How much time does invoice review really take? Count the work around the invoice

A supplier invoice takes six minutes to review. That sounds manageable.

But those six minutes may include finding the attachment, deciding whether a six-page PDF contains one invoice or several, copying fields into a spreadsheet, checking the total against the page, and looking for the email that explains a price change. The actual decision—is this invoice ready to move forward?—might take only a fraction of that time.

For a lean AP team, reducing invoice review time starts by separating work that needs judgment from work that only gets the invoice in front of the right person.

Where the minutes go

Follow one invoice through your current process. Before the reviewer can make a decision, they may need to:

• Find and open the supplier’s attachment.
• Work out which pages belong to the invoice.
• Enter the supplier, invoice number, dates, and amounts.
• Compare the entered values with the original page.
• Look for a possible duplicate or missing detail.
• Find the right person to resolve an exception.
• Prepare the reviewed information for the accounting system.

Some of those steps protect the business. Others are repeated handling of the same document and the same data.

The goal is not to approve invoices without looking at them. It is to make the document, its captured details, and the issue requiring attention available in one review workflow.

What a faster review looks like

Imagine a supplier sends a PDF containing two invoices. One is straightforward. The other has a total that needs checking.

In a manual process, an AP teammate first separates the pages, enters both invoices, checks the values they typed, and messages the controller about the second total. The controller then opens the attachment and finds the relevant page.

In a more focused workflow, the pages are grouped into two invoices before review. The key details are captured for the teammate to verify against the source. The question about the second total is visible with that invoice, so the controller can inspect the page and make the decision.

Both workflows still require a person to check the questionable total. The difference is how much work it takes to reach that decision.

What could that mean for a small team?

Here is an illustrative calculation, not a Claribo performance result.

Suppose a team handles 500 invoices a month and spends an average of six minutes of hands-on time receiving, preparing, and reviewing each one. That is 50 hours a month.

If a different workflow brought the average down to three minutes, the same work would take 25 hours a month—a difference of 25 hours. Whether that is achievable for your team depends on your documents, exceptions, and existing process.

The calculation is simple. The useful question is what you would measure to find your actual number.

Measure the process before making a speed claim

Take a representative sample of invoices: clean PDFs, multi-page files, invoices that need correction, and bills that require someone else’s input. For each one, record:

1. Hands-on intake and preparation time: Finding, sorting, grouping, and entering information.
2. Hands-on review time: Checking captured fields and resolving what the reviewer can decide.
3. Waiting time: Time spent awaiting a buyer, controller, or supplier response.
4. Rework: Corrections needed after the invoice leaves review.

Compare the same types of invoices before and after changing the workflow. A faster first pass is not a win if errors create more work later.

Give people the right work to do

Claribo focuses on the stage between an invoice arriving and its reviewed data being exported. It brings incoming documents into a queue, supports page grouping, presents extracted details for review against the source, and lets the team resolve review items before export.

That gives an AP teammate a better starting point than a PDF in one window and a blank spreadsheet in another. It also keeps the human decision where it belongs: with the person who can determine whether a charge is correct.

Want to find out where your team’s invoice time goes? Request a Claribo demo and walk us through a few of your typical invoices—including the messy ones. We’ll look at the review steps with you, rather than promise a percentage that has not been measured.