What Does Good AP Visibility and Control Actually Look Like for ANZ Businesses — And How Do You Get There?

In the face of growing transaction volumes and increased vendor expectations, finance teams must ensure a smooth and efficient accounts payable (AP) process to keep cash flow moving. But fragmented systems and manual invoice processing can slow things down, creating delays that weaken supplier relationships and make it difficult for organisations to forecast cash flow and meet compliance requirements.

So how can finance teams gain the real-time visibility and control they need to maximise AP efficiency?

Concur Invoice automates and streamlines the entire invoice management process, from receipt to payment, enabling businesses to easily capture, submit and pay invoices with full visibility into business spend.

In 2026, Peter Soukos, Director Client Executive at SAP Concur, hosted a webinar to discuss the opportunities and challenges of rolling out Concur Invoice. He was joined by three customers – Maria Mash, Accounts Payable Team Leader, Engenco; Melanie Marshall, AP Officer, Newcastle Anglican; and Brendan Tanner, Head of Finance, McGrathNicol – who shared their experiences of how Concur Invoice has added efficiencies, as well as tips for managing the AP solution.

Online Customer Panel Unlocking Visibility and Control in AP: 3 Organisations Share Their Success Stories

If you have an AP solution and would like some ideas on how to optimise your own process, or if you are thinking of digitising your AP process, watch us now and hear firsthand how three finance leaders are using Concur Invoice to add efficiencies to their business.

They will share their own experiences and tips for automating their Accounts Payable function, including tips for implementing and configuring a new AP system, considerations for change management and training, and the most impactful ways a solution like Concur Invoice can help your AP process.

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Still Processing Invoices Manually? Here’s What ANZ Finance Leaders Are Doing Instead

Before implementing Concur Invoice, all three organisations had specific pain points in their accounts payable processes that they knew they needed to address, which led them in search of an automated, end-to-end solution.

For McGrathNichol, this was part of a broader transformation project centred around enterprise resource planning (ERP). “Our AP challenges were pretty typical for a professional services firm,” Brendan said. “We had invoices coming into all different parts of the business – both email and good old-fashioned hard copy posted invoices. Without full visibility over the process, invoices were sitting in the approval flows.”

Because of their reliance on manual input of invoice data, human error was a significant risk. Brendan commented, “We had non-finance personnel responsible for getting GST correct within the system; that unfortunately led to a lot of errors and inconsistent coding. And from the way our previous processing system was designed, there were some real challenges with correcting things that had gone through poorly.”

Similarly, Engenco had an existing AP setup that wasn’t fit for purpose, which was negatively impacting on performance. Maria said, “It was very slow on queries pulling up the images, and workflows would get stuck so they wouldn’t get to the approvers. The OCR functionality wouldn’t pick up half the information on the invoice.”

Maria also pointed to a number of API integration failures. “The single sign-on didn’t work properly; it would go down twice a week, so we’d have to go back to manual processing. There were also critical security issues which really pushed us to look for an alternative.”

When choosing a solution, McGrathNicol had one non-negotiable: automation. Brendan said, “We were looking to remove that manual keying aspect to reduce errors, so we needed to automate at least part of the process. We wanted to incrementally improve anything we possibly could. Once we became aware of Concur Invoice, we could quickly see how those pain points would be addressed.”

Engenco had already been using Concur Expense to streamline and automate the management of employee expenses. Implementing Concur Invoice was the logical next step in their digital transformation. “We know how well Concur Expense works; we’ve never had any issue with it,” Maria said. “So Concur Invoice was our next port of call.”

How ANZ Businesses Are Implementing AP Automation Without Disrupting Day-to-Day Operations

Once Engenco and McGrathNicol had decided on the Concur Invoice solution, they were pleased to find that implementation was quick and relatively seamless. While there is always some complexity in integration systems and APIs, with the assistance from SAP Concur support teams, day-to-day operations continued to run smoothly during the transition. 

Brendan said, “We’re now five years post go live but I remember the implementation for Concur Invoice as being reasonably painless. We had a couple of internal resources that were responsible for it, but they didn’t have to be dedicated in any way. It was a kind of fractional responsibility where they were doing their day job as well.”

In addition to the SAP Concur team, McGrathNicol leaned on external support for integration with the broader ERP program. “We were implementing the ERP at the same time as the AP solution so both sides were moving – that was probably the most challenging part,” Brendan said. “The rest was straightforward: building the workflows we wanted, that weren’t exactly the same as what we had previously, and all the approval steps. I don’t think we would have done anything differently.”

Engenco deployed Concur Invoice in 2024, in collaboration with SAP’s implementation partner Xaana. Maria remembered, “We were very fortunate; their expertise in Concur implementation is second to none. They’re experts in being able to accelerate designs, invoice imaging, handling, and syncing our master data which was a bit of a mess when we first started. Because we have a number of matching rules, not all our business units operate the same rules. We had to design for each different business unit, syncing the PO matching rules. It was fantastic project hygiene on their part.”

Engenco and Xaana adopted a phased delivery approach, prioritising core functionality while minimising business disruption. Maria said, “We really concentrated on phase one: capturing the invoices, non-PO and PO invoicing, making sure all the approval chains were set up, then completing the configuration without ERP. We’ve found that our straight through processing rates have gone extremely well for the PO matching.”

Xaana also coordinated with suppliers, facilitating the integration of data between third-party records and the Concur system. Maria said, “We would get massive spreadsheets with a huge amount of data; we’ve been able to put all of that into Concur in a concise way so it can automatically flow through to our ERP in real time. Overall, our experience was really excellent.”

The ANZ Finance Leader’s Playbook for Rolling Out AP Automation Across Your Organisation

A major barrier to successful deployment of a new tech solution is end user adoption. Fortunately, Engenco and McGrathNicol had a clear strategy to communicate the value of Concur Invoice, driving early uptake.

Brendan said, “As part of our broader ERP deployment, we had an extended communications plan covering a whole range of topics – the AP change was part of that. We shared granular detail with the administrators across the country about a month before we went live, so they had plenty of heads up for what was coming. A few of those team members were involved all the way through, helping with design and providing key user input at different points.”

And while training was an important component, the emphasis was on drilling the basics rather than overwhelming the team with information overload. Brendan said, “For this particular one, we aimed not to overtrain our admin team but just focus on the key changes: how to get an invoice into Concur, assign project codes, and select approvers. We reinforced the new workflow process, that there was going to be a verification step for finance personnel upfront that would take away some of the data points they were previously responsible for, like GST.”

McGrathNicol offered a one-hour workshop for all staff a couple of weeks before deployment, then optional training about a week later. “I can’t recall anyone actually attending,” Brendan said. “This probably highlights how poor our previous process was, because once they got into the new system and did a couple of invoices, they didn’t need a great deal of training – just some refinements and sharing extra features.”

Because the platform was so easy to use, the team quickly understood the benefits. “This was one of the most positively received aspects of the broader transformation project we were running – that ‘less is more’ training approach really worked well for us. Most of our team found the platform pretty intuitive,” Brendan said.

Engenco’s finance team had the advantage of using Concur Expense, so they already had knowledge of the system. The business took a two-pronged approach, offering a series of training sessions backed by ongoing expert support and resources.

“Training was fairly simple for us,” Maria said. “We rolled out to the approvers first to get their buy in and train them up. Then we moved on to the users and just did bite-size half-hour training sessions, three in total. We also launched a support channel, so they knew who to contact with any questions. And we gave examples of what it was going to look like and how to go about things – these were quick cheat sheets they could refer to if needed.

At the same time, they worked closely with the procurement team to ensure they were on board with the change. “They could give any feedback upfront and we could deal with it right away,” Maria said. “Overall, it was a very simple implementation and training program across the company.”

Less Manual Checking, Fewer Errors: How AP Automation Is Transforming Daily Finance Operations in ANZ

At Newcastle Anglican, Concur Invoice is an integral part of daily operations. Melanie said, “We’ve got most of our suppliers sending invoices directly through to Concur now. We just get the odd ones that are still a bit old school and email them through to us and we’ll just forward them on from there.”

As the Concur Invoice lead for Newcastle Anglican, Melanie described the end-to-end AP process leveraging the solution. “The invoice will come through to the invoice capture page, flagging a verification to be done. Invoices that come through with multiple pages will always go to document separation – sometimes we get maintenance companies that send through the whole report before the invoice, so it moves the invoice to the top. The software will generally pick up everything we need; verification just involves double checking before we move on to the next step, so everything is in the right sections.”

Thanks to Concur Invoice, the approvals process has become much easier to manage, according to Melanie. “Once we’ve worked our magic and figured out who the invoice belongs to, it’s a matter of simply entering the staff member’s name. We make sure all the information is correct – the expense type, the details of what the invoice is for – and we just hit ‘submit’ and off it goes to them.”

For Melanie and her team, the system maximises both efficiency and accuracy, although there are the occasional anomalies that require a human in the loop. She explained, “The only other instance is when there are both GST and GST-free items on the same invoice. In that case, we have to assign the invoice to ourselves so we can do the GST split and go to the next. So we work with it.”

Clear Governance, Low Maintenance: An AP System That Supports ANZ Finance Teams

When it comes to ongoing upkeep of the solution, the good news is that Concur Invoice doesn’t require heavy IT involvement. The finance team is able to take ownership almost entirely, saving a lot of time, effort, and complexity.

Melanie said, “I love doing the housekeeping tasks: checking that all the suppliers we currently use are still active in the system, and making sure the ones we haven’t used in the last 18 months are flagged as inactive so there’s less chance of them being picked up. It’s great that you can download a report to Excel, filter it however you want, and check when you last used a supplier. If we haven’t used them for two years, we can mark that off and then re-upload the report back into the system so all the data is clean.”

Brendan agreed that the finance team at McGrathNicol is across the day-to-day aspects of system admin and maintenance of the user base. He said, “Whether it’s different access levels within Concur, we’re looking at features that could be used by other people in the firm – that very much sits with finance.”

This frees up the IT team to focus on the more complex task of monitoring integration points. Brendan said, “Our supply master sits in our ERP and we’re moving that data across on a nightly basis. Any new suppliers that are integrated come across to Concur, and equally all of those supplier invoice details come back to the ERP for payments. But once the system is deployed, it’s not a heavy IT team requirement – how it’s used is driven by the finance team.”

Engenco’s finance team also owns maintenance of the Concur solution, Maria said. “Someone in head office finance handles the expense module and I handle the load for invoicing, with Xaana as our remediation contact. The only time we would get our internal IT involved is if there was a certificate issue – for example, tickets haven’t been renewed.

“But if we’ve got the ERP flowing, it’s happening in real time. That data is forever changing; if anything isn’t populating, Xaana will re-import or export what we need it to do, so that is the only thing we’re really touching. For anything else, like setting up new users, it’s all managed in-house in finance.”

How ANZ Finance Teams Are Using AI and Machine Learning to Transform Accounts Payable

While artificial intelligence has recently exploded in the tech landscape, SAP Concur solutions have harnessed AI and machine learning for many years. These capabilities enable powerful features like intelligent invoice matching and optical character recognition (OCR) that accelerate AP workflows.

“Traditional AI features have been really fundamental benefits for our firm from when we first went live, and continue to perform a very important job for us,” Brendan said. “One of the attractions was the OCR in invoice capture; at the time, I think we were promised it would be 80-85% accurate in terms of data capture and initial population. But we’ve found it to be far more accurate than that right from day one, and that’s probably just continued to improve over time.”

Concur Invoice also transforms rich data into actionable insights. Data Intelligence is a fully-customisable reporting tool embedded within the platform, allowing finance teams to easily monitor trends, simplify spend management, and improve audit compliance.

Maria said, “With Business Intelligence, we’ve had a number of reports built fit-for-purpose like PO matching and PO users versus non-PO. I’ve got about 15 reports I can pull into a dashboard, which has really helped strengthen our relationship with the supply chain. If they need something, we can pull the data and show them exactly where the money’s going – down to the supplier, money spent, the codings, GLS, exceptions, the whole lot. We use all the data we can get our hands on.”

Because these tools have enhanced visibility and reduced manual effort, SAP Concur customers are excited to leverage future AI capabilities. Brendan said, “SAP Concur’s AI features are very well-liked and received at McGrathNicol. Due to the nature of a services firm, there are other elements that we don’t utilise but if we can get to the point where we need more generative AI built in for verification and assigning to our approvers, I’ll happily accept it.”

From Dashboard Visibility to Mobile Approvals: The AP Benefits ANZ Finance Teams Rate Most Highly

Now that all three organisations have been using Concur Invoice for a number of years, they were able to identify which parts of the solution have become essential to their AP process. In some cases, this was just a small configuration that has delivered big value to the business.

For Newcastle Anglican, the greatest benefit is in sorting items for verification. Melanie said, “We could have 400 items in there; not all of them are verifications, it will show everything that has been processed over a seven-day period. I always sort by verifications, then click on the date and time it was received so I can process the oldest first. That’s huge for me, because I don’t want to be flicking through 300 invoices trying to find the next one on my list to do verifications on.”

From a user experience (UX) perspective, Melanie said the Concur platform outperforms others. “Moving from a different system, this is just a hundred times better than what we used previously. It’s very simple to use, there’s not a lot of thinking – that’s what I find easiest. You just tab through all the fields, fill in what you need to, and if it’s assigned to the wrong person, it’s a simple two-step click to get it to the right person. As a user, it’s not difficult at all.”

Brendan called out a simple yet effective feature: the Invoice Manager Overview Dashboard, found in SAP Concur’s Business Intelligence reporting. He said, “It’s just really easy to visualise where everything is in the process. You get a very quick view of where things are up to – for example, if things are sitting there waiting for verification with our admin team. It gives a clear picture of the entirety of your invoice volume at that point in time, so I find that a really handy screen to look at.”

Maria agreed that having a single, unified view was critical: ““It’s given us greater visibility. We can see all the exceptions and why things aren’t going straight through the three-way matching we have on our POS.”

Brendan also highlighted the solution’s flexibility as a major value add. “As you’re going through an implementation, you can rethink and change your workflow. If we’d gone in with the same workflow that we had in our old system, we would have missed a trick. It’s the flexibility to move things around on the invoice, insert finance here, and lock down the GST field so it can’t be altered by anyone doing the project coding at a later stage. The flexibility we found with the tool is what makes us still think it was a really good decision all these years later.”

And the benefits aren’t just limited to the finance team, but extend to approvers as well. Brendan said, “Because it is a mobile-enabled, automated space, approvers can just use the Concur app on their phone. It’s a very modern experience compared to more traditional AP processes that are tied solely to a desktop interface.”

ANZ Finance Leaders Share Their Top Advice for Starting an AP Automation Journey

So what advice would these finance leaders offer to other businesses at the beginning of their own AP automation journey?

For Maria, the key to a successful tech implementation is understanding how the solution will fit your unique business needs and getting all stakeholders on the same page. She said, “Know your BAU back to front including what pain points you need to address. Make sure you’ve got buy in from procurement from the AP side, so that you’re working together to get the right solution.”

But Maria’s biggest piece of advice was to engage the support of Concur’s Premium Assistant team, which has delivered Engenco some quick wins. “One change gave us an 80% improvement. Because the small balances are up to eight decimal places, our ERP doesn’t accept that – the exception is out and you always get a variance. But the Premium Assistant team can fix that up straight away and bam, huge benefit for us. We’re able to work with the supply chains and get our percentage rates up.

She added, “When I’m looking at the system every day and seeing these anomalies, these are pain points for our team. Now I’m able to show the pain point to our Premium Assistant and ask, have you got a solution for this?”

Brendan emphasised the platform’s powerful automation and AI capabilities which are essential for driving digital transformation. “I think any AP transformations need to have that as a key component; certainly Concur Invoice has automation and AI features built in,” he said. “If I was going to leave one learning, don’t just stick with what you currently do – find a new solution.”

Finally, Brendan urged organisations to align technological transformations with long-term strategy and vision. “Take the opportunity with any transformation to rethink what you’re doing. It might only be slight changes, but you can almost turbocharge that automation off the back of it by making sure you’ve got your future state workflows and flexibility built into the solution,” he concluded.

A productive and efficient AP department can make a huge difference in how well a business runs and to its bottom line. By automating and streamlining accounts payable, Concur Invoice empowers finance teams with real-time visibility and control over spending – reducing manual effort and freeing up their time to focus on smarter, data-led decision-making that will drive your organisation forward.