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When getting ready to perform an AP recovery audit, finance leaders are faced with a choice; rely solely on their team or adopt an automated solution. Their human counterparts have intuition, better judgement, context, and understand forming and maintaining relationships. The fully automated AI option has stronger pattern recognition, can move faster, and lacks human bias. At Bedrock, we’ve seen that the most powerful results come from a hybrid model- one that combines AI’s scale and pattern recognition with human judgment, context, and relationships. Our integrated approach merges these strengths to deliver higher recovery rates, stronger supplier relationships, and greater confidence in outcomes. In today’s post, we’ll dive into why we believe this is the best method.
While manual audits bring expertise and nuance to the table, they also come with significant constraints. Finance teams can only get through so many records within a given cycle, and reviewers might not see the more subtle patterns or anomalies that will only emerge across much larger datasets. Manual audits also often struggle to keep up with increasing transaction volumes, complex supply chain data, and higher-level payment behaviors. As a result, even the most highly skilled human only teams may miss recovery opportunities.
On the flip side, a solely automated audit system can scale rapidly and process large volumes of data, but it lacks the human context that can differentiate a genuine recovery from a false positive. While AI can flag duplicates, anomalies, and outlier behavior, it can incorrectly identify legitimate payment arrangements (like supplier credits, contract offsets, or multi-entity consolidations) or struggle with supplier relations during a dispute resolution. According to the article “What AI Can Do for Auditors” in the Journal of Accountancy, AI tools “process large amounts of data… and reconcile accounts many times faster than a human auditor can, and with fewer errors.” Journal of Accountancy. Yet, the same article underlines that human oversight remains essential in interpreting results and managing relationships.
The optimal model lies in relying on the irreplaceable qualities of human reviewers, while leveraging AI to do what it does best. This is often referred to as “human-in-the-loop” or collaborative intelligence. Here’s how Bedrock’s hybrid approach works:
This human + AI partnership delivers:
While each organization’s metrics will differ, industry data illustrates the scale of improvement possible when automation and human insight come together. For example, a blog by Rillion reports that AI in accounts payable “has the potential to double the level of automation and deliver over 90% accuracy.” rillion.com Although this statistic speaks primarily to AP automation rather than recovery audit specifically, it highlights the efficiency and accuracy improvements that automation enables, deeming it a necessary component of a high performing hybrid audit model.
Drawing on this as a baseline, finance leaders can expect:
Finance organizations that rely solely on legacy manual audits or pure AI solutions are increasingly exposed to process bottlenecks, missed recoveries, and supplier relationship risks. The next wave of AP audit excellence belongs to those that embrace collaborative intelligence: rationalized processes, continuous data driven detection, human judgement, and automated scalability.
From an executive perspective, this transforms AP recovery audits into a strategic opportunity for operational performance, risk management, and cash flow optimization.
To maximize recovery, maintain supplier trust, and build lasting data intelligence, the future of AP auditing lies in hybrid models where precision meets perspective. At Bedrock, our human + AI audit platform is designed to deliver exactly that: intelligence driven detection, expert execution, and measurable results.
If your team is still relying on manual audits or experimenting with standalone AI, now is the time to explore a hybrid approach that protects revenue, reduces risk, and optimizes AP recovery.
Interested in learning more? Contact us today!