Resources · Guides
Guides
Longer reads for teams deciding what to automate and how to judge the options.
Read this first
Long reads for the people who have to decide
Written for finance, operations and IT leads choosing what to automate and how to judge the options, including ours.
A guide here is the long, settled version of an argument. The insights are where a position gets tried out; a guide is where it ends up once we would defend it in front of an auditor. Each one takes a single buyer question, works through the mechanics, says where we would draw the line, and finishes with a way to check the answer against your own process.
None of them is a comparison table of vendors. What they do instead is tell you how to run an evaluation that would expose a weak product, ours included: which documents to bring, what to count, which controls to insist on. If a guide makes you want to test something, the research tools are the next step.
The guides
Six guides, one question each
Numbered in the order a first evaluation usually runs. Start with the one that names the problem on your desk.
Agentic AI vs RPA: What Changes for Finance Teams
Where robotic process automation stops, what an agent adds, and how to decide which fits a finance process. For teams who have tried RPA and hit its limits.
Accounts Payable Automation: An Evaluation Guide
Intake, extraction, matching, approvals, exceptions, posting and audit, with the questions to ask vendors and the numbers to measure.
Intelligent Document Processing: How to Evaluate It
OCR, template IDP and agentic extraction compared, with a test plan for confidence scoring, validation and review that uses your documents rather than the vendor's.
GST Automation: A Practical Guide for Indian Finance Teams
Invoice validation, GSTIN checks, GSTR-2B reconciliation, ITC eligibility and an audit trail that survives a notice. Where GST work goes wrong in payables, and how to fix it.
Human-in-the-Loop AI: Designing Review That Scales
Thresholds, queues, escalation, sampling and measurement, so that review stays a control instead of becoming the new backlog.
AI Automation Readiness: A Self-Assessment Checklist
Seven dimensions, honest answers and a clear first project. The checklist behind the PTAS AI Automation Benchmark.
Which guide
Start from what you are hearing
Most teams arrive with a complaint rather than a topic. These are the ones we hear most, and the guide that answers each.
Six guides, by the question on your desk
If two rows sound like your week, read the readiness checklist first. It tells you which of the other five matters more.
In what order
Where each guide sits in an evaluation
A first automation decision usually passes through the same four questions, in this order, before anyone signs anything.
An evaluation, question by question
- 01 Is it ready? Readiness checklist: process, documents, data, systems, workflow, AI and governance
- 02 Agent or bot? Agentic AI vs RPA: where scripted automation stops on finance work
- 03 Which product? AP automation and IDP evaluation: what to test, on whose documents
- 04 What stays controlled? Human-in-the-loop and GST: review design, tax checks, the audit trail
- 05 Prove it The assessment, the document test, then a demo on your process
Skipping the first question is the most common reason a pilot stalls. The product was fine; the process was not ready for it.
How they are written
What to expect from a PTAS AI guide
One question
Each guide answers one thing
A guide on AP automation is about evaluating AP automation. It does not drift into a product tour, and it says which questions it leaves to another guide.
Your process
Each ends with a test you can run
The finished guides close with a short exercise on your own documents or queue: count the exceptions, pull twenty invoices, draw the approval ladder from policy.
Labelled
Opinions marked as opinions
Where we argue a position, we say so. There are no invented statistics and no customer results; timelines appear only as indicative ranges.
To see how the products are applied, the case studies page explains what a PTAS AI case study will contain and how to ask for a reference conversation. The research and evaluation hub holds the benchmark, both assessments and the document test.
Keep reading
After the guides
Case studies
Implementation write-ups, published only when a customer has checked every number.
Read more →Research and Evaluation
The benchmark, both assessments and the document test, and which to use when.
Read more →Glossary
Fifty-seven terms from the guides, from approval band to three-way match.
Read more →FAQ
Short answers on the products, control, integrations, deployment and evaluation.
Read more →Read it, then score it
Find out which guide applies to you
The assessment scores seven dimensions in about seven minutes and names the two places we would start. Those two usually point straight at one of the guides above.