This month’s article answers the question: why choose the Business Central Copilot AP Agent instead of Continia’s Document Capture solution for AP Automation?

The Payables Agent is generally available on the cloud for all BC countries, including Canada. Supported languages are French and English. It is in preview mode as I write these lines. (Yes, me! Not ChatGPT or Copilot. I’m the one writing these lines. Me!)

Continia Document Capture has been around for many years and is therefore available for cloud and on-premises deployments.

The information provided in this article has been verified against MS Learn and Continia documentation. Please bear in mind that both solutions will continue evolving over time and it is advised to validate any claim by yourself against available documentation.

Intake Channels

The AP Agent retrieves PDF attachment from a monitored Microsoft 365 email inbox while Document Capture can process emailed PDF and XML files, scanner inputs and electronic invoices through the Continia Delivery Network.

Volume and document size

The Copilot AP Agent skips emails with more than 10 attachments, does not process PDF files over 10 pages or 5MB, and processes up to 100 emails per day and up to 50 emails per batch. Although this may seem limiting, it probably isn’t that big of a deal for most SMBs.

If, however, you need to process high volumes, Continia may be more appropriate. Keep in mind that it can split combined documents automatically during import.

Data capture method

Azure Document Intelligence OCR powers the Copilot AP Agent and provides AI-based account suggestions. These suggestions improve as more historical data becomes available, so low-volume environments may receive fewer automated recommendations.

Document Capture applies template-based recognition per vendor. Once the field of an invoice are mapped, all future documents will be interpreted accurately unless the invoice format changes.

Purchase Order Matching

The Agent performs 3-way matching against open purchase orders and corresponding receipts. 2-way matching will be available in an upcoming release.

Continia’s solution processes invoices and credit memos, matching them to purchase orders, return orders and return shipments, automatically or manually, on totals or line by line.

It can handle variances, partial deliveries, freight and multi-order invoices.

Billing

The AP Agent uses consumption-based billing by spending Copilot credits. The processing cost can therefore prove to be a little unpredictable at first and eventually increase based on complexity or capability as the AI “thinks more”.

Continia’s pricing is based on modules deployed and a price per processed page. The price per page decreases with increased volume.

Conclusion

The Payables Agent is a good introduction to AI-assisted invoice handling inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. As a new product, it lacks the depth that Continia Document Capture provides. Microsoft will certainly improve it over time, and we should see it, at the moment, as a Minimum Viable Product. We feel this can still be a great product for many customers.

Continia Document Capture makes sense in more complex, high volume environments.

We hope this article proves helpful and don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like a demo of these products.

Cordially,
Sylvain.
Last updated: August, 2026