Organization in Accounts Payable
How many times have you put something down in a seemingly easy to remember location, then five minutes later completely forget where you placed it? This happens with everything: phones, pens, books, sticky notes, and, unfortunately, invoices. Organization in accounts payable is difficult to achieve when relying on paper that can be easily misplaced. Maybe your coworker accidentally picked it up, or it got hidden in a pile of papers. Or maybe it’s been in the place you put it all along, but you completely forgot where it was. Either way, paper invoicing is an easy way to quickly get disorganized, no matter how hard your department might try to keep organized. Accounts payable automation allows everything to be kept in one secure place for easier, simpler access.
Working with suppliers who want to do different forms of invoicing can be tricky when your AP department is operating without the support of an AP automation solution. One supplier might want to mail in their invoices, while another supplier prefers faxing or email. While your department can receive and process both invoices, it’s more difficult to store and track them the same way. With the help of an accounts payable automation solution, every invoice goes through one system, and with an enterprise level solution, built to serve departments with complexity, it doesn’t matter how an invoice gets sent. Depending on where you and your suppliers are at currently, you can receive invoices via a supplier portal, file upload, email, or paper. While receiving through the supplier portal is ideal, high-level accounts payable invoice automation solutions will help you with other forms of invoices as you and your suppliers continue to adapt to the preferred electronic formats. Either way, the right solution lets your department decide exactly where you want your invoices to go, so you never lose an invoice again.
While an accounts payable solution ensures that your department stays organized, making sure you always know where each invoice is, that is not the only benefit of switching solutions. One of the most dreaded times of any AP department is when you hear that an audit is coming around. Once an auditor is given access to your records, they are checking for completeness, validity and compliance within your company’s AP records. These will be compared with the disclosed end-of-year AP balance to see if they match up right. Unfortunately, that means they’re looking for missing, duplicate, or incorrect invoices. Along the way, any red flags will be noted and included in the audit report. Oftentimes this means weeks of chasing around paper trails that lead you and the auditor on wild goose chases.
By switching to an e-invoicing solution, audits become simple. AP automation ensures that records, such as invoices and purchase orders, will be complete and contained in digital files, all in one easily accessible place. These files turn a multi-week audit into a trail that can be inspected in a fraction of the time, days or even hours.
Organization in accounts payable with paper is possible, but it’s tedious, difficult, and leads to further headaches and problems. Organizing your department with complete electronic processing and access through accounts payable automation saves you time, money, and headaches. Check out this piece to read about how you can know what automation solution would be best for you, including a quiz you can fill out!