IFS is a powerful ERP — so why are 80% of non-PO invoices still coded by hand?
If your finance team is using IFS, chances are you’ve made big strides in ERP-led digitalisation. But for many IFS customers, one surprisingly manual process still eats up time, budget and team focus: coding non-PO invoices. Despite the tech stack, despite the workflows, most finance teams are still manually entering GL accounts, cost centres, VAT codes and more. And they’re doing it for thousands of invoices every year.
This is the automation gap — and it’s bigger than you think.
The IFS Automation Gap: Where Digitisation Stalls
Invoice automation inside IFS isn’t broken, but it’s not complete either. Most companies use OCR tools and hardcoded rules to accelerate processing. However, the reality reveals significant limitations:
- OCR extracts data from PDFs but cannot determine proper coding destinations — someone must complete the process.
- Rules are inflexible, demanding continuous maintenance and failing when circumstances shift (new vendors, missing data, unusual invoice formats).
This results in 80% of non-PO invoices remaining manually coded, causing slower approvals, human inconsistencies, €4–8 per invoice in administrative expenses, and finance teams performing tasks their ERP should automate.
Why the Status Quo Persists
The problem isn’t insufficient effort. IFS customers invest considerable resources into enhanced rules and updated templates. However, most organisations handle only a small percentage of repeatable, rule-dependent invoices — the remainder are too variable. Scaling logic across every edge case proves impractical, particularly when AP teams face deadline pressures.
Enter Snowfox: AI That Understands Your IFS Data
Snowfox operates as a native AI add-on for IFS Finance, learning directly from historical invoice data rather than requiring rules or templates. Upon implementation, Snowfox predicts coding and routing for over 90% of non-PO invoices, eliminating manual coding, rule maintenance, and system modifications while continuously improving.
Want to See It in Action?
For organisations still manually coding IFS invoices, Snowfox offers an alternative. We provide an AI Accuracy Test that analyses 6–12 months of your historical data to demonstrate potential automation accuracy — without speculation.
