Viewing Capabilities for Accounts Payable and Vendors
It’s been said that knowledge is power. If so, power starts with unbridled viewing access to information.
The same is true with the business world, of course. It takes a lot of time to build trust between companies that want to do business with one another. Perhaps the business relationship that depends the most on trust is the vendor-vendee relationship. One must be trusted to provide the right product at the right time in the right quantity and quality. The other must be trusted to make full payments in a timely fashion.
No department knows this better than accounts payable. Every month, the AP department must see that vendors are kept happy with timely payment, so that the supply chain won’t dry up. An invoice comes in, AP checks it against purchase orders and/or seeks authorization from the procuring department, then pays the bill. Easy enough, right? If only the real world worked that smoothly!
The vendor’s need for access to information is just as much a consideration as the AP department’s need for streamlining and fast turnaround. The result is a vendor portal carefully developed with ease of use and viewing transparency in mind. Using the InvoiceWorks® vendor portal, vendors have access to their account 24/7. There, they can see where their invoice stands as far as payment, they’re alerted to any errors or other problems that may be holding up that payment, and they can even communicate directly with the department where the problem is being investigated.
In more practical terms, this means that your vendors can make choices that impact their bottom-line right from their computer. For example, Dynamic Discounting allows flexibility with fast pay discounts – flexibility that the vendor controls. It also means the vendor can spot errors and even correct them with the InvoiceWorks® change-tracking feature. Plus, if necessary, InvoiceWorks® comprehensive searchability makes it so much easier to find data the vendor needs for an audit, financial statement or any other purpose.
The benefits an AP automation vendor portal provides your valued vendors cannot be overestimated. For only the investment of a little time and effort, a vendor can cut out the paper monster that invoicing used to be and speed up transactions. But just as important, through viewing capabilities, vendors become part of the process. Not only do they see what’s going on, they can actually impact the process quickly and efficiently. And let’s not forget the most important thing: vendors come to see your AP department as a transparent and trusted partner. Even more than they did before.