At a Glance

  • Financial operations platform Tesorio on Thursday launched "Supplier Portals Agent," an agentic AI tool designed to automate the process of submitting invoices to supplier portals, according to a press release shared with CFO Dive.
  • The AI agent streamlines the invoice submission process by automating the filling of required fields and submitting invoices to supplier portals such as Coupa and Ariba, per the release.
  • "We created an agent that goes into the portal on behalf of the customer, successfully submits the invoice, and simultaneously monitors the invoice submission and approval process, thereby automating the entire process from start to finish," Tesorio Vice President of Finance and Operations Max Dame told CFO Dive in an interview.

Deep Dive

The AI agent automates the often tedious process of submitting invoices to supplier portals, helping companies reduce their days sales outstanding (DSO). According to a 2024 report on B2B payments by accounts receivable software provider Upflow, DSO—the average time it takes to collect payment for sales or revenue—averages 56 days.

Although the introduction of supplier portals has alleviated some challenges by helping approved invoices get paid on time, "submitting and approving invoices across dozens of portals can strain supplier finance teams," Tesorio said in the release. The San Francisco, California-based software provider noted that teams often maintain "parallel" processes for "portal" and "non-portal" customers, further slowing progress and miring teams in tedious work.

Supplier Portals Agent was born from answering the question: "What is the biggest gap in the invoice-to-cash, order-to-cash cycle?" Dame said. "Interestingly, the main driver of increased DSO is missing information."

Invoices may be incorrectly formatted or lack critical information, he said, and Supplier Portals Agent helps address this by automatically filling in invoices and alerting finance team members to issues, Dame said. In addition to speeding up the invoicing process, the agent frees up critical time for team members to shift to other tasks, he said.

"I'm not replacing people; I'm replacing a task that truly has no added value," he said.

The agent's launch comes as similar products emerge across the software landscape, with several prominent companies including Salesforce and Oracle also rolling out AI agents, CFO Dive previously reported.

Although AI agents hold significant potential in eliminating time-consuming or manual tasks, many finance leaders remain hesitant to grant such solutions full autonomy; given their responsibility for the compliance and accuracy of corporate financial statements, CFOs not only seek speed but also require transparency from such solutions.

"I do want to make sure I have control over the numbers and understand what's happening behind the scenes," Dame said. "Therefore, AI agents must operate within very strict guardrails, and I think that's where most finance leaders have concerns or are cautious."

As a result, transparency is critical for these agents; "having that visibility cannot be a black box," Dame said.

It's difficult to fully predict how AI agents or related technologies will be integrated into financial systems. In operational finance tasks such as order-to-cash, there is still significant room for automation and AI, but on the other hand, "I would be very cautious about financial statement generation," Dame said.

"I want to ensure my financial statements are reviewed by humans, by people with the knowledge and experience; I wouldn't rely solely on a system to do that, at least not yet," he said.