Esker said on June 23 that it has been positioned as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Accounts Payable Applications. It is the second year in a row the company has landed in that category. Gartner’s report, written by Miles Onafowora and David Condon, was published on 18 June 2026.
A second analyst firm came to a similar view. Esker was also named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Accounts Payable Invoice Automation Software, Q2 2026. In its vendor profile, Forrester said Esker’s vision stands out for customer centricity, and that the product offers AI-powered communication for internal users and suppliers when invoices are disputed.
Esker, which describes itself as the leading AI Automation Suite for the Office of the CFO, is based in Lyon, France, and Madison, Wis. It says it earned the Gartner placement through its approach to AP automation, from invoice capture that needs no templates to agentic AI tools meant to make handling of invoice exceptions faster and more consistent.
The company’s pitch is about a changing job. With invoice volumes rising, processes growing more complex and regulatory requirements shifting, Esker argues accounts payable is moving past plain transaction processing into a more strategic role in finance. Its software takes over manual tasks, deals with exceptions and ties AP into the rest of the finance function.
Scott McDermott, Esker’s chief financial officer, put it this way: “We believe these evaluations underscore Esker’s vision for AI-powered finance and our commitment to helping AP teams keep pace with evolving business demands.” He added that Esker is focused on giving the Office of the CFO the automation, intelligence and connected workflows to improve “agility, visibility and control.”
Esker also said where it plans to spend. It expects the next generation of AP to rest on intelligent automation, connected processes, natural language interaction and more proactive decisions, and says it is committed to investing in agentic AI, intelligent decision support and connected finance processes.
Both research firms attach caveats to their rankings. Forrester says it does not endorse any company or product in its research and does not advise anyone to choose vendors based on its ratings. Gartner says its publications are opinions, not statements of fact, and that buyers should not pick only the vendors with the highest ratings.
