Simplify the Invoice Process with Invoice Automation

For many Accounts Payable (AP) practitioners, manual invoice processing is grueling. Physically completing the invoice cycle –data entry and coding, chasing down approvals, and eventually making a payment—can be difficult for departments that have yet to implement an automated solution.

Manually processing an invoice is time-consuming and filled with several challenges. For starters, processing a paper invoice is costly, making it tough to increase revenue and improve your company’s bottom line. The annual costs businesses incur from processing paper invoices are around $171,0001. From there, it becomes increasingly difficult to store paper documents that can easily be lost, stolen, or damaged among the piles of paperwork in your office. Even worse, missing invoices can stress your employees more and damage relationships with your vendors due to payment delays2.

Another major challenge of manual processing is an increased risk of fraud. AP departments are susceptible to fraud, and on average, organizations lose 5% of revenue to fraud each year, with the median loss amounting to $125,0003. Poor visibility also caused by manual invoice processing can be detrimental to an organization. This leads to long cycle times, information silos, poor cash management, weak control and tracking, and delayed financial close4. Without visibility, finance leaders will be unsure of what’s happening within their organization and fail to manage its cash flow and operations.

While there are several challenges associated with manual invoice processing, Invoice Automation eliminates those stressors. Paymerang’s best-in-class Invoice Automation solution uses artificial intelligence to capture, read and route invoices, giving your team a fail-safe electronic paper trail. Automating enables you to electronically capture invoices, route approval, and post to the General Ledger.

Key Benefits of Paymerang’s Invoice Automation:

Cost savings:

On average, small businesses pay $16-$22 to manually process an invoice, while larger companies spend as estimated $9 on manual invoice processing5. Invoice Automation reduces processing costs by 60% to 70%.

Greater visibility:

Electronic workflows give you instant access to all invoices and approval statuses.

Better accuracy:

In today’s world, AP departments are battling staffing shortages and are always tasked with doing more with less. Busy employees don’t have time to meticulously sort through data, which can lead to errors when coding invoices. The manual entry of invoice data currently accounts for 3.6% of errors made on invoices6. Paymerang’s Invoice Automation uses artificial intelligence to reduce errors with automated invoice capture, providing an 80% reduction in errors with coding and invoice exceptions.

Increased efficiency:

Manually processing invoices is inefficient and often leads to payment delays and late fees. With traditional processing, the average AP clerk can process around five invoices per hour7. Electronic routing reduces the time spent approving and posting invoices, generating 80% time saved on processing.

Improved timeliness:

Paymerang users will receive automatic reminders for invoices still awaiting approval, creating faster processing times. On average, automated invoice processing is 56% faster than manual processing, reducing processing time from 8.3 days to 2.9 days8.

To be successful, finance departments must stop relying on manual accounting processes that are labor-intensive and time-consuming. Implementing Paymerang’s Invoice Automation technology is simple, and organizations will see immediate benefits. Invoice Automation is a powerful tool that transforms organizations by improving cash flow, vendor relationships, and more.


Sources:

1PYMTS & B2B

2Mail Parser: 6 challenges of Manual Invoice Processing

3Association of Certified Fraud Examiners

4OnBase by Hyland

5The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.: B2B: How the next payments frontier will unleash small business

6Bottomline

7CloudTrade

8PYMTS

Erroll Amacker

Erroll Amacker

Erroll Amacker is the Account Executive for Paymerang's Invoice Automation software within our Education vertical. Erroll was the first to move into the Account Executive role for our Invoice Automation solution which Paymerang brought to market in 2019 and ramped up sales and marketing for in 2020. He has enjoyed the fast pace and variety that blitz scaling a new product to market has brought to the company and continues to focus on the product's growth focusing on both Lower and Higher Education.