Meet E2D — Aqilla's AI-enhanced invoice automation feature that turns supplier invoices into AP-ready data, automatically, inside your accounting software.
One task has stubbornly resisted automation for many finance and accounting teams: supplier invoice processing. Invoices arrive by email, someone downloads them, opens the accounting system, and types the data in — line by line, invoice by invoice.
At five to ten minutes per invoice, it doesn't feel catastrophic. But for a team processing 100 invoices a month, that's up to 16 hours of skilled finance staff time spent on pure data entry — work that adds no analytical value and introduces meaningful risk every time a number is misread or mistyped.
Time cost: 5–10 minutes per invoice, multiplied across hundreds of suppliers and multiple entities, adds up fast.
Error risk: Manual entry means transposition errors, even duplicate payments, and VAT miscalculations.
Fragmented workflow: Invoices spread across email inboxes, spreadsheets, and shared drives make it hard to know what's been processed.
Third-party tools: OCR tools solve one problem and create another – data must be reconciled between two systems.
Many teams have turned to standalone OCR tools to help — but these come with their own overhead. Data is extracted outside your accounting software and must be imported back in, creating a reconciliation step that consumes much of the time saved elsewhere.
Why Aqilla built E2D to automate invoice capture and processing
The thinking behind E2D: The pattern our team at Aqilla kept seeing was the same: finance teams using our cloud accounting software but still relying on a patchwork of external tools to get invoices into it. Every tool adds friction — another login, another subscription, another point of failure between an invoice arriving and appearing correctly in the AP workflow.
The decision to build E2D entirely in-house — rather than integrating a third-party invoice capture — was deliberate. It means invoice data never leaves Aqilla to be processed elsewhere. It means there's no reconciliation step. And it means Aqilla controls the roadmap directly, so improvements arrive faster and aren't dependent on an external vendor's release cycle.
The result is a feature that is built into Aqilla.
What E2D does
E2D stands for Electronic-to-Digital. It's Aqilla's AI-enhanced data extraction technology that reads supplier invoices — in any format, from any supplier — and automatically creates draft purchase invoices inside Aqilla, ready for your AP workflow.
2× faster invoice processing than manual entry
60% cheaper on average than standalone OCR tools
£40 per month to activate, plus £0.20 per invoice
E2D extracts everything your AP workflow needs — supplier details, invoice number, document and due dates, line items, VAT amounts, and totals — and maps it directly to the correct fields in a draft purchase invoice. It works across invoice formats and supplier layouts without needing predefined templates.
Every field it extracts is assigned a confidence score. High-confidence fields pass through cleanly. Anything the AI is less certain about is flagged for review before processing. Your team only looks at what actually needs their attention — which in practice is a small fraction of the total volume.
How it works in four steps
Set up your invoice inbox
You get a dedicated E2D email address for supplier invoices. Share it with your suppliers and invoices start flowing in automatically — no manual upload, no forwarding to an external service. For example: invoices@yourcompany.aqilla.net
2. E2D captures and reads the invoice
When an invoice arrives, E2D automatically reads the document, extracts all key data, and attempts to match it to an existing supplier in your Aqilla records. If it can't match with confidence, it flags the invoice for a quick manual review rather than guessing.
3. Review the draft invoice
A pre-populated draft purchase invoice appears in your Purchase Invoice Inbox, with confidence scores against each field. Your team reviews flagged items, adds cost codes or analysis fields if needed, and confirms. Most invoices take seconds.
4. Process through your normal AP workflow
The invoice moves straight into Aqilla's accounts payable workflow — sent for approval, posted, or processed as you normally would. From inbox to AP-ready in seconds, entirely within Aqilla.
Is E2D right for your team?
E2D is designed for finance teams who process supplier invoices regularly. In practice, it's most valuable for teams in one or more of these situations:
✓ Manual entry today: If your team is still typing invoice data into Aqilla, E2D removes that.
✓ Using a separate OCR tool: E2D replaces Dext, Datamolino, and similar tools — at a lower cost.
✓ High invoice volume: The more invoices you process, the greater the time and cost saving every month.
✓ Multi-entity operations: Invoice volume scales with entity count. E2D keeps the entire process manageable – you just need to create a dedicated inbox for each company.
Getting started
E2D is available as an add-on for all Aqilla customers at £40/month + £0.20 per invoice. Activation is straightforward — once enabled, you configure your invoice inbox and can begin processing invoices immediately.
For teams currently paying for a standalone OCR tool, E2D could offer a direct cost reduction with the added benefit of eliminating the reconciliation work that comes with managing two systems.
Ready to remove invoice data entry from your team's week?
Existing Aqilla customers can activate E2D directly.
Book a demo →
