Accounts Payable: Why it is Essential to Consider Automation?
Automating payment processes can improve business efficiency; however, some businesses may not find it essential to automate their payment collection and reconciliation processes.
Automating payment processes is to streamline the manual processes of matching, approving, and sending payments. Automation involves collecting invoices from multiple sources, interpreting the data, and reviewing invoices for inconsistencies.
Why automating payment processes is essential for businesses?
Payment automation eliminates the manual tasks involved in payment processing, and the accounts payable solution offers significant benefits to businesses of all sizes:
Quick cycle times
Automating and improving the process will see greater returns and suppliers will be paid faster. Processing invoices quickly can leverage early payment discounts and see substantial cost savings.
Paperless transactions
Paper checks are expensive when compared to electronic payments. Businesses can benefit from automating the AP process as the average cost of invoice processing is $20.
Payment errors and duplicates
Duplicate payments are one of the most common problems for the AP department. Duplicate invoices and overpayments can be reduced by leveraging automation. Around 60% of people reported receiving a fake invoice or experiencing fraud over the invoice-to-pay process. Over 81% of organizations were victims of payments fraud, and this emphasizes the importance of securing your sensitive data.
Visibility
Every data can be captured with an automated solution that has an advanced analytics feature. The finance department wants to have clear insight into cash flows and payments. Gaining visibility into supply chain management, including dynamic discounting, can optimize various payment options.
Additional discounts
Manual invoice processing makes it harder to take advantage of early payment discounts. Organizations can cut down the process cycle time and take advantage of available discounts, thereby optimizing working capital.
Supplier queries
The supplier has fewer queries about invoice and payment status and gave access to the self-service portal. The portal offers suppliers real-time visibility into payment status, thereby reducing the effort to answer all inquiries. The self-service portal answers the questions that suppliers have the most times; the portal not only helps strengthen supplier relationships but can also ease the burden of the support team to answer every supplier query.
Supplier satisfaction
Automating payment processing would result in shorter payment cycles enabling suppliers to receive payments faster, reducing the waiting time, and improving supplier relationships.
Selecting payment automation software
Good research is highly required when selecting payment automation software. Every business has unique requirements, so it is essential to choose the right solution in the market today.
When choosing the invoice system, the most factor is to check if the solution can handle every scenario your business might encounter. Invoices should be processed quickly and at lower costs. The solution has to automate all invoice processing tasks effectively, and the solution you choose should integrate with your existing enterprise systems. The automated accounts payable solution synchronizes data and automates the process with minimal manual work.
Conclusion
The accounts payable solution automates payment processes, including invoice matching, duplicate checks, verification, and more. The solution eliminates manual data entry, thereby reducing the need for staffing.
