Modern AI can extract useful information from a supplier invoice in seconds. It can identify the vendor name, invoice number, dates, currency, PO number, quantities, prices, taxes, and line items without requiring an AP employee to type every field into an ERP system. 

That is valuable. But it leaves a more important question unanswered: Does this invoice agree with the business records that determine whether it should be processed? 

An AI model may correctly read a PO number. That does not mean the PO exists in your ERP. It may correctly extract a quantity of 500 units. That does not mean the warehouse received 500 units. It may accurately identify a vendor name. That does not mean it maps to the correct vendor record in your system. 

Extraction tells you what the supplier document says. Validation helps determine whether you can trust it. 

Traditional invoice processing begins with transcription. A supplier sends an invoice, and AP manually enters the vendor, invoice number, dates, payment terms, PO number, items, quantities, costs, and taxes. 

AI extraction can remove much of that repetitive work. Instead of starting with a blank Purchase Invoice, the AP team can start with information already extracted from the supplier document. 

But an extracted field is not automatically a trustworthy accounting field. A supplier invoice represents the supplier’s version of the transaction. Your ERP contains your organization’s version: vendor records, purchasing history, receiving activity, item information, and accounting history. A controlled AP workflow needs both. 

For PO-related invoices, GoldFinch can validate applicable, available extracted information against relevant ERP records before creating a draft Purchase Invoice. Depending on the transaction and configuration, that can include vendor, Purchase Order, warehouse receipt, received quantity, item and Unit of Measure, currency, duplicate-invoice information, and required information checks. 

These checks do not mean every invoice should automatically post. They help AP avoid reconstructing every routine transaction from scratch. GoldFinch creates a draft Purchase Invoice for user review, and the finance team remains responsible for reviewing and posting the accounting transaction.

“How accurate is the extraction?” is a reasonable question when evaluating AI invoice software. It is not the only question. 

A correctly extracted invoice can still require attention. The supplier may have referenced the wrong PO. Receiving may not yet have recorded a delivery. The vendor may have submitted a duplicate invoice. The PO may have changed after the invoice was issued. Or a quantity, currency, item, or Unit of Measure may not agree with ERP records. 

These are not necessarily OCR failures. They are business-validation issues. 

Without ERP validation, AP may save typing time but still spend substantial time manually checking extracted data. With validation, routine checks can occur first, allowing AP to focus on reviewing completed drafts and investigating transactions that do not agree.