AP sits closer to more business-critical data than almost any function in finance. In many organizations, that potential still isn’t fully realised. The Basware AI Certification is where that changes.
I’m Andrew, and I lead Enablement here at Basware. With AI in our product for over a decade and over a billion AI actions running through our platform each year, my team sees a constant pattern as to where the real problem sits. The gap is not in the technology, but between AI being deployed and people being ready to use it well.
That gap is one of the biggest unsolved opportunities in front of finance leaders right now. Not the agents themselves, but the people working alongside them.
The Basware AI Certified Program is built to close it. The first certification, Invoice AI Agent Professional, is in Basware Academy, the first of more to come, and available to every Basware customer, because adopting AI shouldn't be something anyone has to figure out alone.
We built the Basware AI Certification to address four realities every finance organisation is facing right now.
1. AP is becoming a more strategic seat in finance
In a few years, an AP professional's day won't be "process invoices." It will be:
-
Working capital intelligence, turning every payment decision into a lever for the business.
-
Supplier risk and continuity, spotting financial distress in a critical vendor before anyone else, because AP sees the patterns first.
-
Fraud defence, protecting the business from a new generation of AI-driven invoice fraud.
-
Controls and AI governance, owning how AI decisions get governed, audited, and trusted across finance.
-
Shaping the AI itself, using their technical experience and judgment to optimize agents.
That’s a more strategic seat than AP has ever held. The first step into it is practical and available now: learn to work alongside the AI Agents, when to trust them, when to override them, and how human judgement remains part of the loop. That’s what our first certification Invoice AI Agent Professional teaches.
2. Re-skilling is the missing half of every AI strategy
Everyone is discussing AI transformation but almost no one is addressing the re-skilling required to ensure this transformation delivers the tangible business outcomes expected.
Deloitte's 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise puts clear numbers behind this: insufficient worker skills are the single biggest barrier to integrating AI into workflows, and yet fewer than half of companies are making serious adjustments to their talent strategies in response. Many stop at basic AI awareness with far fewer rearchitecting the way work actually gets done.
That gap is where the value of every dollar spent on AI gets either created or lost. Closing it is part of our job at Basware, not something our customers should have to figure out alone.
3. Human in the loop is not the same as human by exception
These two phrases are often used interchangeably, but in practise they describe quite different operating models.
Human by exception means the human only shows up when the AI fails. In compliance-heavy environments like AP this can be a trap given the tax, audit, and e-invoicing regulations. AI isn't signing the attestation and isn't sitting in front of an auditor, a person is.
There’s a quieter problem underneath the legal one: if humans only ever see edge cases, they lose the muscle to recognise one. Keep the human engaged, keep the judgment sharp, let the agent handle the keystrokes. That’s the philosophy our new certification teaches, and the philosophy our product is built around.
4. Real capability needs to be proven, not assumed
A webinar is not a skill neither is a slide deck. A skill is something that can be practised, assessed, and trusted.
The certification concludes with a credential that says, specifically, this person can work effectively alongside the AI Agents in a real AP environment. It gives AP professionals something concrete to point to in development conversations, helps managers identify readiness for more strategic responsibility, and offers finance leaders a clearer answer to a common question: is the AI we bought actually translating into capability on the floor?
Get AI‑Certified
Invoice AI Agent Professional is the first in what will be a broader certification pathway.
Our measure of success is simple: every AP professional using Basware has a real, practical place to start, and the credential should hold real meaning inside their organization. That’s the bar we’re holding ourselves to.
You can register your AP team for Invoice AI Agent Professional through Basware Academy. It’s intended as a clear, low‑risk way to help teams build confidence alongside the AI already in their business.
Our ambition: is to turn AP professionals into the AI heroes of their organizsations. The ones inside finance who see this moment coming and step into it.
