time or in bulk, the release said.

Another new feature, ERP-connected bill processing, allows clients that process invoices directly in their integrated ERP system to import those invoices into Rho in one click, pay them in seconds and have the corresponding liabilities marked as paid in the ERP system, per the release.

“Today, AP clerks spend roughly a third of their time on manual data entry, invoice reconciliation and policy enforcement,” Chopra said in the release. “Rho’s new capabilities apply generative AI in a way that makes finance teams’ positions more fulfilling and saves them critical time.”

AP transactions are highly interconnected to other areas of the enterprise as well as business partners outside the company, Rho Co-founder, President and Chief Product Officer Alex Wheldon told PYMNTS in an interview posted in January 2021.

As such, data integration is vital to achieving a seamless workflow, from invoice acceptance, to approval, through to the actual act of paying the bill, Wheldon said at the time.

“AP is simply a workflow,” Wheldon said. “It will traverse the business, and the best way to do that is in an integrated fashion — not to have it sit outside the core banking or core finance function in a standalone product.”