What is RPA?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a software technology that builds, deploys, and manages software robots that emulate humans interacting with digital systems and software. RPA bots are designed specifically for highly repetitive, routine tasks that follow strict, unchanging rules.

RPA in Financial Administration

In bookkeeping and tax preparation, RPA is extremely effective at extracting data from a specific cell in an invoice spreadsheet and pasting it into the corresponding field of an accounting software platform. It executes the task thousands of times without error, provided the document format never changes.

The Limitations of RPA

RPA is brittle. If a vendor changes the layout of their invoice, the RPA bot will fail and require manual reprogramming. RPA cannot interpret context, handle exceptions, or make decisions outside of its strict programming parameters.