How Procurement Software Helps You Improve the Invoice Approval Process

In today’s ultra-modern world, numerous advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Business Intelligence (BI) hit the market to help businesses automate their functions.

But many companies are still following age-old traditional procedures, believing them to be cost-efficient. Particularly, when it comes to the invoice approval process, companies are still following the manual processes due to which they’re losing money, time, and productivity.

The potential bottlenecks of invoice approvals, such as invoice fraud, inaccurate data, or duplicate payments are restricting businesses from gaining the fullest benefit.

As per research conducted by the PayStream Advisors firm; the top three invoice concerns for most organizations are missed discounts, duplicate payment, and late payment. However, these three problems can be addressed with an advanced procurement software solution.

Here we’ve discussed how an automation software helps you improve the invoice approval process.

Invoice Capture

When an invoice is received, the procurement team must transfer all critical data of the invoice; such as PO number, invoice amount, quantity of goods, T&C, and more, into the system.

Managing every invoice gathered from suppliers/vendors and entering the necessary details onto spreadsheets manually requires a lot of time and money.

The software automatically captures all crucial data from various types of invoices such as paper invoices, electronic invoices, and emailed invoices using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, while reducing the possibility of human errors.

Invoice Validation & PO Matching

Once the invoice data is captured, it must be categorized and matched to the relevant documents of the transaction, such as PO, purchase receipts, shipping documents, etc.

A few advanced solutions allow you to generate POs automatically, match captured invoices with their POs, and provides you with the visibility to the entire procure-to-pay cycle.

Exceptions and Corrections

If the invoice lacks sufficient information, it is routed back to the procurement team who will enter the incomplete details on the invoice. Manually tracking each invoice from the bundles of invoices can be difficult for any employee.

Fortunately, procurement software centralizes all the invoices onto a cloud-based platform. Allowing you to sort and track all invoices easily by the invoice number, date, and other details. So, the process of monitoring the data, re-verifying, and matching can be done hassle-free.

A few advanced procurement solutions allow you to setup specific invoice approval routings. Once the invoice verification is complete, the software automatically routes the invoices to the corresponding approvers based on the criteria, which ultimately streamlines the entire invoice approval process.

The Bottom Line

You can minimize the risks involved in invoice processing by optimizing your invoice workflows effectively. The software enables you to setup automated workflows with contingencies to minimize the roadblocks, allowing you to track each invoices status in real-time.

With various advanced features and functionalities, a procurement software allows you to enjoy substantial savings while also reducing your labor costs and the time involved in manual processes.