After submitting an invoice, you naturally want to know when it will be available in your accounting software. The processing time depends on the type of processing required. The good news: most invoices are processed within a few minutes.

The pure processing time for documents that are fully automated (straight-through processing) averages 20 to 30 seconds. The difference between compute time and total throughput time is explained by the wait time in the processing queue.

The IDR (Intelligent Document Recogniser) processes the vast majority of invoices fully automatically. In a limited number of cases, the automatic recognition is not confident enough about the result. The invoice is then sent to eConnect's Quality Control team for manual verification.

Situations where this can occur:

• A difficult-to-read scan or photo (low resolution, skewed, poor contrast).
• An unfamiliar invoice layout from a new supplier.
• A field with multiple possible interpretations (for example, a duplicate amount).
• Missing data that needs to be completed.

The QC team manually reviews and corrects the recognition. The maximum turnaround time for this is 24 hours on business days. After correction, the findings are fed back to the IDR as training data, so that similar invoices are processed automatically in the future.

With higher subscription tiers (Enterprise), the priority option is available. Documents are then given priority in the processing queue and are processed faster. This is especially relevant for larger volumes or time-critical processes.

When there is a sudden increase in document volume, the platform applies automatic scaling. Additional processing capacity is started based on processor load. During the scaling moment, processing time may temporarily exceed the average 30 seconds. Once the additional capacity is available, processing time normalizes.

eConnect guarantees that 99% of all documents are processed within 8 business hours. This SLA is reported monthly, including explanations for any exceptions.

Tip: want to check the status of a submitted invoice? Open the platform and view the conversion tasks. There you can see for each document which processing stage it is in.

Want to learn more about the full processing workflow? Read Conversion task: the process from start to finish.

• Conversion task: the process from start to finish
• How does Scan & Recognise (IDR/OCR) work?
• Submitting purchase invoices by email
• SLA and reporting for document processing