The operating margin hiding in your spend.
What looks like an AP problem is usually three problems: cash you haven't recovered, costs you haven't avoided, hours you haven't freed. Twenty-one levers across procurement, finance and operations - the same model used in your live Value Review.
Annual recovery opportunities
£2.18MPer-document economics
The true cost of processing one invoice
Exception overlay £4.06
Query overhead £1.00
All-in. No add-ons.
90% reduction
AI extraction speed
How these numbers are calculated
Every figure comes from a 21-dimension model spanning procurement policy, finance controls and operational productivity - the same one used in live client Value Reviews. Three buckets, three audiences: CASH is what your CFO recovers; AVOID is what your CPO and COO stop paying; OPS is what your AP team gets back. Estimates use sector benchmarks; once you're connected, every dimension gets computed from your actual invoices, statements and alerts.
True cost per invoice
Base processing £14.50 (derived from 12 min × your hourly rate) + exception overlay (exception rate × handling minutes × hourly cost) + query overhead £1.00.
Exception rate defaults to 39% - typical for multi-site operators without automation. 8% of invoices require manual intervention (touchless rate: 92%).
Recovery opportunities - the 21 dimensions
Grouped the same way as your live Value Review: CASH (direct recovery), AVOID (cost avoidance), OPS (operational productivity).
CASH - direct cash you recover
- Credit note reduction - 2% recovery on misallocated or unclaimed credit notes (calibrated against client base)
- Fraud prevention - 0.8% of spend exposed to duplicate or fraudulent claims
- VAT reclaim - 0.5% of invoices have VAT errors; recovery at 20% standard rate (calibrated against client base)
- Early payment discounts - 50% improvement in capturing 2% terms on suppliers that offer them
- Duplicate payments - 0.5% of invoices paid twice (requires statements module)
- Spend without invoice - undocumented bank debits at ~4% of lines (requires statements module)
- Payment timing - 4.5% opportunity cost on invoices paid 15 days early (requires ERP connection)
- Price spike detection - flags sudden price increases vs historical average; 1% of spend exposed to undetected spikes, 50% recoverable once detected
AVOID - costs you stop paying
- Price negotiation - 4% of spend on volatile products where locking unit prices saves money
- Bulk pricing - 2% discount on 40% of spend eligible for volume terms (hospitality multi-site benchmark)
- Maverick spend - 2% premium paid on off-PO invoices (35% of total without POs, 10% with)
- Late payment avoidance - statutory 12.5% interest on the 15% of invoices paid late
- Expense compliance - 8% rejection rate + 5% no-receipt risk (requires expenses module)
- Cut-off compliance - invoices received after period close cause misstated financials; 1.5% of invoices affected, 20 min correction cost each (requires ERP connection)
- Industry benchmarking - compare spend patterns against industry averages; strategic insight value that improves procurement decisions
- Emissions reduction - track supplier carbon footprint and consolidate orders; 7.5% delivery consolidation saving on 3% delivery cost (requires ESG module)
OPS - hours you free up
- Time savings - your AP team currently spends ~12 min processing each invoice manually. AI extraction runs in 37 seconds (measured across 35 documents - 20x faster than manual), freeing capacity that's valued at your hourly cost.
- Exception handling - 25 minutes per exception at your hourly cost
- Statement reconciliation - 15 minutes saved per auto-matched bank line at 75% match rate (requires statements module)
- Delivery reliability - track delivery accuracy per supplier; 2% of deliveries have discrepancies (short deliveries, substitutions), 60% recoverable (requires purchase orders module)
- Product variant accuracy - detect when suppliers substitute products (different pack size, brand); 3.5% of lines have substitution discrepancies at 5% price impact
Hero metrics
Loss prevented = fraud prevention + duplicate payments + VAT recovered. Cash accelerated = early payment discounts + payment timing optimisation. Touchless rate = 92% of invoices auto-processed without human intervention (8% exception rate).
Pricing assumed in payback / ROI
Starter £25/mo + £1/doc · Single site £125/mo · Multi-site £250/site/mo · Enterprise custom.
Calculator auto-routes to whichever tier is cheapest for your inputs (Starter wins for single-site below 1,200 invoices/year; Single Site above).
ROI = (annual recovery - annual platform cost) / annual platform cost.
Model v2.1 · 21 dimensions · benchmarks calibrated against the active client base. In client mode, every benchmark above is replaced with a measured value from your data.
How the AP Automation ROI Calculator Works
This calculator models 21 dimensions of recoverable value across your accounts payable and procurement operations. Enter your invoice volume, average invoice value, number of sites and AP team size to see a personalised breakdown of where money is being lost and how much can be recovered.
The model covers three categories: cash recovery (early payment discounts, credit notes, VAT reclaim, price spike detection, payment timing), cost avoidance (fraud prevention, duplicate payments, maverick spend, late payment penalties, cut-off compliance, industry benchmarking, emissions reduction) and operational efficiency (processing time savings, exception handling reduction, delivery reliability, product variant accuracy, strategic capacity freed).
Every benchmark is sourced from published industry data (APQC, IOFM, Hackett, Gartner, CIPS) and calibrated against OmniPATH's active client base. The methodology section within the calculator details every assumption and source.
Why AP Automation ROI Matters
The average UK business spends £17.50 processing a single invoice manually - comprising £14.50 in direct processing cost, approximately £4 in exception handling and £1 in query overhead. With AI-powered automation, that cost drops to £2.80 per document - an 84% reduction.
But processing cost is only one dimension. Most businesses leak 5-8% of total AP spend through hidden costs: missed early payment discounts, undetected duplicates, price drift from suppliers, unapplied credit notes and maverick purchasing. For a business processing 12,000 invoices a year at £850 average value, that translates to six-figure annual losses hiding in plain sight.