Go Green with Accounts Payable Invoice Automation
With concerns about global warming continuing to make headlines, companies large and small are taking a hard look at themselves to see how they can go green.
Going green means much more than just reducing carbon emissions, although that is the primary focus as far as global warming is concerned. Going green also means consuming and manufacturing sustainable products, recycling whatever can be recycled, and above all, avoiding overuse of materials. This approach applies to every part of the company, including administration.
We don’t always think of office functions as affecting the environment, but they do. Electricity, heating fuel, and water can all add up over the course of a year and the impact can be substantial. For accounts payable departments that still use paper invoicing methods, paper waste is the culprit, but it doesn’t have to be. With accounts payable invoice automation (APIA), paper use can be cut dramatically, perhaps altogether. And it should be, just as soon as possible. Anything that can be done with paper, APIA can do using computers alone and in a fraction of the time. This means no paper invoices, purchase orders, envelopes, authorizations – whatever the company uses in the process.
If you’re wondering just how much “green” APIA can contribute to your company, the answer is a lot. How many of us have become complacent about the use of paper in general, even with the proliferation of business computing, simply because we figure it will be recycled anyway? The fact is that a lot of paper still gets improperly discarded and ends up in a landfill. Also, to make paper requires not only the destruction of trees, but production of harmful carbon emissions and chemical wastes at the factory that made that paper. It’s far better never to have used paper in the first place.
Ecology experts stress that companies must look for better ways to contribute to a healthy future environment throughout the business process. For manufacturers, this means using sustainable materials, disposing of waste correctly, reducing carbon emissions, and even choosing the most ecologically sensitive delivery methods such as electric trucks. For the accounts payable department, the obvious contribution is paperless invoicing. Not only can e-invoicing save your company a lot of money, it can help save the environment too.