Digits Launches AI Bill Pay for Small Businesses

Accounting software firm Digits has launched AI Bill Pay, an artificial intelligence (AI) accounting platform. 

Calling it the world’s first bill pay product to fully understand invoice document structure, the company said in a Tuesday (April 30) news release that the software uses layout-aware language models to enable business owners manage their accounts payable (AP) workflows in a few clicks. 

Business owners can drag and drop their bills onto the Digits platform or forward them via email. Digits’ AI then processes the invoices and extracts relevant vendor and payment information, including line-level details. Business owners can then click “Approve and Pay,” completing the process. 

Digits also offers enhancements such as tags on overdue bills, totals on outstanding bills and payment history at a glance, making it easier for business owners to manage cash flow, according to the release.

The company noted that AI Bill Pay is the result of extensive design and engineering, including industry-leading work on layout-aware language models. The AP software is a trained AI that can accurately extract all bill payment information in seconds.

The AI is self-hosted and proprietary to Digits, per the release. It operates and is trained on encrypted data, which ensures the safety of businesses’ sensitive financial data. Invoices remain within Digits’ U.S.-based infrastructure, are encrypted, and are never shared with any third-party AI companies or models, the release added. 

As PYMNTS reported earlier this month, recent advancements in deep learning and computer vision have made invoice processing more automatable. 

That’s according to Krishna Janakiraman, head of engineering at Ottimate, who spoke to PYMNTS in an interview posted April 5 about how AI can enrich AP processes. 

“If you look at the whole AP automation workflow, it starts from processing invoices or documents such as statements and purchase orders, and then you are coding those documents to accounting dimensions, and ultimately approving those documents for paying,” Janakiraman explained.

He added that beyond automating tasks, AI is also providing insights that can help in decision-making. By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can pick out any patterns or anomalies that might indicate fraud or mistakes, which can enhance the security and integrity of AP processes.

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