Streamline Efficiency and Elevate Student Experience with Paymerang’s Invoice Automation for Blackbaud Users

Blackbaud offers a range of impactful software solutions that drive positive change across various industries, including K-12 schools and higher education institutions. Their versatile cloud-based software is designed to help users streamline essential functions like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), marketing campaigns, fundraising, finance, and accounting and analytics.

In the education sector, Blackbaud’s accounting software has proven to be an effective tool for Accounts Payable (AP) departments. Many educational institutions now use finance automation solutions, including Invoice Automation, to leverage those capabilities further.

Typically, 84% of the typical AP practitioner’s day is spent on tedious manual tasks like keying invoice data, pushing paper, fixing typos, chasing down information, and responding to calls and emails about the status of supplier invoices and payments¹. Invoice Automation allows Blackbaud users to send invoices for approval and coding by department heads electronically, review by appropriate staff, and with the click of a button, have all that data seamlessly be moved into a system that acts as a central data source. The result is a more efficient AP process, empowering educational institutions to focus on strategic initiatives and high-value tasks that directly impact students while improving finances.

Challenges of Not Implementing Invoice Automation:

Common misconceptions about finance automation often prevent educational institutions from implementing Invoice Automation. However, collaborating with a best-in-class provider helps you dispel doubts.

Failure to automate invoice processing can result in the following:

• High Volume of Invoices: Educational institutions receive a large number of invoices from vendors. Managing and processing these invoices manually can be time-consuming and labor-intensive.
• Complex Approval Processes: In educational institutions, invoices often require multiple levels of approval before they can be processed for payment. This involves routing invoices to different departments and individuals for verification and authorization. Manual handling of this approval process can lead to delays and errors.
• Data Entry and Verification Errors: Manual invoice processing involves manually entering invoice details into accounting systems, which is prone to human error. Verifying the accuracy of invoice information, such as matching purchase orders and receipts, can also be challenging and time-consuming.
• Paper-based Workflows: Many educational institutions still rely on paper-based invoices, which adds to the complexity of manual processing. Paper invoices must be physically stored, sorted, and retrieved when required. This increases the risk of invoices getting lost, misplaced, or damaged, leading to further delays and difficulties in processing.
• Lack of Visibility and Tracking: Manual invoice processing often lacks transparency and real-time visibility into the invoice lifecycle. It becomes difficult to track the status of invoices, identify bottlenecks, or ensure timely payments. This can impact cash flow management and vendor relationships.
• Compliance and Audit Risks: Educational institutions must comply with various regulations and audit requirements. Manual processing increases the risk of non-compliance due to human errors, such as incorrect data entry or missing approvals. Maintaining a complete and accurate audit trail of invoice processing activities becomes challenging.

These challenges can inadvertently impact students in many ways, including learning disruptions that impact overall experience, a lack of resources, delayed reimbursement or financial assistance, and less time to focus on supporting students, such as counseling, advising, or addressing concerns.

The Value of Automated Invoice Processing:

By implementing a best-in-class Invoice Automation solution that seamlessly integrates with existing Blackbaud software, institutions can overcome these challenges and unlock numerous benefits, including greater visibility, increased efficiency, better accuracy, and improved timeliness.

At a glance, this results in:

• 60%-70% reduction in costs.
• 80% of time saved on invoice processing.
• 80% reduction in errors with coding and invoice exceptions.
• 5X more invoices processed in the same amount of time.

Conclusion:

Invoice Automation that seamlessly integrates with Blackbaud accounting software empowers K-12 schools and higher education institutions. By eliminating tedious manual invoice processes with automation, institutions can save valuable time and allocate resources more efficiently to transform their AP processes and improve student experiences and outcomes. Additionally, automated systems enable faster processing and approval, better vendor relationship management, and data analysis for informed decision-making.

To start using Invoice Automation, schedule a demo today with Paymerang, a Blackbaud ISV member.

Sources:

¹IOFM