How Krannich collects 24% more orders
28 April 2025
Finance departments worldwide are under increasing pressure to optimize costs, improve efficiency, and maintain strict accuracy.
In a recent global survey of finance leaders by Gartner, 58% of respondents indicated they are turning to automation and AI solutions to drive better performance by eliminating manual processes.
Traditional financial workflows often involve repetitive data entry and approvals that consume valuable time and are prone to human error. Microsoft Power Automate (part of the Microsoft Power Platform) has emerged as a key tool to address these challenges by streamlining financial processes through low-code automation, and organizations are leveraging it to save time, reduce errors, and drive significant ROI in financial operations.
In many cases, investments in Power Automate pay back within months, with studies citing ROI as high as 248% over three years.
Before diving into the Power Automate use cases in finance, let’s start by briefly presenting the software and its benefits for financial departments.
Power Automate in Finance: An Overview
Microsoft Power Automate is a cloud-based workflow and robotic process automation (RPA) tool that enables organizations to automate tasks and integrate disparate systems with minimal coding.
In finance functions, it serves as a digital workforce handling routine tasks (such as data entry, reconciliations, and routing approvals) so that employees can focus on higher-value analysis. The platform offers a vast library of connectors to common finance systems (Excel, SharePoint, enterprise resource planning platforms like Business Central or SAP, etc.) as well as AI capabilities (for example, AI Builder for extracting information from invoices), facilitating end-to-end automation of financial processes.
Power Automate bridges modern cloud APIs and desktop RPA to automate both legacy and current systems, offering built-in financial templates (e.g. multi-level invoice and expense approvals), detailed audit logs for compliance, and a low-code visual designer that lets finance “citizen developers” build or tweak workflows under IT oversight, making it a scalable, enterprise-grade solution for organizations of any size.
Benefits of Financial Automation
Let’s understand the potential benefits of financial automation for your business:
1) Faster Invoice Processing
By using Power Automate in finance, your organization can accelerate invoice processing.
You can reduce the work hours needed to process invoices, while simultaneously taking advantage of early payment discounts from vendors and avoiding late payment penalties.
Large enterprises with high invoice volumes report significant gains.
2) Improved Compliance
The value of automation in compliance and auditing is evident in improved reliability and reduced risk. By having consistent processes that are followed every time (driven by workflows), the likelihood of human oversight errors diminishes.
Moreover, the cost of compliance can be reduced. Tasks that might have required extensive manual effort by staff (such as reconciling records or reviewing access logs) can be handled by automated flows, allowing compliance teams to focus on higher-level risk management.
3) Increased Accuracy
Automating critical finance workflows like invoice processing and reporting can be significant in terms of time saved and improved accuracy by reducing common errors.
4) Better Communication and Collaboration
Power Automate in finance can automate approvals, notifications, and compile work from different individuals or subsidiaries.
These automations transform how your company works together and communicates. You complete tasks and projects faster, while making sure that everyone is updated on real-time information.
5) Optimal Stock
When inventory levels drop below a certain point, Power Automate can instantly create an order and forward it to the right supplier.
If needed, it can also send an approval request to the responsible manager to ensure that the optimal order is being placed.
With such automation, you can make sure that your warehouse is always stocked with enough units to fulfill orders on time, maintaining customer satisfaction at a high level.
5 Power Automate Use Cases in Finance
1) Streamlining Accounts Payable Processes
Handling vendor invoices manually is labor-intensive and error-prone, involving data entry and multi-level approvals. Power Automate can automate the accounts payable (AP) workflow end-to-end.
For example, when an invoice email arrives, a flow can automatically extract key details from the attachment using AI, then match those details against a purchase order in the ERP (performing a three-way match among the invoice, PO, and delivery records). If everything checks out, the invoice is routed to the appropriate manager for approval based on predefined rules (for instance, higher amounts automatically go to a senior approver).
Once approved, the payment is scheduled and the accounting system is updated, all without any manual retyping of data.
2) Enhancing Financial Reporting and Analysis
Financial reporting, accounting close, and analysis are core activities that often involve gathering data from multiple systems and preparing reports under tight deadlines.
Power Automate can alleviate bottlenecks in these processes by handling data aggregation and routine report generation tasks.
For example, during a month-end close, a Power Automate flow could pull trial balance data from an ERP, combine it with data from a sub-ledger or Excel file, and then email a consolidated report to the finance team each morning during close week.
It can also send reminder notifications (e.g. via Microsoft Teams or email) to department heads to submit their accruals or adjustments by a certain deadline, ensuring nothing goes unnoticed.
Another use case is automating financial consolidation for reporting: if each subsidiary uploads its financial results to a SharePoint library, a flow could automatically compile those files, apply standard formatting, and generate a combined income statement without manual copying and pasting.
Additionally, automated workflows minimize the risk of omissions or delays – a missed journal entry or forgotten report distribution is far less likely when key steps are scheduled and executed by a flow.
Power Automate also integrates with business intelligence tools like Power BI. Finance teams can set up flows to refresh Power BI dashboards and even notify stakeholders when new reports are available. Rather than waiting for an analyst’s email each week, a CFO could receive an automatic alert (with a link to the latest dashboard) as soon as sales or expense data updates.
For smaller companies that lack a dedicated data warehouse, Power Automate provides a way to bridge systems. For instance, pulling invoice and expense data from different sources and merging them into a single Excel or Google Sheets report. In this way, even small finance teams can produce timely, accurate reports without burning valuable hours on data gathering and preparation.
3) Strengthening Compliance and Auditing
Regulatory compliance and internal auditing are critical in finance, as organizations must adhere to laws (such as Sarbanes-Oxley, IFRS, tax regulations) and internal policies, while also preparing for periodic audits. Microsoft Power Automate can significantly strengthen compliance efforts by standardizing processes and maintaining detailed records automatically.
A common use case is implementing approval workflows that enforce segregation of duties. For example, a flow can ensure that any payment or expense above a certain threshold automatically routes to a senior approver who is not the requestor, enforcing compliance with approval policies.
The system prevents critical steps from being bypassed, which is harder to ensure in purely manual processes. Every approval, rejection, or modification in a Power Automate flow is timestamped and recorded, creating an audit trail by default. Auditors (internal or external) can be given read-access to these digital logs or even have flows set up to compile evidence.
For instance, a workflow might collect all transactions above a certain value and save their supporting documents into an “audit review” folder each month, saving auditors from chasing down paperwork.
Another area is compliance monitoring. Power Automate can schedule routine checks –(like a monthly flow that scans for any transactions or vendors that violate policy) and automatically alert compliance officers if something is doesn’t add up.
This proactive approach means potential compliance issues are caught and addressed early, rather than only being discovered during an audit after the fact.
4) Automating Procurement
Finance departments often coordinate closely with procurement, and automating procurement workflows speeds up purchasing while enforcing financial policies.
A common use case is automating purchase requisitions and purchase order (PO) approvals. Instead of relying on paper forms or email threads, an employee submits a purchase request through a digital form and Power Automate routes it to the appropriate approver based on company policy. For example, managers can approve routine purchases while high-value requests automatically escalate to a finance director. Once the request is approved, the flow can generate an official PO or notify the supplier to proceed with fulfillment, all with transparent tracking.
In essence, Power Automate can strengthen procurement processes in several ways:
- Automating purchase requests and approvals (ensuring requests are routed according to spending limits and managerial hierarchy).
- Triggering reorders when inventory is low (initiating purchase workflows when stock levels fall below defined thresholds).
- Requesting approval for supplier onboarding documents (collecting vendor information and sending it to the appropriate stakeholders for review).
All of these capabilities contribute to more efficient and controlled spending.
5) Expense Management Automation
Expense management is another area where automation delivers value.
Instead of manually inspecting each employee expense report, a Power Automate flow can automatically validate submissions by checking that receipts are attached and amounts comply with policy. The flow auto-approves all reports that meet requirements and instantly routes any exceptions (e.g. over-limit expenses or missing documentation) to a manager for review.
This approach reduces the finance team’s workload and speeds up reimbursement for employees.
Get Started with Power Automate in Finance
Key decision-makers should note the dual advantages of such automation: operational improvements (faster cycle times, fewer errors, improved compliance) and financial returns (labor cost savings, early payment discounts, avoidance of regulatory penalties).
For finance executives and IT leaders, adopting Power Automate is a strategic step to enhance agility and accuracy in the finance function. It can transform finance teams from manual record-keepers to strategic advisors. The outcome is not only immediate cost and time savings, but also a stronger foundation for informed decision-making.
Verus+ is an experienced Power Automate Consultant who can analyze your finance processes and come up with an intelligent automation strategy for your business. Book your free consultation today and discover how we can help you streamline finance processes and improve financial results.
