The Challenge

This distributor had been running Epicor P21 for years, but like many P21 users, they'd accumulated other systems that didn't talk to their ERP. Their sales team used WebPresented CRM (WPCRM) to manage customer relationships and track opportunities. Their phone system was 8x8. And they'd moved to Microsoft 365 for email and collaboration.

None of these systems were connected. Sales reps would update WPCRM after a customer call, but that information never made it to P21. When someone called in, the person answering had no idea what the customer's recent order history looked like without switching to P21. Customer contact information lived in three different places and was rarely consistent.

But the biggest pain point was accounts payable. The AP team received hundreds of vendor invoices every week—most of them as PDF attachments to emails. Each invoice had to be manually opened, reviewed, and keyed into P21 as a voucher. The process was tedious, error-prone, and consumed the better part of two people's days.

A single invoice could take 3-5 minutes to process: open the email, download the PDF, find the PO number, look up the PO in P21, verify the line items, create the voucher, enter each line, attach the PDF to the voucher record. Multiply that by 150-200 invoices per week, and you're looking at 15-20 hours of pure data entry.

The AP team was always behind. Invoices sat in the inbox for days before being processed. They missed early payment discounts. Vendors called asking about payment status. And despite all the manual effort, errors crept in—wrong amounts, wrong GL codes, invoices entered against the wrong PO.

The Solution

We approached this as a two-phase project. First, we connected the core systems to give everyone a unified view of customer information. Then, we tackled the invoice automation challenge with a custom solution built on Microsoft Power Automate.

Phase 1: System Integration

P21 to WPCRM Integration: We built a bidirectional sync between P21 and White Cup CRM. Customer master data, including contacts, addresses, and credit information, stays synchronized between both systems. When a sales rep adds a note or logs an activity in WPCRM, it's visible to anyone looking at that customer. Order history from P21 appears in WPCRM so sales reps see the complete picture.

8x8 Phone Integration: We connected the 8x8 phone system to both P21 and WPCRM. When a customer calls, caller ID triggers a lookup that shows the customer's information, recent orders, and open quotes on screen before anyone picks up the phone. Outbound calls from WPCRM are click-to-dial. Call logs automatically record to the customer's activity history.

Microsoft 365 Integration: Customer emails in Outlook can be associated with customer records in WPCRM with a single click. The sales team's shared calendar syncs with customer follow-up tasks. Documents stored in SharePoint are accessible from customer records.

Phase 2: Automated Invoice Processing

This is where things got interesting. We built a custom invoice ingestion solution using Microsoft Power Automate that monitors a dedicated AP inbox and automatically processes incoming vendor invoices.

How it works:

When a vendor invoice email arrives, Power Automate triggers a flow that extracts the PDF attachment and sends it to an AI-powered document processing service. The service reads the invoice and extracts key data: vendor name, invoice number, invoice date, PO number, line items, quantities, and amounts.

The extracted data is validated against P21. Does this vendor exist? Is this PO number valid? Do the line items match what was ordered? Do the quantities and prices fall within acceptable variance thresholds?

If everything checks out, the system automatically creates a voucher in P21 with all the line items populated. The original PDF is attached to the voucher record. The AP team gets a notification that a new voucher is ready for review.

If something doesn't match—an unrecognized vendor, an invalid PO, a price variance outside tolerance—the invoice is flagged for manual review. The AP team sees exactly what didn't match and can resolve it quickly instead of processing the entire invoice from scratch.

We built this as a configurable solution. The client can adjust variance thresholds, add vendor-specific rules, and define which invoice types get auto-processed versus flagged for review. They started conservative and have gradually increased automation as confidence grew.

The Implementation

Phase 1 (Weeks 1-6): We implemented the WPCRM, 8x8, and M365 integrations in parallel. Customer data sync came first, then phone integration, then email/calendar. The sales team was fully operational on the connected systems within six weeks.

Phase 2 (Weeks 7-12): Invoice automation required more careful rollout. We started by processing invoices in "shadow mode"—the system would process invoices and create draft vouchers, but the AP team still reviewed everything before posting. This let us tune the extraction accuracy and validation rules.

After two weeks of shadow mode with 95%+ accuracy, we moved to "auto-post with notification"—clean invoices create vouchers automatically, and AP gets a daily summary to spot-check. Exceptions still go to a review queue.

The Results

85% reduction in manual invoice entry. Of the 150-200 invoices per week, about 85% now process automatically without any manual data entry. The AP team focuses their time on the 15% that need attention—price discrepancies, missing POs, or new vendors.

40 hours per week reclaimed. The team members who spent most of their time on invoice entry now handle exception processing in a fraction of the time. They've taken on other AP responsibilities that were perpetually backlogged, and one position was reallocated to customer-facing work.

Same-day invoice processing. Invoices that arrive by noon are typically converted to vouchers by end of day. The backlog is gone. The AP inbox that used to have 200+ unprocessed emails now rarely has more than a dozen.

Early payment discounts captured. With faster processing, they're now consistently capturing early payment discounts they used to miss. On their invoice volume, this alone saves several thousand dollars per year.

Fewer errors, better audit trail. Automated extraction is more consistent than manual entry. Every voucher has the source invoice attached. The validation rules catch problems before they become payment errors.

Unified customer view. Sales, customer service, and operations all see the same customer information. Phone calls start with context instead of "Can you give me your account number?" Customer issues get resolved faster because everyone can see the history.

Key Takeaways

Start with integration, then automate. Connecting the core systems created immediate value and built confidence. Invoice automation was the bigger win, but it worked better because the foundational integrations were already in place.

AI document processing has matured. A few years ago, automated invoice reading was expensive and unreliable. Today's AI services extract data from invoices with remarkable accuracy, even handling different vendor formats, handwritten notes, and poor scan quality.

Power Automate is underrated. Microsoft's automation platform is included with most M365 licenses but rarely used to its potential. For organizations already in the Microsoft ecosystem, it's a powerful tool for building custom workflows without major development investment.

Automation doesn't mean zero oversight. The AP team still reviews the daily summary, spot-checks vouchers, and handles exceptions. Automation handles the routine work; humans handle the judgment calls.

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Interested in automating your invoice processing or connecting your P21 to other systems? Learn about our integration services or contact us to discuss your situation.