What is Your Business Missing without Accounts Payable Automation?

Keeping up in today's business world is increasingly challenging, requiring companies to continually reassess their processes to stay competitive.

New and evolving technologies are a major help in this respect, having the potential to give businesses a much-needed boost.

Accounts payable automation is one technology that no serious business can afford to ignore. Financial systems are one area that can significantly benefit from the use of modern technologies, as manual invoicing processes are both labor-intensive and slow. But utilizing automation software can transform the way your business handles its invoicing and benefit everything from cash flow to business-to-business relationships.

Read on as we lay out just some of the improvements your business could see with the use of accounts payable automation.

1. Enhanced Accuracy and Fewer Errors

One of the major drawbacks of manual invoicing and accounts payable processes is their level of accuracy. Human data entry is inherently prone to mistakes, requiring an additional level of double-checking in order to ensure that the information is all copied over correctly and no typos have slipped in. Even a simple error has the potential to cause significant disruption down the line, causing financial discrepancies or duplicate payments that can strain business relationships.

Accounts payable (AP) automation entirely removes the need for manual data entry from the invoicing process. AP automation utilizes technologies including optical character recognition (OCR) to accurately extract data from invoices, allowing the system to quickly capture and process data. This eliminates the risk of errors creeping in during the data entry process, making for a far more accurate accounts payable system.

2. Increased Efficiency and Time Savings

Another trait of the manual invoicing process is its time-consuming nature, especially with the need to double-check data. There are multiple steps that all require time and effort to complete, from the initial receiving of invoices to data entry, matching invoices with purchase orders, obtaining approvals and finally issuing the payments. It is no surprise that manually processing an invoice can take a solid investment of hours or even days.

AP automation works to streamline all these elements of the process, removing the need for human input during much of it. This results in a much faster and more efficient system of handling invoices, allowing for quicker turnarounds with less investment of staff time.

With the time that the team no longer has to spend on the manual busywork of invoice processing they can focus on other areas, putting attention into value-adding tasks instead.

3. Better Financial Control and Visibility

A proper overview of a business’s financials and cash flow is essential for both growth and sustainability. This is something that is much harder to achieve with a manual invoicing process, as data is often siloed and may be hard to locate quickly. Tracking the status of invoices and payments can be a struggle for businesses, leading to inefficiencies and issues with cash flow management.

However, AP automation allows for companies to maintain real-time visibility over the entire invoicing process. Proper AP automation solutions often incorporate dashboards and reporting capabilities into the software, giving stakeholders instant access to information on the status of invoices, pending approvals and payment histories.

As AP automation also integrates with other backend systems this allows invoicing data to flow through key pipelines of the business, aiding in more informed decision making on the whole.

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These are just a few of the benefits of adopting accounts payable automation within a business. Missing out on the improved efficiency, accuracy and visibility of AP automation leaves companies at the mercy of potential payment disruption and cash flow issues.