Is it Time for Your Team to Join the AP Processing Revolution?
This guest blog was contributed by Ray Emirzian | 3/11/14
It’s time for a change. AP managers and controllers everywhere are fed up with inefficiency and are howling from rooftops, raising fists full of paper invoices in protest. Well, not exactly. But perhaps at the next team meeting … .
The headaches caused by uneconomical manual AP processing are all too familiar. A glut of paper files to manage and store, lengthy approval routines, disconnected teams working from several offices, outdated manual reporting – the list goes on. As your business grows, the ability to process AP in a timely, efficient manner becomes increasingly difficult and time consuming.
Not only does inefficiency make for frustrated employees, vendors and CFOs, it can adversely affect your bottom line and supplier relationships. Invoice mishandling can take weeks or even months to correct. Payment deadlines that are not met can mean costly fees. Without timely processing, companies are unable to take advantage of early pay discounts. Without account transparency, businesses may have an unclear financial picture.
A recent report from the Aberdeen Group highlights the importance of effective AP to a company’s overall health: “… [it] is essentially the custodian of an organization when it comes to cash flow, which in turn is the lifeline of liquidity. If either one of the two core functions – Accounts Payable (AP) or Accounts Receivables (AR) within the payables realm is inefficient, effectively an organization’s ability to accurately forecast its financial position is also compromised.” Without the right systems in place, it can take nearly three times as long to process invoices and cost your business 3 times as much.
The good news? The AP Processing Revolution has begun! And it has a name: AP Automation. Software systems to manage the entire AP process – electronic invoice and document management, workflow automation for routing approvals, advanced reporting and analytical tools– are available today. Accounts Payable Automation Systems allow you to access supporting documentation anywhere, anytime, across departments and locations, ensuring deliverance from oppressive and antiquated methods.
More and more businesses are using AP Automation to improve invoice processing time, reduce costs and benefit from early pay discounts. As of 2013, over one-third (35 percent) of companies have made significant investments in AP automation, and 23 percent are currently evaluating the use of AP automation technology.
There is no time like the present to improve your bottom line and declare independence from repressive stacks of paper, pages of inefficient spreadsheets and layers of disjointed workflow. Saving time and money should be your first focus in 2014 – join the revolution today and find your freedom.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all accounts are created equal, that they are endowed by their managers with certain unalienable rights, which among these are Efficiency, Accuracy and the Pursuit of Payment … .
Ray Emirzian
Ray Emirzian is Vice President of Operations & Product Management at docSTAR, a B2B software firm specializing in cloud document management software and business process automation. He has more than two decades of experience in business process analysis, business process automation, and business consultation working with industry-leading organizations including NCR, Canon USA, and AuthentiDate Holding Corporation. Ray offers innovative perspectives on streamlining business for improved efficiency and productivity with emphasis on AP Automation Solutions. You can follow Ray and the docSTAR team on Twitter, @docSTARsoftware.
