AP-focused financial automation platform Stampli released an AI-driven procure-to-pay solution that works through dynamic conversations with the system itself. 

Stampli Procure-to-Pay, which uses the company’s AI assistant Billy the Bot, has the ability to turn plain conversational text into structured purchase orders and financial documents, replacing rote data entry. Stampli observed that procurement often involves dynamic conversations between multiple stakeholders, such as finance teams, employees and vendors. These conversations, though, tend to take place on separate channels, emails and chat tools versus the procurement platform itself, which breaks the audit trail. 

The conversation-first approach, on the other hand, allows the software to capture and contextualize all procurement discussions within each transaction’s workflow. It can support an existing intake process, approval workflow or business requirement. The system uses AI-powered approval flows guided by historical patterns. It automatically suggests preferred items and vendors based on an analysis of purchasing patterns. The program generates formatted purchase orders directly within customers’ ERP systems. 

“Only Stampli unifies all procurement processes, documents and discussion into a single intelligent workflow,” said Stampli CEO and co-founder Eyal Feldman. “Everything happens within Stampli: every step, every approval, every budget review, and every conversation, in perfect harmony with your ERP.”

For example, according to the CEO in a later email, a user could describe their office supply needs in plain language. Billy the Bot analyzes the text and extracts the item names, quantity and context, then maps them to stock-keeping units, descriptions and costs. This process requires no special training and is designed to encourage employees to use the system and not try to bypass or ignore it, which creates challenges in terms of compliance as well as workflow efficiency. 

Stampli said its new solution can be implemented within weeks. Once deployed, it will adapt to existing processes, reducing the amount of necessary change management. 

The announcement comes a few months after the release of another AI-powered solution, Stampli Cognitive AI, which the company said features “human-level” purchase order matching. Using large language models combined with nearly a decade’s worth of data on invoice-processing workflows, the model is said to understand the nuanced context of financial operations and replicate human decision-making processes.

Cloud ERP solutions provider Acumatica announced several updates and enhancements for 2025 that align with the company’s new AI-first product strategy, which involves looking at business problems from the ground up and then determine how applied AI can address these problem scenarios.

“Acumatica’s AI capabilities are designed to automate and eliminate error-prone manual processes and enable businesses to intelligently streamline workflows across industries,” said Acumatica chief engineering officer Miten Mehta. “From Generative AI assistants to smart automated sales workflows tailored to unique operational needs, our tools integrate seamlessly into existing workflows, making them immediately impactful. We’ve created a stable, secure foundation, ensuring businesses can confidently integrate AI technologies into their processes—whether AI-powered anomaly detection in manufacturing or intelligent assistants in construction—driving real, measurable results.”

Two major components of this will be enhancements to Acumatica Labs as well as the release of Acumatica AI Studio. Acumatica Labs will include a new customer preview program that enables early access to new features for testing and direct feedback, as well as advanced kitting, order orchestration, customer special orders, case closure notes, B2B ordering, document templates and AI-powered anomaly detection for those who sign up. 

Meanwhile, Acumatica AI Studio—a new feature in the larger platform—will let businesses automate their workflows without having to code. Chief Technology Officer Mikhail Shchelkonogov, during his presentation, showed how he could use it to automate report production, using the example of support case reports. After their engineering staff helps a customer with a technical issue, they must take all the case activities, analyze them, and report on things like what the problem was, what the root cause of that problem was, and how it was fixed, among other things. This is a complicated multi-step process. But Shchelkonogov, with the AI Studio, created a single button that directs the AI to gather all the information from the support case and then send it to the large language model to produce the report itself. He noted the AI even knew he spent 4 hours and 15 minutes working on that particular support case. 

He explained how he set up the button himself through the AI Prompt Editor that is part of the AI Studio. Effectively, the button activates a prompt he had already prepared which specified things such as the items he wanted to include in the closure notes, the format of the report itself, and additional information to be used to enrich the text (e.g. product descriptions from the Acumatica website.) He then tested the results, refined the prompt to his satisfaction and completed the automation. 

“Number one, I did not write a single line of code to do that. Number two, it was very fast. Number three, think of how many actions I automated. Now you can take it and go to any screen in Acumatica, think of the scenario you want to implement, and do it by yourself,” said Shchelkonogov. 

The AI Studio also provides data-driven insights in a secure environment. For example, during his presentation Doug Johnson, vice president of solution architecture, raised the example of an Alaskan company that makes scratch off lottery tickets. The insights feature combed through hundreds of thousands of records to find which of their salespeople were discounting too heavily, which were selling below margin and other performance statistics. They also used it to determine who was overdue with their bills (Johnson noted that billing can be challenging in Alaska due to mail delays, so standard patterns won’t work). They were able to find this information by entering a simple data query, which gathered the information and put it on a dashboard “so instead of 100,000 or a million records, you only have to look at 15.”

“Another thing here is the [AI determined] average days to pay. It varies wildly by customer. That is what AI really helps with, so they can focus on the right problem instead of focusing on people who just have mail issues at their place,” he said. 

Acumatica also announced several industry-specific solutions for the distribution, manufacturing, construction, retail and professional services industries. For professional services, Acumatica plans to implement a native ProjectManager integration for resource planning and project scheduling.

At this time, Acumatica hasn’t shared specific release dates for these updates.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Mike Crapo. R-Idaho, and ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, issued a discussion draft Thursday of bipartisan legislation aimed at improving procedures and administration at the Internal Revenue Service, with the support of the American Institute of CPAs.

The draft legislation, known as the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act, comes only days after the IRS opened the tax filing season facing a hiring freeze imposed by the new Trump administration, leading to rescinded job offers.

“As the tax filing season gets underway, this draft legislation suggests practical ways to improve the taxpayer experience,” Crapo and Wyden said in a joint statement. “These adjustments to the laws governing IRS procedure are designed to facilitate communication between the agency and taxpayers, streamline processes for tax compliance and disputes and ensure taxpayers have access to timely expert assistance.”

The discussion draft includes policies that would:

• Require the IRS to improve “math error” notices so that taxpayers are better positioned to timely respond to them;
• Streamline review of offers-in-compromise to facilitate the taxpayers’ resolution of tax debts;
• Simplify foreign bank account report (FBAR) compliance so that fewer taxpayers will fail to file key forms;
• Clarify and expand Tax Court jurisdiction so that more taxpayers can pursue their claims in an appropriate venue;
• Expand the independence of the National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) from the IRS;
• Increase civil and criminal penalties on tax professionals that deliberately take actions to harm their clients;
• Expand taxpayer access to the IRS Independent Office of Appeals;
• Extend the so-called “mailbox rule” to electronic submissions so that taxpayers have certainty their materials are submitted on time;
• Protect taxpayers by adopting reasonable standards and due process for issuing and revoking return Preparer Tax Identification Numbers, or PTINs;
• Strengthen the IRS whistleblower program while protecting the confidentiality of taxpayer information;
• Protect hostages from unfair tax processes and penalties.

The proposals in the discussion draft reflect in many ways nonpartisan legislative proposals recommended by the National Taxpayer Advocate, along with standalone tax administrative bills introduced by congressional members.  The provisions aim to reduce or eliminate challenges faced by taxpayers and other stakeholders within the current federal tax administrative system. 

“This bipartisan draft bill, several years in the making, would significantly strengthen taxpayer rights in nearly every facet of tax administration,” said National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins in a statement.  “I encourage taxpayers and the tax professional community to carefully review the draft and provide feedback to refine it, and I encourage Congress to prioritize the passage of this common sense bill to ensure stronger protections for taxpayers and a more fair and transparent tax system.”

The AICPA expressed its support Thursday for the discussion draft, and said it strongly supports and endorses the following provisions found in the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act:

•  Sec. 101. Scanning and Digitization of Tax Returns and Correspondence.
• Sec. 102. Establishment of Dashboard to Inform Taxpayers of Backlogs and Wait Times.
• Sec. 103. Expansion of Electronic Access to Information about Refunds.
• Sec. 104. Expansion of Callback Technology and Online Accounts.
• Sec. 105. Improvement of Notices of Math or Clerical Error.
• Sec. 108. Individuals Facing Economic Hardships Informed of Collection Alternatives.
• Sec. 112. Postponement of Certain Deadlines by Reason of Disasters Made Applicable to Limitation on Credit or Refund.
• Sec. 116. Modification of Rules for Postponing Certain Deadlines by Reason of Disaster.
• Sec. 405. Operations to Assist Taxpayers Experiencing Hardships During a Lapse in Appropriation.
• Sec. 504. Authority to Deny, Revoke, or Suspend Preparer Tax Identification Numbers.
• Sec. 903. Quarterly Installments for Estimated Income Tax Payments by Individuals.
• Sec. 904. Establishment of a Failure-to-Pay Penalty Safe Harbor for Individuals.
• Sec. 905. Extension of Mailbox Rule to Electronic Submissions and Payments.

“We are grateful to Senators Wyden and Crapo for putting together a thoughtful package that will provide much-needed support to taxpayers,” said Melanie Lauridsen, vice president of tax policy and advocacy for the AICPA, in a statement. “When passed, the TAS Act will be one of the most significant tax packages we will have seen in recent years. It will be instrumental in establishing a foundation that helps simplify some of the laborious tax filing processes and allows taxpayers to better meet their tax obligations. We look forward to working with Senators Wyden and Crapo as this discussion draft moves forward.”

The Government Accountability Office released a report Thursday on the 2024 tax filing season that found the IRS improved its live service for taxpayers last year and began to modernize some of its operations, but timeliness issues remain.