The biggest benefit of end-to-end Accounts Payable Automation is having a firm grasp on pending payments. Moreover, an AP automation solution also helps your organization with cost efficiency, optimizing invoice cycle times, and increasing productivity by utilizing the latest industry best practices.
While many businesses have successfully employed a paper process for their accounts payable, the benefits of automation promise to revolutionise the payment process, bringing much-needed control and greater efficiency into an often-fraught process.
What Are the Four Steps In A Typical End-To-End AP Process?
Maintaining strong vendor relationships is key to any business, and the end-to-end accounts payable process is a vital part of that exercise. There are four key steps to the standard end-to-end accounts payable process to ensure everyone is happy and everything runs smoothly.
STEP 1: Invoice Receipt
An invoice is received via email, fax, or paper mail and then needs to be approved for payment.
STEP 2: Invoice Approval
Once an invoice has been received, it is sent to the correct person for validation and approval of the purchase.
STEP 3: Invoice Capture
Once an invoice is approved, it is entered into the Accounts Payable system for payment.
STEP 4: Payment Execution
Once entered, payment is scheduled to be sent to the vendor at the appropriate time.
How Does the Manual AP Process Work?
The manual processing of invoices can be problematic for a variety of reasons. This is because during the manual invoice capture process, there is room for human error to be introduced – both in the capture of information and in slower processing times (depending on invoice volumes). There can be a variety of delays when the accounts payable process is done manually.
During the manual process, there is significantly limited visibility on the status of payments. This can make it incredibly easy to miss deadlines. A manual process requires many people to be involved in the handling of invoices.
Manual processing costs can quickly add up and can slowly erode ROI. The amount of time spent tracking, inputting, and paying invoices is drastically reduced when automation is introduced.
How End-To-End AP Automation Works
Automating the end-to-end AP process isn’t so much about changing the steps in the process as it is about optimizing the overall process by making the necessary steps more automatic and less manual. Eliminating manual steps in any process by automating them is by no means a new concept and has become a part of best-practice norms in virtually every industry. Specifically, AP Automation eliminates the need for the manual handling of 90% or more of the standard AP process steps. All that is left to manual touch is approvals, and in the majority of cases the right automation solution can be trained to handle those approvals – making the automation process even more intelligent with each new transaction.
Read more about: What Is AP Automation
How End-To-End AP Automation Maximizes ROI
As we have seen, automating the end-to-end accounts payable process increases ROI. The name of this operation is a giveaway as to how this is achieved, but it does this by entirely automating the process.
The result of this automation is that it decreases the time spent on a transaction, thereby reducing the chance of introducing human error into the process.
It also provides quick, simple and secure access to financial information, which helps those in decision-making roles to better understand the financial health of their organization.
Finally, automating your end-to-end accounts payable workflows improves the overall efficiency of the invoicing process by getting invoices to the right people more quickly than manual delivery, helping your business to earn savings and run more smoothly and efficiently.
For more information on how your organization can benefit by automating the accounts payable process, call us at 800-719-9621 or click the button below.
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