Last updated: July 2026.

Every accounts payable team has a version of the same routine: sign in to a supplier's portal, download last month's invoices, save them to the right folder, key the details into the ERP, repeat for the next supplier. Multiply by dozens or hundreds of vendor portals, each with its own login, its own MFA prompt, and its own layout, and invoice retrieval becomes a standing tax on the AP calendar. The portals have no API, so the usual answer is a person with a password spreadsheet.

Anchor Browser (anchorbrowser.io) automates the portal side of this work with managed cloud browsers: sessions that sign in with stored identities, navigate the portal, download the invoices, and hand the files directly to your systems, with a recording of every run. This page covers how that works and where it fits alongside the AP software you already run.

The portal-access problem, specifically

AP automation suites and ERP systems are good at what happens after the invoice arrives: coding, matching, approval routing, payment. The gap is upstream, at portals where invoices are generated and wait to be fetched. That gap has three hard parts:

1. Logins at volume. Hundreds of credential sets, password rotations, and MFA prompts.

2. No API. The portal was built for a human with a browser, so automation needs a real browser.

3. Proof. Finance controls require knowing what the automation touched and when.

How it works on Anchor

Stored identities handle the logins. Each portal credential is saved once as an Identity, and sessions re-authenticate automatically on every run. Credentials reach the login form as secret values that resolve only at typing time, are processed in memory, and are excluded from logs and telemetry. Teams that keep secrets in a vault can resolve them at runtime through the 1Password integration instead of storing them with Anchor. Email one-time codes and MFA event coordination cover the second factor without a person on standby.

A real browser does the retrieval. Automations run in isolated cloud browsers driven by Playwright, by natural-language tasks through the perform-web-task API, or as versioned automation tasks. Anchor publishes ready automation guides for the systems AP teams touch, including Bill.com accounts payable workflows, NetSuite, and Sage Intacct.

Files land in your environment. Downloaded invoices transfer directly to your systems: P2P download streams files from the browser to you in real time, and per Anchor's security documentation, no file artifacts are stored on Anchor's infrastructure. Each session's browser runs in a dedicated VM that is erased when the run completes.

Every run leaves evidence. Sessions record to MP4 by default, retrievable through the API and the session-history dashboard, so a controller can watch exactly what the automation did on any given day. Sensitive-data masking can be enabled to mask payment details and account numbers in those recordings. Anchor holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and GDPR attestations, with documents available through the trust center.

Scale is a parameter. Month-end retrieval across the whole vendor list runs concurrently: batch sessions create up to 5,000 browsers in a single API call.

What it costs

Anchor bills per unit of work: $0.01 per browser creation, $0.05 per browser-hour, $0.01 per AI step (pricing; verify current rates there). Retrieving invoices from 200 vendor portals monthly, at roughly 4 minutes and 2 AI steps per portal, computes to about $6.70 per cycle: 200 creations ($2.00), 13.3 browser-hours ($0.67), 400 AI steps ($4.00). Plans start free, with the Starter plan at $50/month.

Where AP suites fit

Platforms like BILL, Tipalti, and Coupa carry the invoice lifecycle after capture: coding, approvals, payments, vendor management. Anchor is the access layer that gets documents out of no-API portals and into those systems. Teams keep their AP suite and point Anchor at the portals it cannot reach.

Frequently asked questions

Can it handle portals with MFA? Yes. Email OTP is handled natively, and the MFA coordination API signals your systems in real time when a code is needed. Details at when an MFA wall stops your automation.

Where do downloaded invoices go? Directly to your environment over a peer-to-peer channel (P2P download). Anchor's security model stores no file artifacts; the session VM is erased after the run.

What does the auditor see? An MP4 recording of each session, session history in the dashboard, and Anchor's compliance documentation via the trust center. For the authentication-specific audit questions, see what to tell the auditor about how your automation authenticates.

Does this replace our AP automation software? No. It feeds it. Anchor retrieves documents from portals that have no API; your AP suite and ERP handle coding, approval, and payment.