If it feels like your accounts payable team never has enough time in the day, you are not alone.
One-in-five accounts payable teams are working longer hours these days, according to an online survey conducted by the Institute of Finance and Management (IOFM). Incredibly, eight percent of accounts payable practitioners are working an additional two hours per day. And many accounts payable teams would be working longer hours if their employer had not put a lid on overtime.
Adapting
manual, outdated processes to a remote working environment has been hard on
accounts payable teams. The operational
disruption caused by the sudden shift to Work from Home has resulted in new
fraud risks, slower invoice approval cycles, more phone calls and e-mails from
suppliers regarding the status of invoices, and more time spent chasing down
information.
And
the workarounds that many accounts payable departments have implemented during
the shift to Work from Home – notably, using e-mail to approve invoices –
really are not working.
Before
the shift to remote working, accounts payable already was bogged down with manual
tasks:
- Collecting
supplier banking account details and tax documents
- Opening the mail
- Manually
retrieving invoices from an e-mail box
- Logging into a
supplier portal
- Keying invoice
data and correcting inevitable errors
- Matching invoices
to purchase orders (POs) and shipping receipts
- Determining
invoice approvers and forwarding invoices
- Chasing down
information to resolve invoice exceptions
- Uploading approved
invoice information into a downstream system
- Reconciling
invoices and payments
All
the while, accounts payable staff must keep track of dozens of business rules,
best practices, regulations, and auditor guidelines for how they should approve
invoices and pay their suppliers.
With
businesses leaning heavily on their accounts payable departments to provide
better visibility into cash and corporate spending, and accounts payable
departments being asked to do more with less, accounts payable leaders must
find ways to free their staff to focus on higher-value activities such as data
analysis, supplier management, stakeholder collaboration, and vender master cleanup.
Why
automate accounts payable
Now
is the time for accounts payable departments to standardize their
processes. From invoice receipt and data
capture to approval routing and payment processing, accounts payable departments
with more consistent processes operate far more efficiently and with fewer
errors than their peers. In these
departments, staff are taught the best practices for performing each function,
and they do it that way consistently.
Moreover, staff continuously search for ways to improve their
performance.
The
thing is that half of all departments have not begun their process improvement
effort, according to IOFM’s report, Building an Action Plan: Key Takeaways
from Top Performing AP Teams.
Payables
departments have no time to waste in standardizing their processes. And there is no better way to standardize
accounts payable processes than with an automated solution. The combination of automation with
standardized processes delivers the improvements businesses desperately need
now:
- 58% improvement in
cost-per-invoice
- 19% improvement in
invoice paid-on-time rates
- 19% improvement in
first-pass match rate
- 58% improvement in
transactions requiring correction
These
statistics from IOFM show why automation is critical to process improvement. Automation delivers the consistent processes
that departments need to achieve optimal performance.
- Access and
responsibilities can be configured by role or user
- All invoices are
aggregated onto a single platform for standardized processing
- Intelligent data
capture and validation improves data quality
- Automation
enforces adherence to processes (workflow rules, segregation of duties, etc.)
- Invoices can be
prioritized for processing based on pre-configured business rules
- Only
administrators can determine process changes in an automated system
- Automated
retention ensures that images and data are not discarded prematurely
- Complete audit
logging ensures operator accountability
- Key Performance
Indicators (KPI) make it easy to track operator performance
- Real-time
visibility into invoice workflows help managers identify bottlenecks
What
is more, leading accounts payable solutions integrate with downstream systems,
such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) or accounting platform. This facilitates the fast, seamless flow of
information and eliminates the possibility of mis-keyed data, data latency, or
misrouted information.
Achieving
better operational performance is top-of-mind in times like these.
Automated
accounts payable solutions provide the consistent processes that departments
need to improve the metrics that matter – cost, on-time payments,
straight-through posting, and accuracy.
If your accounts payable department wants to improve its operational performance, Paymerang wants to speak with you.
Email us now.