How to Switch to Paperless Accounts Payable in 5 Easy Steps

Taking Your Accounts Payable, Paperless

This means that instead of manually going through each invoice and trying to categorize or code the expenses, Envoice will do this for you. You can easily organize your invoices into the right categories with AI categorization. This system adds human validation to the data capturing process, and you can be confident that 99.9% of the data is recognized and accurate. According to a Buffer survey, 99% of participants said they’d like to work remotely, at least some of the time, for the rest of their careers. Obviously, remote work is here to stay, and putting systems in place to enable your employees to work remotely is forward-thinking.

  • If they all come at different times during the month, it can lead to pure chaos.
  • The implementation should also include training all internal stakeholders on the new system, and adjusting settings as needed to ensure everything is working correctly.
  • Since an invoice will be sent digitally via email as a PDF or an e-invoice, the time it takes for a physical copy of an invoice to reach the buyer from the seller is cut out.
  • The efficiency of a paperless accounts payable process means you can take growth in stride with only nominal AP-related cost increases.
  • We also offer continuous supplier enrollment services to drive adoption on your behalf.

For example, a typo in a purchase order number might erroneously generate two invoices for the same order. Human error, such as failing to properly mark an invoice as paid, can also lead to https://bookkeeping-reviews.com/ duplicate payments. These invoice processing problems can result in significant bottom-line impacts for the business—not to mention supplier annoyance when you need to request a refund.

Improved security and reduced errors

However, not automating should not be an excuse for not tracking metrics. The only way to assess improvement is to continually benchmark AP team’s performance. There are steps you can take, however, to eliminate or minimize those issues that keep your AP department from being the best it can be.

  • Once the software knows what type of document it’s looking at, it’ll index it and create a kind of roadmap that will help you search for information later.
  • By the time someone discovers the problem, you might owe hefty late fees to a vendor.
  • Without AP automation in place, AP teams need to wait to use the data until the data has been posted to the ERP and the invoice has been processed.
  • It also prevents ad hoc negotiations with individual suppliers that can negatively impact your DPO, affecting the payable department’s bottom line.

Approval Processing is the movement from point A to point B via the act of approval. This info is sometimes entered more than once depending on your current office workflow which means you’re saving your staff a massive amount of time by not having to do all that tedious data-entry. No wonder then that the savings of going paperless materialize almost immediately after you get started.

Supplier portal

You’ll also save money on filing cabinets, storage boxes and other equipment that’s no longer needed. Many companies think it’s just a matter of choosing the cheapest AP automation software package available, but that’s not always the case. Some accounting packages are designed for small businesses that want a paperless AP process, but others are for larger companies that need more robust features.

Here are three strategies you can implement today to reduce paper documents. Second, we will talk about how to speed up the invoice matching and approval process after you have received the invoice. The biggest issue with cash flow planning is surprise invoices that were not authorized before purchase and not having all the invoices in one place. Now that you are aware of the benefits of a paperless AP system, you may be ready to make the jump.

Consider Outsourced Accounting Services for Businesses

Card Integrity provides an expert solution to the various forms of data you may be facing even after going paperless. Instead of reviewing a sample of P-Card spend or invoices, we review 100% of these transactions and provide a clear financial overview. Additionally, Taking Your Accounts Payable, Paperless our reports point out key red flags while taking a deep dive into payment methods, vendor types, overpayments, refunds, and more. This data can also be used to improve communication and visibility between Accounts Payable and other departments like Procurement.

Why do we digitize accounts payable?

Digitizing AP enables organizations to establish an efficient invoice processing workflow to more accurately, securely and quickly carry out all the steps in the AP process. It also reduces errors, prevents fraudulent invoices from slipping through the cracks and speeds the entire payment process.

If you’re digitizing paper records with highly accurate image capture and indexing like NextProcess offers, you can even run searches on the document text and metadata. There really isn’t a way to do something similar with a paper-based system. Despite these advancements, many accounts payable departments still rely on a combination of paper and technology.

Invoice approval software

Once approved, the invoice is ready to be paid via your accounting software application, where a check can be processed, or better yet, the invoice can be paid electronically. If you’re ready to get rid of some of that paper, one of the best areas to start is accounts payable. Take a moment and think about all of the paper documents that pass through the AP department.

Taking Your Accounts Payable, Paperless

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