Finance teams have spent the past year automating at a pace few would have predicted. AI in finance has moved from experiment to an everyday tool for many, and AP automation continues to accelerate impact. But many teams are still working out how far to trust AI, how ready they are for ongoing global change, and whether their AP operations can keep up with the growing workloads.
That’s the central finding of Tipalti’s new global research report, The 2026 Global Finance Outlook Index: More AI, More Pressure, and More Change. The research surveyed 2,116 finance professionals across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands in August 2026.
What stands out to me is that progress depends on what automation delivers. For finance leaders, that means assessing whether it gives their teams more capacity to manage growing workloads and greater confidence in their processes and controls. Where do finance teams stand on AI agents and AP automation in 2026? Here are the key takeaways.
Key takeaways from the research
- 31% of finance teams describe their AP as fully automated, up from 7% in 2025, and 46% have implemented AI tools or AI agents. Only 6% describe their AP as fully automated with agentic AI.
- Automation is still uneven: no single AP step is automated by more than 37% of teams with fully or partially automated AP.
- Confidence lags in fraud and global growth: 23% say their team is very prepared for global growth, and 21% are very confident they’d catch a fraudulent vendor payment change.
- The top barriers to going further are data security (36%), accuracy (33%), and control and trust in AI (30%).
- Workloads keep rising: 86% say their own workload increased in the past year.
Why are finance teams under more pressure in 2026?
Global conditions haven’t settled. 82% of respondents say the time they spend on international business has held steady or increased, and 78% say economic and policy shifts have added volatility to their forecasts.
The pressure extends to daily work. 86% say their own workload has increased in the past 12 months, and 66% say manual work has increased. Team members spend an average of 10 hours per week on manual AP tasks, totaling roughly 65 working days per year. Teams don’t see headcount as the whole answer: 90% say scaling AP effectively takes the right tools, not just more people.
How far has AP automation come in 2026?
Adoption has advanced: 31% of finance teams describe their AP operations as fully automated, compared with 7% in 2025, and another 30% say they’re mostly automated.
The labels of mostly and fully automated, however, deserve a closer look. Responses about individual steps suggest that automation coverage remains uneven. Among teams with fully or partially automated AP, matching invoices and POs, payment reconciliation, and electronic approval routing each account for 37%, and 68% say their automation mainly covers the invoice-to-payment workflow.
For finance leaders, the question is where manual work remains—and how much effort it takes to keep the process moving.
Source: The 2026 Global Finance Outlook Index
Is AI in finance and AP automation delivering results?
Where teams have put AI and AP automation to work, they report real gains: 48% cite time savings, 33% faster invoice coding or approvals, and 30% a faster month-end close. Where AI is in place, it’s most often used for financial reporting (39%) and invoice processing (38%). And 78% say AI and automation are key to enabling more strategic finance work.
Source: The 2026 Global Finance Outlook Index
Getting there takes effort. 74% say operational work has increased while they build the infrastructure and processes to support AI, and 69% need to scale AP for growing invoice volumes at the same time.
Where do AI agents fit into AP automation today?
Early, for most teams. 46% of finance teams have implemented AI-powered tools or AI agents, but only 6% describe their AP as fully automated with agentic AI, meaning agents that execute multi-step tasks.
That small group stands out. Compared with the average respondent, they were 91% more likely to say they’re very prepared for the complexity of global growth, 184% more likely to say their systems could absorb a sharp economic or policy shift and adapt quickly, and 174% more likely to be very confident they’d catch a fraudulent vendor payment change.
They raise a useful question: how can AI agents in finance help build both capacity and confidence?
Why aren’t finance teams more confident for global growth?
Despite a year of progress, few teams feel fully ready. Only 23% say their team is very prepared to manage the financial complexity of global growth. Just 21% are very confident their process would catch a fraudulent vendor payment change, and 17% say their systems could absorb a sharp economic or policy shift very well.
Source: The 2026 Global Finance Outlook Index
What holds teams back comes down to whether they can rely on the results: data security (36%), the accuracy of automated tools (33%), and control and trust in AI (30%). Standing still carries its own risk. 54% agree that a lack of automation, especially AI, could limit their company’s ability to scale, and 38% expect AI or automation to handle more than half of routine AP tasks within five years.
How can finance teams close the confidence gap?
The first step is to look past the “fully automated” label and ask what your process actually covers.
- Map what’s automated. List every AP step, from invoice capture to reconciliation, and mark what runs without manual work. Gaps are common: no single step was automated by more than 37% of teams with fully or partially automated AP. Identify where your team still needs to intervene to keep work moving.
- Start with the bottlenecks. Resolving errors (39%), chasing invoice approvals (32%), and mismatched POs and invoices (29%) top the list of what slows AP. Quantify the time and cost behind each.
- Set the rules before adding AI agents. Decide how you’ll handle data security, accuracy checks, and who reviews what. Those were the top three barriers. Our post on building trusted agentic AI into AP is a good start.
- Pressure-test your fraud controls. Only 21% are very confident they’d catch a fraudulent vendor payment change. Test how your team verifies bank detail changes before payment goes out.
I see the next phase of AP automation and AI transformation as an opportunity to turn adoption into measurable progress: less manual work, stronger controls, and more capacity to support the business.
The full report goes deeper on how heavier workloads, global change, and AI are reshaping finance, including how responses differ by role. With 57% of teams already planning to modernize AP in the next 12 months, download the report to benchmark your team’s automation and readiness.
About the research: The 2026 Global Finance Outlook Index survey was conducted by Kickstand between August 3 and August 24, 2026, among 2,116 full-time finance, procurement, and accounts payable professionals at companies with at least 20 employees in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The study was conducted at 95% confidence with a +/- 2.1% margin of error.
