How to Validate Invoices with AI Invoice Match in Tropic

What This Means for You

Validating invoices manually slows down your accounting team and increases the risk of errors or overpayment—especially when vendor details are hard to track down. AI Invoice Match streamlines this by doing the heavy lifting for you. It can also help flag potentially fraudulent or misrouted invoices that don’t match any contract in Tropic. 

When you forward an invoice to Tropic, the platform automatically compares it to the contract and request data you already have. You’ll get a quick confirmation that everything checks out—or a heads-up about mismatches like pricing, terms, or missing details. It’s especially helpful during month-end close, when manually checking invoices against contracts is time-consuming and error-prone.

This saves time, reduces back-and-forth with business owners, and strengthens your audit trail—all without changing how your AP system works today. You’ll also gain peace of mind knowing that each invoice has been matched against your contracts, helping ensure you only pay what you should.

Step-by-Step Demo

Tip: You can navigate back and forth between steps by positioning your mouse at the bottom of the demo screen. A progress bar will appear, allowing you to jump to different steps as needed.

How to Use AI Invoice Match

1. Navigate to Settings >  AI Invoice Match

This is where you’ll see your Tropic invoice forwarding address and configure where results should be sent.

2. Confirm or Update Your AP System Forwarding Email

Enter the inbox where Tropic should send its invoice analysis (e.g., ap@yourcompany.com). The invoice analysis is typically forwarded to your AP system inbox, but you can choose to send it to any email address your team prefers.

3. Use Your Tropic Invoice Forwarding Address

Tropic auto-generates a unique forwarding address for your organization (e.g., tropic@invoices.tropicapp.io). You’ll send invoices to this address for analysis.

• This address appears in the How it Works section, and it's also shown at the top of the Invoices tab—so you don’t need to return to Settings every time
  • It’s preconfigured and read-only—no setup required.

4. Choose Which Insights Tropic Should Analyze

These insights help your team catch common invoice issues early—reducing the risk of errors and saving time during review:

• Contracted vs. Bill Payment Term Discrepancies
  Alerts you when the payment terms on an invoice don’t match what was agreed in the contract. This can help prevent early payments or inconsistent terms across vendors. 
• Bill is Outside Contracted Start and End Date
  Flags invoices that fall outside the expected contract period—so you’re not paying for services before the contract begins or after it ends. By default, we will flag invoices that have greater than a 5 day difference, but this is customizable within the settings.
• Duplicate Bill Detection
  Detects if the same invoice has already been received, helping avoid duplicate payments and improving your financial controls.

5. Send Your Invoices to Tropic

From your email inbox, forward PDF invoices to your Tropic forwarding address (e.g., tropic@invoices.tropicapp.io).

Tropic will extract the invoice data and compare it to your existing contracts. The analysis will then be sent to the AP system inbox you’ve configured.

Note: Only PDFs are supported at this time. Image formats like JPG or PNG are not currently processed via email forwarding.

What Happens Next

After you send an invoice to Tropic, you’ll receive an email with the results of the AI Invoice Match. This email gives you a clear summary of what was found—and what to do next.

Note: The way the invoice analysis appears in your AP inbox may vary depending on the system you use. Below are notes for some of the most common AP platforms.

• Bill.com only supports text-only emails, so the formatting will be minimal.
• Ramp will accept both text and attachments. Ramp only accepts emails forwarded from authorized addresses for security reasons. We recommend adding the notifications@tropicapp.io as a trusted domain. 
• Tipalti and Brex don't show email content at all—just the attached invoice file. In that case, Tropic adds a banner to the invoice PDF with a link to view the full analysis.

Review the Analysis Summary

The email includes a breakdown of any discrepancies Tropic identified, like:

• Spend that doesn’t match the contract
• Unexpected payment terms
• Missing contract dates
• Duplicate invoice detection

Each discrepancy is listed clearly in the Analysis Summary section.

💡 Note: Invoice totals may include tax, while Tropic compares against the pre-tax contracted amount. This can explain some spend variances you see in the analysis summary.

Check the Invoice Details

Right below the summary, you’ll see the Invoice Details Tropic extracted—things like:

• Total amount
• Payment terms
• Service period (if available)
• PO number (if present)

This helps you confirm what was captured and catch anything that may have been missed.

View the Related Records

In the Related Records in Tropic section, you’ll find a direct link to the matched contract. Clicking the link opens the contract record in Tropic, where you can verify the terms, contract value, and timeline the invoice was checked against.

Edit and Resubmit (If Needed)

Tropic’s AI Invoice Match extracts key invoice data and compares it to your contracts. If you want to make adjustments—for example, to reflect updated terms or correct vendor information—you have two options:

• From the Tropic platform, click View Original Bill to open the extracted invoice
• You can make updates directly in that view, such as adjusting quantities or adding a missing line item.
• If you need to change what contract or request has been associated with the invoice, you can do so by opening the Invoice, scrolling down, and clicking “Manage” next to the contract or request. 
• If the invoice itself needs to be updated, simply forward a revised version to Tropic to trigger a new analysis.

Any changes you make will be reflected in the Invoices tab, so your team can track what’s been reviewed, edited, or re-submitted.

You can view and manage all invoices processed through AI Invoice Match by going to the Invoices tab. This page gives you a centralized, at-a-glance view of each invoice—showing its status, amount, due date, extracted details, and whether any discrepancies were flagged.

From this tab, you can open the full invoice record, make updates if needed, and track what’s been reviewed—so your team stays on top of approvals and errors without digging through emails.

Tip: One Invoice Per Email

To ensure accurate results, we recommend forwarding one invoice per email. This gives Tropic the best chance of correctly extracting and matching the file.

FAQs

Q: What file types are supported?
A: PDF invoices are supported via forwarding. Image formats (JPG, PNG) are not currently processed through email.

Q:Can I customize which discrepancies Tropic should flag?
A: Yes. You can define thresholds for spend variance and toggle which insights are active.

Q:What if an invoice doesn’t match anything in Tropic?
A: If Tropic has low confidence in a match or finds no related contract, the invoice will be flagged for manual review.

Q:Is a new task created in Tropic?
A: No. Invoices are analyzed and emailed, then stored in the Invoices tab—but no workflow task is created.

Q: How will the analysis look in my AP Inbox?
A: The Tropic invoice analysis you receive may look different depending on what AP Inbox you use. For example, Bill.com inbox only supports text-only emails. This means that we cannot apply any formatting to your email. Tipalti does not accept any email content and only displays the attached invoice file. In this case, we will show a banner at the top of the invoice with a link to Tropic to review your analysis. 

Q: What email address does the invoice analysis come from? 
A: You will receive your invoice analysis from notifications@tropicapp.io

Q: What happens if a supplier has multiple contracts? Which contract will the forwarded invoice be matched to? 
A: We are using AI to select a contract that shares the most similar fields to the invoice we’ve analyzed. If we do happen to match to the wrong contract, you can update what contract an invoice is associated with and resubmit for analysis within Tropic. 

Q: How do I update which contract an invoice is associated with?
A: Within the Invoices index, open the invoice you want to re-associate. Scroll down to find the “Contracts”. There, you can click “manage” and select a new contract. Once you hit save, we will resubmit for analysis based on the new contract data.

Q: Why isn’t the invoice analysis showing up in my AP inbox?
A: Check with your specific AP system when types of emails they accept. For example, Ramp will only accept emails from trusted domain and will block emails from non-trusted domains without warning. If you continue to have issues, please create a support ticket.

Q: What currencies does this work with? 
A: Currently, we will only be able to match invoices in USD.

Additional Resources

For more training guides or documentation, please visit our Help Center. Our resources provide detailed guidance to help you navigate Tropic effectively.