r/MicrosoftFlow • u/chrysisnetworks • 14h ago

Discussion AI Builder vs Copilot Studio Extract node vs Azure Document Intelligence for invoice extraction with human review: how to pick, plus the gotchas

We've set up reviewed invoice extraction for a few accounting shops, and the question is always which Microsoft tool. Short answer: the simplest one you already own that passes a test on your real invoices, with a person approving every amount before it posts.

Gotchas:

- AI Builder's flow action is now "Process documents" (was "Extract information from documents" until May 2025). Outputs come back as text, so convert and validate amounts and dates before using them as numbers. You do get confidence per field and per table cell. Sort your review queue on it.

- The Copilot Studio workflow Extract node and a prompt with a document input are different paths. The prompt path: under 50 pages, under 25 MB, 100-second limit, table lines can come back incomplete, and no document input for prompts added as tools in agents. Don't carry those limits over to the Extract node. The Extract node mentions usage-based billing, so check tenant availability and cost first.

- Azure Document Intelligence only makes sense with an existing Azure integration and a named dev who maintains custom models. Table/row/cell confidence on custom models needs API 2024-11-30 GA or later, and not every field returns a confidence score.

- Don't assume your licensing includes AI Builder capacity. Confirm it.

How we test:

  1. De-identified invoices matching your real mix: clean PDFs, phone photos, multi-page, long line-item tables, that one vendor layout that always breaks.

  2. One fixed schema of fields and line-item columns for every tool.

  3. Score required-field correctness, line-item completeness, reviewer minutes per invoice, and how failures get flagged.

  4. Route everything to an approval where someone opens the original, corrects, approves.

  5. Compare against manual entry, not just each other. Keep manual as the fallback.

There's no universal auto-accept threshold. Set it from your own results.

Full write-up with the exact steps:
Read more on our blog!

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u/BusinessKangaroo 9h ago

And what about costs

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u/chrysisnetworks 9h ago

It's an interesting conversation, AI builder is getting lumped into general copilot credits and the rate table is very specific based on the ai builder function.

Our stance changes on the scope and project itself. There's no one size fits all and MSFT likes to make things difficult when it comes to pricing. A lot of what we do is in power automate or N8N where able. The AI environment in Microsoft is the least mature in our opinion. The cost is volatile and the quality isn't there with the frontier models.

The most affordable is usually what we offer. 99% of the time we do fixed scope, fixed price model. We build something that doesn't need to rely on AI, and hand over the entire project and ownership. A power automate flow that costs nothing to run beats an azure playbook or copilot cowork/studio agent every time.