Manual reconciliation and invoice processing across multiple teams created duplication, inconsistency, and an unsustainable administrative burden.

Finance teams at NCL ICB were managing a highly manual general ledger reconciliation process across multiple departments.

Each day, teams reconciled ledger extracts against year-to-date reports and updated a central reconciliation file for budget monitoring. With eight teams carrying out the same activity, this work was repeated multiple times, duplicating effort and increasing the risk of inconsistencies.
At the same time, teams were operating with reduced capacity, with highly skilled finance staff spending time on repetitive tasks rather than higher-value analysis and decision-making.

A significant additional burden came from invoice processing. Finance staff were required to review invoice records and extract key information from PDF invoices, taking around two minutes per invoice. With over 25,000 invoice PDFs processed, this created a substantial and ongoing manual workload.

As transaction volumes increased, the workload became harder to sustain. NCL worked with NHS SBS and UiPath to explore how automation could streamline reconciliation and create a more reliable single source of financial data.

Automating ledger reconciliation and intelligent invoice processing, creating a single, reliable source of financial data.

The automation was introduced to streamline reconciliation efforts and create a standardised master reconciliation file that acts as a single source of financial truth. It automates the daily reconciliation of financial reports, reducing manual data handling and ensuring discrepancies are identified and flagged for review.

It also supports month-end activities, including handling adjustments and preparing the year-to-date reconciliation file for the next reporting period.

Alongside the reconciliation process, a second automation was introduced to analyse invoices, extracting and categorising key financial data. Using UiPath IXP intelligent document processing, the solution extracts key information from invoice PDFs and feeds it directly into the reconciliation file, removing the need for finance staff to manually review each document.

To reflect the way the finance function operates, the automation incorporates department-specific logic, allowing the invoice analysis to support the different reporting requirements across teams while maintaining a consistent overall process.

The first automation went live in July 2025, with the second phase delivered in March 2026.

5,000 hours of finance capacity freed, and a scalable process created, able to handle growing transaction volumes

The solution automates high volumes of financial transactions and invoices, reducing manual effort and enabling staff to focus on higher-value activities.

Running overnight in readiness for the next working day, the automation ensures the needed information is available for staff. It improves the consistency and reliability of financial reporting by creating a single, trusted source of data and reducing duplication across departments.

Designed to scale with demand, NHS SBS’s solution is engineered to support the organisation’s merger with North West London ICB on 1 April 2026, becoming the largest ICB in England – NHS West and North London.

NHS West and North London is expected to process over 150,000 PDF invoices annually, which would previously have required ~5,000 hours of manual effort each year.

The solution establishes a scalable capability that can support significantly increased volumes without additional resource, forming a key part of the new organisation’s future operating model.