AI & Automation
What is Natural Language Processing (NLP)?
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a field of AI that enables computers to read, understand, and generate human language — including the text found in contracts, emails, invoices, and financial documents.
Explanation
In accounting automation, NLP is what allows a system to understand that 'Net 30', 'Payment due in 30 days', and 'Terms: 30 days' all mean the same thing — and extract that information correctly. NLP also powers the ability to classify documents (is this an invoice, a credit note, or a remittance advice?), extract named entities (supplier name, invoice number, line items), and understand context that rules-based systems would miss. More recently, large language models (LLMs) — a type of NLP model — have made it possible to describe a document workflow in plain English and have the system execute it automatically. This is a significant shift from traditional accounting automation, which required technical configuration for every workflow.
How Rima relates
Rima uses NLP to let users describe their document workflows in plain language. You describe what you want to extract and how to process it — Rima builds and runs the workflow automatically.
See Blueprint automation in actionRelated Terms
Machine Learning
A type of AI that learns patterns from data to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed.
AI Document Processing
Using artificial intelligence to automatically extract, classify, and process data from documents.
Blueprint Automation
A configurable automation for a specific document workflow, built by describing the process in plain language.
See it in action
Rima automates the manual document workflows accounting teams spend hours on every week.