At any business, the accounts payable and accounts receivable departments face a large amount of work and plenty of invoices every day. And the work can be grueling. The typical AP clerk might take up to an hour to process approximately five invoices. That’s about twelve minutes per invoice. That pace might work well for an incredibly small business with very few clients, but it simply isn’t feasible for most industries. Fortunately, invoice automation can save you time, money, and manpower while freeing up your AP department for other tasks. Here are five benefits of automating your invoice processes today.
Faster Processing
Invoice automation software is quickly becoming an essential tool for most businesses. It starts with faster processing. Automation software can give your AP teams a break once in a while and free them up to perform other critical business tasks. automation software streamlines the entire accounts payable process by automating manual tasks such as data entry, document retrieval, approval routing and payment processing. This essentially eliminates some of the more critical errors that manual processes can take. So, not only do you process invoices faster but you eliminate potentially costly mistakes that might happen when overworked employees mess up on processing an invoice.
More Control Over Invoices
Invoice automation offers businesses something more valuable than your automation: more control over invoices. By asserting more control over this process, it’s easier to ensure payments get made on time and get recorded accurately. Moreover, invoice automation software also makes tracking customer payments as well as payment histories easier. You don’t have to worry about overdue payments, discrepancies, or billing problems when you control your invoice workflow. With the right automation software in place, it’s also easier to capture more discounts, optimize cash flow, and prioritize discounts for certain services without digging through mounds of paperwork to get there.
More Transparency
When it comes to your Invoices, visibility and transparency are powerful tools. Automating the entire invoicing process from start to finish, businesses can obtain more visibility into their finances, track incoming/ outgoing transactions, and be actively involved in the entire payment process. This makes it easier to identify cash flow issues or other serious problems (poor vendor work, theft, fraud, and so on) before they can bloom into more serious concerns down the line.
Scalability
Scalability is something all businesses—if they plan to grow, anyway—must consider in most of their operations. Invoice processing is no different. Scaling your business properly means having access to high quality data that you can use to operate efficiently. This applies to invoice processing as well. When you process larger quantities of invoices, you use more data and might end up experiencing more errors. Fortunately invoice automation can help mitigate this somewhat and keep things running smoothly as your company expands. Scaling your accounts payable department means that your team can focus on higher value projects instead of worrying about simple tasks.
Cost Savings
Manual invoicing is full of hidden costs and takes a lot of time to approve. With manual processing, invoices need to be matched to purchase orders, work must be validated, and errors must be caught before submitting for approval. Automation circumvents that by automatically identifying problems, correcting them, and making it easier to save money on submitting your invoices. Investing in the right technology reduces human error and essentially pays for itself by saving you money over time. Invoice automation also allows AP teams to quickly approve invoices right from their devices or email without a bunch of extra steps. Ultimately, invoice automation streamlines the entire invoice process and should not be overlooked as a way to improve your business’ overall efficiency.
