Business

Benefits of Automating Your Accounts Payable

We can all agree: change is daunting, particularly when it comes to swapping processes within a company that has been performing the same job, in the same manner, for ages. However, there are many convincing, cost-justifiable reasons to have automated processes, especially an automatic accounts payable process.

What Is Accounts Payable Automation?

Accounts payable automation is a technology that employs a digital system to minimize repetitive and manual tasks like writing checks and data entry. With automation, your company can process payments, manage approvals, and submit invoices electronically on a single platform.

Companies opt for automation to eliminate or reduce manual intervention and accelerate tasks like approvals, which usually take longer when proper controls are lacking.

What Are The Benefits Of Accounts Payable Automation?

Cost Savings

Manual operations in accounts payable such as approval follow up, and data entry are the leading contributors of high accounts payable costs. Therefore, processing an invoice manually is more expensive than with an automated system. An automated accounts payable process will reduce labor costs by reducing close to 90% of the data-entry and accelerating other tasks such as invoice matching and payments as well as expenses for document postage, storage, and more.

An automated accounts payable system also minimizes the risk of making late or duplicate payments or unintentionally overpaying invoices. With automated accounts payable, you will receive alerts for overpayments, duplicates, and reminders of upcoming due dates.

Time Savings

With an automated accounts payable process, your finance team will be able to process invoices at a faster rate. Without an automated process, it will take you two weeks to process an invoice manually. However, with an automatic accounts payable process, your company will process an invoice in four days.

An automatic accounts payable process routes payables according to set company processes instantaneously and automatically. Slow cycle times can have adverse impacts on your company, such as a backlog of invoices and unpredictable cash outlays.

Minimizing Accounting Risk

Automatic accounts payable processing gives visibility into the payments and approval workflow. This implies that common accounts payable risks like duplicate payments, fraudulent transactions, and false billing can be quickly tracked.

An automated accounts payable process will flag additional charges, duplicate invoices, or any wary activity, providing you with the audit controls you require. With an automatic accounts payable process, you are protected from common accounts payable risks such as duplicate payments, unapproved vendors, and phishing scams.

Electronic Audit Trails

Generating trackable audit trails and adhering to IRS regulations are what make your financial team so vital to your company’s success. When the right systems to control and process data are lacking, information may fall through the cracks.

Electronic invoicing systems are helpful when auditing. Invoice softwares has electronic audit trails that facilitate the tracking of invoice processing stages, compliance with IRS guidelines and authorization rules. With an automatic accounts payable process, you will have peace of mind knowing your invoice processing information is securely filed and protected.

Reduced Payments Errors

When manual calculations are involved with data entry and other forms of communication from different departments, mistakes are bound to happen. From paying the incorrect amount to losing and misfiling documents, accounts, payable errors can happen at any time.

Accounting errors can adversely affect your company in several ways. Trying to resolve accounting errors takes time away from carrying out essential jobs and may result in overpayments and duplicate payments. An automatic accounts payable process facilitates accurate bookkeeping by recognizing inconsistencies in the system.

Is your accounting up to date with the latest processes? Consider automating your accounts payable to avoid issues such as delayed payments, invoice errors, and misused resources. An automated accounts payable process will enable your finance department to work smarter.

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Alex

Alex is the co-author of 100 Greatest Plays, 100 Greatest Cricketers, 100 Greatest Films and 100 Greatest Moments. He has written for a wide variety of publications including The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Telegraph.

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