Accounts Payable Automation – The Technology
AP Automation: Real Life Hero Of Accounting Department
Accounts payable automation or ap automation is a financial process automation software developed to help a business to improve and streamline processing and management of their accounts payable.
AP automation allows a paperless vendor billing processing. Everything happens online. It improves the verification process, invoice entries, getting immediate approval via intelligent capture system, and touch free processing with electronic capabilities. The result brings quick processing time and minimizes costs.
But more than just that, AP automation helps solve problems in every company’s accounting department. Some of these issues are difficult to resolve as you do not even recognize that it was there and existent to begin with. The ultimate reason for AP automation is to address this real life problem.
When an organization looks at the value of AP automation, usually they are interested in its paperless capability and quick turnaround time in terms of the whole process. Sometimes, they are also apprehensive with the idea of sacrificing too much control and losing valuable information. If the automation is done in the right manner, the outcome will result in greater control and more visibility to cash flow.
These aren’t the main issues that automation solves. Let’s dig a little deeper.
Audit Concerns
Paper support documentation and filing can bring much of a headache when improperly kept and filed. It gets lost, held on to, and the worst part is, it gets misfiled. This problem is familiar with every company as these are all consistently subject to audit.
During the audit season, with a relatively short notice, they might have to produce various invoices to support a project or justify any other expense that the board of directors would like to review and analyze.
With paper documentation, that means sending someone to the filing room all day to produce the correct support invoices. The main issue with paper filing is that it is only as good and as accurate as the person handling them. As we all know, the current process is subject to absolute human error. All misfiled and lost invoices are bound to happen with paper-based processes over and over.
Not to mention, manually looking and searching for these invoices is time-consuming without known guarantee of finding them in a given period. Frustrating as can be, manual processing comes with this kind of unavoidable problem.
Hero In Disguise
Accounts payable automation gives immediate access to the invoice the moment it is routed from the vendor, and not only when the invoice has been settled and paid. With this, the company can log in to a search tab within the software which provides the ability to search for the exact details of what they are looking for. After which, they can download and convert it to a PDF file, which will allow them to print, email, or even save a copy onto an external drive.
Aside from the quick and easy access to get the backup for an audit, there is a full history of activities recorded as to who did what and when, which makes review about expenses as precise and as accurate.
This automation upgrade permits a company to help monitor their AP’s status, movement, and performance. By this, the organization can earn valuable benefits such as a relatively lower processing costs, better cash flows, and increase in revenues.
Related posts
