Well, it’s quite easy to spot our world with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its related technology taking over in every aspect. AI technology is taking up the notch with every business launching new application every day. May it be scanning reports or chatbots in the service industry, AI has drastically taken off human efforts in such of these tasks reducing our intervention and yet achieving higher results.

Machine learning allows computers to save massive time and has proven to be a boon for most of the industry sector. Take for e.g, Healthcare / Medical Industry wherein, doctors and medical staff’s productivity has been increased by letting these computers do the interpretation of MRI scans and results.

Artificial Intelligence has lots of practical implementation in the invoicing world. Applying AI to invoicing has the potential to save time, money, resources and moreover, contributing to simplifying the business process. Following are the ways we can expect AI to bring in some futuristic changes to invoicing process:

Fraud: Detect & Prevent

Invoice frauds are becoming very frequent nowadays. Individuals and businesses have become prone to such fraudulent tactics and getting ripped off financially. To make matter worse, the account payable (A/P) department is usually overwhelmed with a huge number of backlogged invoices.

Pragmatically, AI can help in reducing the expensive problems associated with the invoicing fraud. Such as, A/P staff can now benefit from a computer program to identify the types of inputs and field indicators with the help of AI to detect and prevent fraud in invoices. No more need to look for instances to spot for fraudulent entries in each invoice one by one.

AI can effectively verify customer information, invoice data and banking details before making a payment. The process can perform validating and fraudulent past invoices to understand and derive the amount to be paid and/or to flag the certain transaction for review. Over the time, AI-enhanced invoicing can draw a pattern from all the incoming data to mark any potential fraudulent invoices before the payment is made out for the same.

Optimization: Cash Flow

When you take a closer look at account receivable (A/R), you will find that it is quite easy to deduce the data of customers paying on-time and those who don’t pay on time. Well, only gathering this information and probably not taking any action is not going to optimize your cash flow of the invoicing process. AI can help a lot in this regards to filling the gap.

For e.g, a computer going through all the account receivable invoice records is able to access historical data on payment and timelines. It can also gather information on the longevity of customer, the payment amount & method used every time, where they are located, whether it is a business or a consumer and so on.

You can always rely on AI to crunch your A/R data and find some insights to favor your invoicing outcomes. Introducing different combinations and test scenarios to speed up outcomes, AI can help you analyze the data of customers to see if they are making payments on-time with expiring coupons or if they using any specific payment method due to which they are usually past-due?

Providing leverage and adding time-based discounts to such customer accounts may boost your payment invoicing process and get rid of an outdated payment method will even further reduce this gap.

Automating: Incoming Payments

One of the manual tasks of account receivable is to allow customer payment to their respectively matching invoices. This could go easy if you have a native invoice and it let’s say it is connected to PayPal, however, this can also be as difficult and tedious as a check mailed with no account number and a different name than the one in the invoicing system.

Again, you can use AI to fetch data from past invoices to understand how payment has been recorded before and to make calculative assumptions based on that to match them up in the future invoicing. It can also be handy if you have a large number of outstanding invoices of customers.

AI technology intelligently could process matching up the invoice payments to banking statements from the data it has gathered and learned from the invoicing history. Additionally, to find accounting errors like payment discrepancies, incorrect invoice numbers and mismatched payments to invoices are few more helpful things that AI can ease up in the invoicing process.

AI – The New Age Saviour Of Invoicing Process

AI will transform invoicing industry for better in areas for detecting invoice fraud, improving cash flow and automating tasks. This will change the current scenario of invoicing which is time-consuming, reducing repetitive actions & tasks to a proactive, enhancing business productivity.

Moon Invoice, a simple and easy invoicing app that can level up your business productivity with its amazing insights & reporting capabilities, accurate account statements and simplified payment option with PayPal and other online payment options.

Recurring Payments Vs Recurring Invoices

Recurring Payments	Recurring Invoices
Recurring payments charge the customer’s credit card account or debit card account on a predetermined schedule for the same amount as preapproved.	Send an invoice to your customer on a regular basis. The client receives the invoice but, money is not paid unless the customer approves.
A business that takes prepayment of money and sells a monthly subscription service and product. Subscription services are excellent examples of this.	A company that provides fixed services with billable hours is an excellent choice for recurring billing. For example law firms and consulting agencies.

Pros and Cons of Recurring Invoices

Pros	Cons
You eliminate the possibility of human error by automating the billing process. If you use a recurring invoice, you will not be concerned about forgetting to charge your customers for the things they ordered.	You must exercise caution while recurring billing to prevent issuing inaccurate pricing. This also holds for price changes that could take place right once an invoice is created.
If you provide your customers with the option for recurring billing, they are more likely to buy products regularly.	It could be difficult to cope with recurring invoices if a transaction fails for any reason.

Net 45	Invoice is due in full within 45 days with no early payment discount offered
2/10 net 45 terms	2% discount if you pay within 10 days; otherwise full payment of the invoice is due in 45 days
1/15 net 45 terms	1% discount if you pay within 15 days; otherwise full payment of the invoice is due in 45 days
1/10 net 45 terms	1% discount if you pay within 10 days; otherwise full payment of the invoice is due in 45 days
1/7 net 45 terms	1% discount if you pay within 7 days; otherwise full payment of the invoice is due in 45 days

Category	Net Method vs. Gross Method	Explanation
Calculation Approach	- Applies tax credits first; reduces taxable income before computing tax liability.	- Doesn't apply tax credits; computes taxable income without considering tax credits.
Tax Credit Eligibility	- Allows for greater likelihood of tax credit eligibility due to reduced taxable income.	- Limits tax credit eligibility because taxable income hasn't been reduced yet.
Itemized Deduction Requirement	- Lowers threshold requirement for itemizing deductions due to decreased taxable income.	- Raises threshold requirement for itemizing deductions due to higher taxable income.
Advantages	- Leads to lower taxable income and increases chances of meeting qualifications for other tax benefits.	- Results in higher taxable income compared to net method.
Disadvantages	- May miss opportunity to reduce tax burden if taxpayer doesn't itemize deductions or take advantage of tax credits.	- Increases taxable income and may result in higher overall tax bill.