What is AI prompt engineering, and how does it work with accounts payable automation?

Let’s talk about artificial intelligence (AI) for accounts payable. More specifically, let’s talk about the convergence of generative AI, prompt engineering and accounts payable. You’ve likely caught on to AI trends reshaping how tasks get done and how they're growing at lightning speed. But have you heard about AI prompt engineering, and how does it work with accounts payable automation?

How does prompt engineering work?

Prompt engineering gathers user behavior and preferences data, which AI algorithms analyze to create personalized prompts. These prompts can be in the form of suggested actions or recommended content. The system keeps learning from your interactions, refining its recommendations over time, which is why user inputs are crucial in guiding generative AI tools to produce what you want them to. When using these AI models, you shape what comes out as generated content with the instructions you put in. The clarity and precision of what you tell it will directly impact the AI's ability to provide accurate and relevant results. So, giving clear and precise inputs is important to avoid unintended, unwanted or irrelevant results.

Prompt engineering in accounts payable

AI helps streamline and automate much of the AP process in accounts payable. For example, it can analyze past transactions and vendor relationships and give you recommendations for future payments. But how does it actually work?

Imagine you have a vendor from whom you regularly buy office supplies. With the right instructions (or prompts) to your system, your accounts payable system can recognize this pattern and suggest automatic invoice payment, so you don't have to do it manually. This not only saves time but also reduces the chances of making mistakes.

Prompt engineering in AP automation goes beyond just automating payments. It's about giving clear instructions to the AI for handling different financial tasks. For instance, you can tell the AI to extract specific information from invoices, match it with purchase orders and update your records accordingly. However, successful prompt engineering requires understanding what AI can do and giving instructions that fit your AP automation needs.

The Medius Agent AMA (Ask Me Anything) brings generative AI to accounts payable, specifically for invoice approvers and suppliers. It helps approvers by giving them useful information about invoices, like the approval path, potential discounts and links to the vendor's five most recent invoices. Suppliers can also get up-to-date information about invoice status and better understand when they can expect to be paid without requiring an AP staff member to take time out of their day. With prompts for common invoice questions, you can get smart and contextual support for quick, confident and accurate approvals.

Common questions include:

• Why have I received this invoice?
• Who else is approving the invoice?
• What have I done with similar invoices previously?
• Tell me more about this supplier.
• How can I send an invoice to somebody else?
• How can I return the invoice to AP?
• When is the invoice expected to be paid?
• Early cash discount opportunities?

And if the prompts don't cover what you need, you can ask any question in your own words, and the Agent will give precise and informed responses.

Also, it’s important to remember there is a presence of biases in AI models' training data, which can result in unfair outputs. AP users should be aware of this and actively work towards reducing biases for an ethical and unbiased approach to AP automation. Regular monitoring and validation of AI-generated results can help identify and fix any discrepancies.