Manual Vs. Automation: Keeping up in 2018

Accounting is all about sales, invoices, bills, payments, paychecks, and taxes. Falling behind on any of these aspects would result in unhappy customers and vendors. However, keeping up with business processes means automating your internal procedures. We are seeing the benefits of automation in almost every industry. So, let us see how automation takes the painstaking tasks out of the AP processes.

Bookkeeping

Manual bookkeeping takes time and costs more money, meaning less profit for your business. Let’s compare manual and automation to gauge your accounting department’s performance.

Account Tracking

Manual: Maintaining a master list of accounts in a ledger book and searching through all these will take up more time.

Automation: Automated accounts payable solution comes with a standard Chart of Accounts. So, transactions created will be automatically assigned to the appropriate account.

Customer and Vendor Database

Manual: Vendor data will be stored in a word document or other file folders. When you interact with the customer, you have to document that information again.

Automated: You will create records for each vendor and pull up the record when needed.

Inventory data

Manual: When data is recorded on the paper, you have to track the number of each item. Whenever inventory changes, the data should be changed respectively.

Automated: You enter the number and the software automatically updates the count every-time you sell a specific item or write an invoice.

Sales and invoice forms

Manual: You create sales form by hand or enter all the information in a word document. You have to send the forms through USPS and receive payments through email.

Automated: Featuring customizable templates for sales forms, automation requires you to fill in other fields by selecting options directly from drop-down lists. You can make payments directly via online.

Missed paychecks

Manual: As there are hundreds of invoices to be processed, there is a chance you can miss making payments on time, resulting in fines and penalties.

Automation: The hardest part of automated AP solution is to establish a setup, where you have to provide detailed information about suppliers, invoices, and payment methods. Once that is done, you have to simply select the supplier or the invoice, enter the number and make the payments.

Reports

Manual: Everyday you write sales, expenses, payment totals and then check when you need to make payments. But, how would you know which invoices are outstanding? What products have you ordered? You will have so many questions and need answers to them quickly.

Automated: Accounts payable software comes with various templates that populate the company data within a few clicks.

In addition to these, there are many other ways automation can streamline your accounts payable lifecycle.