README.md

metadata

title: Invoice Guard Environment Server
emoji: 📋
colorFrom: purple
colorTo: yellow
sdk: docker
pinned: false
app_port: 8000
base_path: /web
tags:
  - openenv

InvoiceGuard -- Three-Way Invoice Matching Environment

An OpenEnv environment that simulates accounts payable exception resolution. An AI agent investigates multi-document business cases -- invoices, purchase orders, goods receipt notes, vendor profiles, and company policies -- to detect discrepancies, classify exception types, and render correct decisions.

Motivation

Three-way invoice matching is one of the most common and error-prone tasks in enterprise finance. Accounts payable teams manually compare invoices against purchase orders and goods receipt notes to detect overbilling, partial shipments, duplicate submissions, and price variances. This environment turns that real-world workflow into a structured evaluation benchmark where an AI agent must gather evidence through sequential investigation actions and reach a correct, policy-compliant decision.

Tasks

Task ID	Description	Difficulty	Expected Decision	Exception Type
task_1_clean_match	All documents align within tolerance	Easy	approve_for_payment	clean_match
task_2_partial_receipt	Billed quantity exceeds received quantity	Moderate	place_on_hold	partial_receipt
task_3_price_variance	Unit price exceeds PO price beyond tolerance	Moderate	escalate_for_supervisor_review	price_mismatch
task_4_duplicate_invoice	Previously processed invoice resubmitted	Hard	reject_invoice	duplicate_invoice
task_5_mixed_discrepancy	Invoice with both price variance and partial receipt; conflicting signals	Hard	escalate_for_supervisor_review	price_mismatch
task_6_false_positive_duplicate	Invoice looks like a duplicate but is a legitimate recurring order for a different PO	Hard	approve_for_payment	clean_match
task_7_retroactive_price	Vendor applied a price increase retroactively; PO predates the effective date	Hard	escalate_for_supervisor_review	price_mismatch
task_8_split_invoice_pattern	Supplier splits large order into sub-threshold invoices to dodge auto-approval	Hard	escalate_for_supervisor_review	policy_violation
task_9_clean_from_risky_vendor	Clean invoice from high-risk vendor with 5 prior incidents -- false-positive trap	Hard	approve_for_payment	clean_match
task_10_rounding_false_alarm	Invoice total off by $0.01 due to line-item rounding -- all else matches perfectly	Hard	approve_for_payment	clean_match
task_11_authorized_overship	GRN shows 110 received vs 100 ordered, but PO amendment authorized 10% overship	Hard	approve_for_payment	clean_match
task_12_corrected_resubmission	Corrected invoice (INV-R1) looks like a duplicate of rejected original	Hard	approve_for_payment	clean_match

Each task includes fully synthetic business documents with deterministic ground truth and a multi-criteria grader. Tasks 5-8 test ambiguity, temporal reasoning, and cross-case pattern detection. Tasks 9-12 are false-positive traps where surface signals mislead toward rejection but deeper investigation reveals the correct answer is approval.

Action Space

The agent has 12 available actions divided into investigation, proposal, and terminal categories.

Investigation Actions (provide action_type only)

Action	Description
inspect_invoice_line_items	Reveal detailed invoice line items (codes, quantities, prices, totals)
inspect_purchase_order	Reveal purchase order details (ordered quantities, agreed prices)
inspect_goods_receipt_note	Reveal goods receipt note (received/accepted/rejected quantities)
inspect_vendor_profile	Reveal vendor risk tier, duplicate history, escalation thresholds
inspect_policy_rules	Reveal company matching tolerances and escalation rules
check_for_duplicate_invoice	Search case history for similar/processed invoices
compare_quantity	Compare billed vs ordered vs received quantities per line item
compare_price	Compare billed unit prices vs PO-agreed prices per line item
compare_totals	Verify subtotal consistency, PO total match, tax, and grand total
summarize_findings	Get a numbered summary of all collected findings

Proposal Action

Action	Description
propose_exception_type	Declare the suspected exception type (with exception_type field)

Terminal Action

Action	Required Fields	Description
submit_final_resolution	final_decision, exception_type, evidence_references, explanation	End the episode with a decision

Action JSON Format

{"action_type": "inspect_purchase_order"}

{
  "action_type": "submit_final_resolution",
  "final_decision": "escalate_for_supervisor_review",
  "exception_type": "price_mismatch",
  "evidence_references": ["inspect_purchase_order", "compare_price", "inspect_policy_rules"],
  "explanation": "Price variance of 10% exceeds 5% tolerance, requiring supervisor escalation per company policy."
}

Observation Space

Each step returns an InvoiceGuardObservation with these fields:

Field	Type	Description
case_id	str	Unique case identifier
task_id	str	Which task is being evaluated
difficulty	str	easy, moderate, or hard
invoice_summary	str	One-line invoice overview (supplier, amount, PO ref)
goal	str	Natural language description of the agent's objective
available_actions	list[str]	Actions the agent can take
revealed_documents	list[str]	Documents the agent has already inspected
findings	list[str]	Accumulated investigation findings
remaining_steps	int	Steps left before timeout
last_action_result	str	Detailed output from the most recent action
last_action_error	bool	Whether the last action had an error
warnings	list[str]	System warnings (e.g., low steps remaining)
reward	float	Reward signal for the last action
done	bool	Whether the episode has ended
metadata	dict	Grader results (on episode end)

Reward Design

The environment provides dense, per-step rewards:

Event	Reward
Reveal a new document	+0.05
Useful comparison finding discrepancy	+0.10
Confirm no issue (clean comparison)	+0.02
Propose correct exception type	+0.15
Propose wrong exception type	-0.05
Summarize findings	+0.03
Repeat an already-seen action	-0.02
Submit correct final decision	+0.30
Submit wrong final decision	-0.20
Correct exception type on resolution	+0.15

Grading

Episodes are scored by a deterministic grader on six weighted criteria (total = 1.0):

Criterion	Weight	Description
Decision correctness	0.35	Exact match = 1.0, partial credit for related decisions
Exception type	0.20	Correct classification of the exception
Evidence sufficiency	0.15	Did the agent inspect the right documents?
Investigation quality	0.10	Breadth of document review and findings
Explanation quality	0.10	Cites specific numbers, references policy, uses correct terminology
Efficiency	0.10	Completing within step budget without waste

Decisions

Decision	When to use
approve_for_payment	All matches are clean and within tolerance
place_on_hold	Billed quantity exceeds received quantity
reject_invoice	Duplicate invoice or fraudulent submission
escalate_for_supervisor_review	Price/total variance exceeds tolerance, high-value invoice

Setup & Usage

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• uv (recommended) or pip
• Docker (for containerized deployment)

Local Development

cd invoice_guard

# Install dependencies with uv
uv sync

# Start the server
uv run uvicorn server.app:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

# Validate
openenv validate

Running the Baseline Agent

cd invoice_guard

# Create .env from the example
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your API key and model

# Run inference
uv run python inference.py

Docker

cd invoice_guard

# Build
docker build -t invoiceguard .

# Run
docker run -p 8000:8000 invoiceguard

# Run with hackathon resource constraints
docker run --cpus=2 --memory=8g -p 8000:8000 invoiceguard

# Validate against running container
openenv validate --url http://localhost:8000

Deploy to Hugging Face Spaces

cd invoice_guard
openenv push
# or: openenv push --namespace my-org --private

Baseline Scores (12 tasks)

Model	Avg Score	task_1	task_2	task_3	task_4	task_5	task_6	task_7	task_8	task_9	task_10	task_11	task_12
gpt-4.1-mini	0.87	0.95	0.78	0.75	0.95	0.78	0.95	0.75	0.75	0.95	0.95	0.98	0.95
gpt-5.4-mini	0.87	0.98	0.95	0.73	0.98	0.75	0.98	0.75	0.50	0.95	0.98	0.98	0.95
gpt-4.1	0.79	0.95	0.75	0.75	0.47	0.78	0.95	0.78	0.75	0.40	0.95	0.95	0.95
gpt-5.4	0.78	0.95	0.75	0.70	0.47	0.75	0.95	0.78	0.75	0.40	0.95	0.95	0.95

Key observations:

• Task 9 (clean invoice from risky vendor) is a strong false-positive trap: both gpt-4.1 and gpt-5.4 escalated instead of approving, scoring only 0.40.
• Task 8 (split invoice pattern) tripped gpt-5.4-mini, which rejected instead of escalating (0.50).
• Task 4 (duplicate invoice) tripped both full-size models, which escalated instead of rejecting (0.47).
• Mini models consistently outperform their larger counterparts on this benchmark, suggesting the tasks reward focused analysis over verbose reasoning.

Project Structure

invoice_guard/
|---- openenv.yaml              # OpenEnv manifest
|---- pyproject.toml             # Dependencies (managed by uv)
|---- uv.lock                   # Locked dependencies
|---- Dockerfile                # Container image definition
|---- models.py                 # All data models (Action, Observation, State, entities)
|---- client.py                 # InvoiceGuardEnv client (EnvClient subclass)
|---- inference.py              # Baseline LLM agent script
|---- .env.example              # Environment variable template
|---- tasks/
|   |---- __init__.py
|   |---- definitions.py        # Synthetic case templates and ground truth
|---- graders/
|   |---- __init__.py
|   |---- scoring.py            # Deterministic multi-criteria grader
|---- server/
    |---- __init__.py
    |---- app.py                 # FastAPI application (HTTP + WebSocket)
    |---- invoice_guard_environment.py  # Core Environment implementation