A new vendor survey, conducted by San Francisco-based Ottimate, which provides AI-powered AP automation (where a software digitises and streamlines the invoice-to-pay process, eliminating manual tasks like data entry, invoice routing, and payment processing), indicates that most midsize businesses haven’t even fully automated their accounts payable processes.
In an online survey of 225 mid-market finance and accounting leaders, conducted in September 2025, only 4% of respondents admitted to fully automating AP from invoice to payment with no manual touchpoints. The respondents reported annual revenue between USD 20 million and USD 499 million.
The survey, titled “The State of AP Maturity 2026: Closing the Gaps Between Partial and Unified Automation,” included respondents across healthcare, retail and hospitality sectors. About 48% of them reported witnessing “little to no cost savings” from their AP automation tools.
Ottimate attributed the issue to the prevalence of “partial automation,” where humans and machines collaborate on tasks. While 89% of respondents use partial automation in the AP function, 7% reported completely depending upon human interventions to complete tasks.
“Partial automation may seem like a step in the right direction. But it actually sets the stage for some of the key challenges finance teams face every day,” Ottimate noted.
While half of the survey respondents filed more than 5,000 invoices monthly, 38% currently take five or more days to process a single invoice.
“While that timeline may not seem particularly problematic, it quickly becomes unmanageable when multiplied across thousands of invoices,” Ottimate’s report observed, noting that this trend occurs amid the growing prevalence of AI-powered frauds. The survey also found four in 10 respondents experienced either invoice fraud or overpayment in 2025.
The study found that when fighting fraud for midsize firms, manual invoice reviews before payment remain the preferred financial control. Some 52% of the respondents cited this method as their most favourite financial control tool, and another 50% said they require two or more approvers before releasing a payment.