With the release of Business Central 26.3, Microsoft has introduced a powerful new capability in Public Preview—Payable Agent. The Payables Agent in Business Central assists you by automating tedious and time-consuming accounts payables (AP) and accountant tasks, saving time and reducing errors. The agent sources vendor invoice attachments from email and SharePoint, and creates purchase invoice documents in Business Central for review. The agent uses available purchase history or the company’s accounting policies to register purchase invoices. The Payables Agent allows AP professionals, clerks, and accountants to focus on more demanding tasks, boosting productivity and efficiency
In this blog, we’ll dive into what the Payable Agent feature is, how it works, and how it can benefit your organization.
What is a Payable Agent?
Every company has expenses. Some relate to the supply chain, and others to operating costs like rent, utilities, leasing, food, phone bills, and software subscriptions. These operating costs, known as overhead expenses, are the first focus of the Payables Agent. They are often received as email attachments or through other channels.
Key Capabilities of the Payable Agent Feature
- Sourcing files and attachments related to purchase of overhead expenses- Payables Agent can source purchase attachments (PDF files) from a Microsoft 365 email account where vendors send their invoices. These invoice documents are imported into E-Documents in Business Central for further processing. After importing the documents, the agent moves the files to an archive folder.
- Processing imported purchase attachment and files – Once files are imported, Azure Document Intelligence processes them using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. The results are stored in Business Central in the E-Document. An updated PDF attachment viewer lets users validate the OCR processing by viewing the attachment in near-full screen.
- Creating purchase invoices – When Azure Document Intelligence processes a purchase attachment, the Payables Agent creates a purchase invoice document, ready for further approval and posting. The agent uses various predictors and indicators for creating these invoices, like the company’s available purchase history, accounting policies, or others specified when setting up the agent. The goal of the Payables Agent is to streamline the entire flow from identifying and importing purchase attachments, capturing relevant information to categorize the expense, registering the expense correctly in the general ledger, to creating purchase documents.
How to enable it?
- Navigate to Copilot & AI Capabilities page
- Select the Payable Agent record and click on “Activate” (by default it is active).
- Navigate to Home Screen (Role Center), on the right top corner, look for Payable Agent Icon.
- Click on it and configure the shared email box.
- If you wish to configure any custom fields on document creation, you can do using option “Configure additional fields”
In the future, the Payables Agent will handle increasingly complex scenarios and company-defined rules, manage supply chain expenses, and match with open purchase orders, while also supporting e-invoices received through other channels, like PEPPOL and other access points, or vendor invoices pushed into E-Documents via its native API.
Final Thoughts
The Payable Agent feature in Business Central 26.3 is a strategic enhancement for accounts payable that seek to streamline vendor payments. this feature reduces complexity and improves visibility.
Stay tuned for updates as Microsoft enhances this feature and prepares it for general availability!, Do you want a step-by-step guide on setting up Payable Agents in your environment? Let us know in the comments or reach out to our team for personalized guidance.