The Touchless AP Gap: How the Best-in-Class Pull Further Ahead Every Year

Every year, Ardent Partners publishes their AP Metrics that Matter research, and every year, the same story plays out: the gap between Best-in-Class AP organizations and everyone else holds steady or widens. The 2026 edition makes that pattern hard to ignore.

Best-in-Class organizations now process 55.2% of invoices straight-through, meaning no human touches the invoice from receipt to payment scheduling. The average for everyone else is 31.4%. That gap represents a fundamentally different way of operating.

For context, the 2025 report showed average organizations achieving 32.6% touchless rates. So the industry average has essentially flatlined while Best-in-Class organizations have continued to improve. The organizations at the top are building on what works, closing root causes, and expanding automation into more of their invoice population every year. The distance between them and the field is growing.

The question worth asking is: why?

The gap is not primarily a technology gap.

That might be the most important thing Ardent Partners’ research reveals. Best-in-Class organizations do leverage technology at a higher rate, but the report is clear that the disciplines driving performance are available to any AP organization today. The difference is process design, upstream controls, and organizational discipline, applied consistently.

Three patterns show up repeatedly in how Best-in-Class organizations operate. First, they treat exceptions as something to design out of the process, not staff around. When an invoice fails straight-through processing, they investigate the root cause and close it. They do not just clear the queue and move on. Second, they hold purchase order discipline at the front of the process. Best-in-Class organizations link 85.1% of invoices to a purchase order. All Others link just 46.9%. An invoice without a PO reference is an invoice that almost certainly cannot process touchlessly. Third, they treat supplier enablement as an ongoing program with a target and an owner. Best-in-Class organizations have enabled 61.2% of their supply base. All Others have enabled 41%. An invoice that arrives clean and digitally structured has a far better chance of processing without interruption.

AI is beginning to change the math.

In 2026, 58% of AP organizations are either using or piloting AI. Most are starting with targeted use cases: invoice capture, exception management, fraud detection. The organizations that will see the biggest gains from AI are the ones that have already done the foundational work. AI accelerates disciplines that already exist.

This is where the touchless processing gap is likely to widen further over the next few years. Organizations that have structured their processes, cleaned up their PO compliance, and enabled their supplier base will be positioned to deploy AI across a much larger share of their invoice population, and the gains will compound. Organizations that have done that foundational work first will find that every AI investment lands with greater impact.

What the 31.4% number actually means.

For an organization processing 10,000 invoices a month, a 31.4% touchless rate means roughly 6,860 invoices require some form of human intervention. At Best-in-Class performance, that number drops below 4,500, freeing nearly 2,400 invoice-touches per month for higher-value work. Multiply that by staff cost and the financial case becomes clear quickly.

We see this play out in DataServ client data every year. Clients like Emerson Process Management have achieved a 93% no-touch PO invoice processing rate. Bunzl now processes one million invoices with just two FTEs. Express Scripts went from single-digit touchless rates to 80% of invoices processed no-touch after partnering with DataServ. These are the results of combining the right automation platform with the process discipline the Ardent Partners research describes.

The organizations that improve their touchless rates consistently are the ones that committed to understanding where invoices fall out of the straight-through path and systematically closed those gaps, one root cause at a time.

The 2026 benchmarks set the bar. If you want to understand where your organization stands against them and what a realistic path to Best-in-Class performance looks like, contact DataServ. We have spent 30 years helping AP teams close exactly this gap.

Read the full report

DataServ’s sponsorship of Ardent’s 2026 AP Metrics That Matter report allows us to offer the full report to our clients, partners, and industry colleagues free of charge. Check out the full article below to get a detailed look at the metrics, trends, and priorities shaping AP performance today. The findings reveal a growing gap between average and Best-in-Class AP organizations, with top performers achieving lower processing costs, faster cycle times, higher touchless processing rates, and fewer invoice exceptions. The research also highlights the increasing importance of analytics, supplier enablement, and responsible AI adoption in driving AP success.

In addition to the full report, we also invite you to join us on Tuesday, October 20 at 10:00AM CDT for a collaborative webinar with Ardent Partners. Andrew Bartolini, Founder and Chief Research Officer of Ardent Partners, will provide an exclusive look at the 2026 AP Metrics That Matter research study. Click the link below to reserve your spot.

The Touchless AP Gap: How the Best-in-Class Pull Further Ahead Every Year

The gap is not primarily a technology gap.

AI is beginning to change the math.

What the 31.4% number actually means.

Read the full report

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