Case study · Wholesale · OCR automation
Invoice OCR automation into Rivilė: 90% less manual work
A wholesale company processing ~200 supplier invoices per month cut bookkeeper time by 90% and brought entry errors close to zero — by integrating AI OCR with their Rivilė accounting system in 10 business days.
Client situation
A wholesale company receives ~200 supplier invoices per month from 40+ vendors. Each invoice arrives by email as a PDF attachment and used to require manual data entry into the Rivilė accounting system.
On average a bookkeeper spent 4–5 minutes per invoice: open the PDF, read the data, find the supplier in Rivilė, enter the total, VAT, date, and invoice number. That adds up to ~15 hours per month on data entry alone — before any error correction time.
Solution: AI OCR + Rivilė API + Make
We built an automated document-processing pipeline that takes an invoice from email arrival to a Rivilė record in 30–60 seconds without human involvement for standard cases. The integration relies on our workflow automation services for the orchestration layer.
Average time per invoice: < 60 seconds from intake to Rivilė record for standard cases.
What we automated, step by step
Make pulls the invoice PDF attachment from a dedicated mailbox and passes it down the pipeline.
Azure Document Intelligence extracts supplier, total, VAT, date, invoice number, and line items.
Confidence above 95% auto-progresses; below the threshold the document is routed to a human for review.
REST API automatically creates a purchase document with all fields and the supplier mapping.
The bookkeeper receives a Slack notification with a link; a one-click approval finalises the entry.
Before and after the automation
| Aspect | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Manual data entry | ~15 hr/month | ~1.5 hr/month |
| Entry errors | 2–3 errors/month | practically zero |
| Processing time per invoice | 4–5 minutes | <60 seconds |
Security and GDPR
Financial documents require the highest level of care. On this project we used:
- Azure Document Intelligence (EU data centre, not public models) — data is not used for AI training
- Invoices transmitted over TLS 1.2+ encrypted channels
- PDF files automatically deleted 24 hours after processing
- API access restricted with an IP allowlist
- NDA signed with the client before access to financial documents
- Audit log: every invoice tracked with timestamps and processing status
Technical architecture
The integration uses Make (Integromat) as the orchestration layer. Every step is auditable in the Make execution log.
| Component | Purpose | Alternatives |
|---|---|---|
| Azure Document Intelligence | AI OCR + structured data extraction | Google Document AI, AWS Textract |
| Make (Integromat) | Orchestration + email trigger + Rivilė API call | Zapier, n8n |
| Rivilė REST API | Purchase document creation in the accounting system | Directo, B1.lt, MS Dynamics |
| Email gateway | PDF attachment intake from suppliers | Webhook, dedicated mailbox |
| Slack | Bookkeeper approval notifications | Teams, MS Outlook |
Does a similar solution fit you?
Frequently asked questions
- Which document formats does the AI OCR support?
- PDF (single-page and multi-page), JPEG, PNG, and Word. For structured invoices, accuracy is typically 95–99%.
- Does this work with ERPs other than Rivilė?
- Yes — Directo, Microsoft Dynamics NAV/BC, and any system with a REST API or CSV import. Rivilė was used here because it was the client's existing system.
- Is AI OCR safe for financial documents?
- Yes — we use business APIs only (not public models), data is never used for AI training, an NDA is available, and invoices are deleted after processing.
Want a similar OCR pilot?
Standard OCR Pilot — from €500: 1 document type, 1 ERP, 5–10 business days. For the pilot we measure accuracy on your real invoices.