How much do you know about your business’s invoicing process? Are you still relying on paper, snail mail, and manual data entry? If that’s the case then your business is missing a trick and putting itself at a serious disadvantage compared to its competitors.
In the current digital age, your finance team must be using software solutions to power your accounts payable (AP) process. If you haven’t implemented accounts payable automation then you’re doing your team a disservice, as this simple tool can radically transform the way your business handles its financial flows.
The power of e-invoicing
Thanks to advancing technology, an increasing number of businesses have made the switch from paper-based to online invoicing. Sending paper invoices in the mail or through a fax machine has long been eclipsed as the optimal way to deliver these essential documents.
E-invoicing does away with the inconvenience of physical invoices in favor of a fully digital format, cutting out the need for paper, ink, or envelopes. This instantly removes a significant cost factor from the equation, lowering the amount that the business needs to spend per invoice.
Sending a digital invoice costs very little, in fact, the only real cost involved is the software and the labor of whoever is handling it. This alone makes the switch to e-invoicing appealing, even without taking into account the improved visibility and accountability it creates.
Digitalizing the accounts payable process
Beyond just going from paper to pixels, implementing AP automation software into your business’s invoicing process brings a whole host of benefits. By moving from manual to digital, you gain the ability to pass off a lot of the busy work involved in handing invoices over to the software.
A trained AI can shoulder much of the process of coding, processing, and approving invoices, taking that off the hands of your staff. Delegating simple data entry and admin tasks to AI allows your team to focus their time elsewhere, rather than spending hours handling repetitive jobs.
As well as saving your team time to spend on more value-adding tasks, AP automation also brings down the amount of time that it takes to process a given invoice. Machines can work far faster than a human can, with far lower odds of making simple typos or inputting errors.
This means that with AP automation you could see your turnaround times drop significantly, without having to invest any extra manpower or labor hours into achieving it.
Complete visibility
Among the major drawbacks of sticking to a paper-based invoicing process is the difficulty in keeping a proper overview of your accounts payable. When information is spread across various papers, filing cabinets, and spreadsheets this creates a level of murkiness when it comes to oversight.
Staying properly on top of your accounts payable and ensuring that payments are made on time becomes far simpler when all that information is collected in a centralized location. This is another benefit of adopting AP automation software, as it keeps your data together so that you can see the status of every invoice or payment at any time.
With the ability to keep proper tabs on every invoice as it goes through your accounts payable process, your team can better manage it all. Being able to spot potential issues or payment bottlenecks ahead of time will undoubtedly benefit the business, helping you maintain an agile approach and reduce the risk of late payment penalties.
—
Bring your business into the modern age by investing in AP automation, ensuring that your finance team has the capacity and ability to process invoices faster and more efficiently. See the improvement in your accounts payable and invoicing process with the support of automation.