Giving Accounts Payable the Business Intelligence Touch

Technology has revolutionized the way business processes work. A part of it is intelligence capture technology, which is a rule-centric and data-centric approach, wherein invoice settings for all the countries, currencies, tax rates, and business rules will be entered into the system. Automated accounts payable software would extract key information such as invoice number, date, amount, and purchase order information. These rules will define what to capture and how to figure out duplicate invoices. Intelligent software would refer vendor master data, purchase orders, business unit tables, and other data. All the information will be synchronized to the application from other ERP applications. All the exceptions are reviewed and corrected.

Invoices can be in any format, and an automated accounts payable solution will support invoices in different formats. All the different formats will be converted to the acceptable format so that those can be imported directly into the system. The intelligent system will provide consistent access to all sources and formats. After getting the final invoices, the accounts payable solution will search for the required fields, extracts and verifies the information against rules, logic, and enterprise data. Any discrepancies will be reviewed and the corrections can be updated in the internal logic, thus enhancing the intelligence of the system.

Besides reducing the cost and error rate, the solution can improve the AP process in the following areas:

Compliance

Enterprises can define custom rules that validate contract data including payment terms and invoices. This data would redefine the approval workflow such as routing invoices for expired contracts to the respective person.

Invoice fraud

The automated solution identifies vendor data, checks the ID of the vendor, and alerts the workflow system of potential conflicts.

Automated accounts payable solution improves the efficiency of the invoice process and works in tandem with other systems. Also, the solution can easily integrate with the financial system, business units, purchase order system, and workflow system. Adding business intelligence to accounts payable software would make the process effortless and accelerates decision-making process.