Automate data entry from email and PDF into your ERP

"Two of my people spend their mornings opening attachments and typing them into the system. Supplier invoices, purchase orders from customers, delivery notes. When one of them is on leave, the backlog takes a week to clear, and the mistakes show up at month-end."

Every company of 50 to 500 people we meet has a version of this. The documents arrive by email, mostly as PDFs, sometimes as scans or photos from a phone. Someone reads them and re-keys the same numbers into Excel, then into the ERP. The ERP is fine. The bridge between the inbox and the ERP is a person.

Why it's still manual in 2026

It isn't for lack of tools. Most teams have tried one: an OCR add-on, a "PDF to Excel" converter, a chatbot that reads invoices. They tend to fail for the same three reasons.

1. They read, but don't decide. Extracting a total is the easy part. Knowing which purchase order it belongs to, whether the price matches the contract and who must approve it is the actual work, and the tool stops before it.
2. They treat every document as a mystery. Your top twenty suppliers probably send 80% of your volume in the same layout every time. Those don't need AI. They need a template and a rule.
3. Nobody owns the exceptions. When the tool isn't sure, the document lands back in a shared inbox. The team goes back to typing because it's faster than checking.

What it costs

Count the hours honestly: opening, reading, typing, checking, correcting, and chasing the missing purchase order number. Then put your own figures into the calculator.

The hours are only part of it. Re-keyed data carries a small error rate, and each error costs far more downstream: a wrong price paid, a duplicate invoice, a stock count that doesn't reconcile.

The fixed flow: rules first, AI where it earns its place

Procure to pay with 3-way match

1. Supplier invoice
2. E-invoice validation
3. Extract invoice lines
4. Fetch PO and GRN
5. 3-way match
6. Within tolerance?
7. Post to AP
8. Schedule payment
9. Paid on terms
10. AP hours a week: 32 → 6 (Example)

1. Sort by rules. A dedicated mailbox receives the documents. Rules sort them by sender and type: invoice, order, delivery note, statement. Spam and "please see attached" replies without an attachment never reach a person.

2. Extract with the cheapest method that works. Suppliers with a stable layout get a template. Documents that arrive as structured data (XML e-invoices, CSV exports) are read directly. AI extraction handles only what's left: new suppliers, scans, layouts that change. That keeps cost and error rates down and makes the AI step easy to audit.

3. Match, don't just copy. Extracted lines are matched against the purchase order and goods receipt in the ERP. Quantities, prices and VAT are compared against tolerances you set.

4. A person checks the exceptions. Anything that doesn't match, or where extraction confidence is low, goes to a named person with the document, the extracted fields and the reason side by side. They correct it in one screen. The correction is recorded, and repeated corrections become new rules.

5. Post to the ERP. Clean documents post automatically, with a link to the original file. Excel stays useful for reporting, but stops being a staging area.

This is how we approach manual processes in general: the person stays in the loop, but only for decisions.

What to do this week, without us

You don't need software to start. You need a clear picture.

• Create one inbox. If documents arrive at five personal addresses, ask suppliers and customers to use one. This alone makes everything after it possible.
• Count a week of documents. By type and by sender. You'll likely find that a short list of senders makes up most of the volume.
• Time the work. Ask the people doing it to log, for one week, how long each document type takes, including corrections and chasing.
• List the fields you actually need. Most ERPs need fewer than ten per invoice. The rest is noise.
• Write down your matching rules. Price tolerance, quantity tolerance, who approves above which amount. If they live in someone's head, they can't be automated.
• Check what your ERP can already import. Odoo, Zoho Books, SAP Business One and most others accept structured imports. That is often the cheapest last step.

With those six answers, any automation you choose, ours or not, will be scoped properly.

When to call us

Call us when volume is high enough that a few hours a week matter, when documents come in several languages or formats (Arabic and English invoices in the same inbox are normal for our clients), or when matching needs data from more than one system.

This is forward-deployed engineering: our engineer works inside your business, not from a ticket queue. During the two-week assessment we sit with the people doing the typing, because that is where the real exceptions show up: the supplier who sends two invoices in one PDF, the customer whose orders come as photos. Then we map the flow, automate the rules, extraction and matching inside your stack, and hand it to your team to run. The people you meet stay on your work from the first day to the last. See the other use cases we work on.

FAQ

Can AI read our supplier invoices accurately?

Devvion uses AI extraction only where layouts vary, such as new suppliers and scans. Stable layouts use templates, and structured files are read directly. Every low-confidence field goes to a person, so accuracy is checked, not assumed.

Do we need to replace our ERP to automate data entry?

No. Devvion builds on the ERP you already run, whether Odoo, Zoho Books, SAP Business One or another system with an import or API. The automation sits between your inbox and the ERP, and posts into it the way a person would.

What about Arabic invoices or handwritten delivery notes?

Devvion handles Arabic and English documents in the same flow. Printed Arabic extracts well. Handwritten notes are less reliable, so we route them to a person with the image and suggested values rather than posting them automatically.

How much of the work can actually be automated?

Devvion measures it on your documents during the assessment rather than promising a figure. In our standing example, a 200-person distributor went from 46 to 9 hours a week on supplier invoices. Your mix of senders and formats decides your number.

Will this remove jobs on our team?

Devvion removes work, not people. The hours that come back usually go to supplier follow-up, cash collection and reporting that nobody had time for. We tell your team that in the first meeting.