3 Reasons It's Important To Automate Accounts Payable

Accounts Payable is an Essential

Accounts Payable -- the department and the process -- are vital to an organization. The careful tracking of Accounts Payable helps an organization keep a clear picture of what their overall financial situation is and is critical to managing a business’s cash flow, as well as being a key factor in accurate End of Month/End of Year reports.

• They ensure invoices are paid on time
• Maintain vendor relationships
• Verify and validate received invoices
• Prevent their organization from paying unnecessary or illegitimate debts
• Prevent fraud

With that being said, why is automating AP so important and why now?

Why It's Important To Automate Accounts Payable

The truth is, AP departments all have different situations and unique challenges, and may seek automation for a number of reasons. They want more visibility into their AP Process, they want a solution that is auditable, they want to be able to track exceptions and make use of automated rules. More and more commonly, AP teams want a solution that communicates with and enhances their accounting system. 

Here's 3 reasons why AP Automation is important to any organization:

1. Reduces Time and Costs

Perhaps you want to reduce time spent processing individual invoices in order to lower their cost per processed invoice. Did you know that according to Goldman Sachs, automation can cut the cost of processing a single invoice from $15-20 in a manual process to under $5? Those numbers are based on the cost of the person performing the work as well as the cost of all the time spent processing a single invoice.

In an automated environment, the same number of resources can efficiently process Invoices, leading to a lower cost per invoice processed and freeing up the AP Person’s time to focus on other duties. Processing invoices quicker also means being able to take advantage of more Early Payment Incentives.

2. Minimizes Duplication

One thing that never changes, however, is that AP departments want a dependable, repeatable process which minimizes duplication of efforts and confusion.

“There’s a lot of turnover with AP Clerks,” Karen Miller,  CFO of DocuPhase in shining armor, says. “They aren’t trained to be accountants, so they don’t always fully understand the steps they’re taking. Automation helps educate the Clerks, makes the process dependable, and also helps protect the business.”

Today, many companies rely on Process Automation to minimize data entry errors, reduce the amount of time spent sorting documents and fixing mistakes, and to intelligently route invoices to the appropriate resources for review, all while maintaining visibility into every step of the process.

3. Dependable and Repeatable

By implementing a repeatable process with rules and controls in place to keep invoices on-track for payment, companies can rest assured that their invoices will be properly processed and paid on-time. By increasing the speed at which a single invoice can be processed, companies can put themselves in the position to make money back through Early Pay Incentives by investing in an automated solution.

At DocuPhase, our customers find themselves prepared to face the unknown thanks to AP Automation!

"If I hadn't deployed DocuPhase in 2019, I don't see how we would have been able to process invoices when we had to go remote due to COVID-19." 
- Terry Biehl, CFO of Explorer Pipeline

Why AP Automation Now

As all of us are acutely aware, one of the biggest societal shifts that we’ve experienced recently is the Quarantine period brought on by COVID-19. The landscape of business has changed: many companies have realized firstly, how important it is to be able to go remote when necessary, and secondly, that remote work may be the new normal. With a process such as Accounts Payable, which relies on approvals and communication, how do you prevent interruptions caused by distance or isolation? Obviously, by making the solution one that they can access no matter where they are.

For our DocuPhase customers, they can review and approve invoices from wherever they can access the internet, which means that even if something like the recent Quarantine happens again, our clients will not need to experience downtime or scramble to find a solution.

Our customers appreciate that DocuPhase is a web-based, streamlined AP Solution which enforces their process rules, makes processes repeatable, minimizes duplication of efforts, decreases time spent on each invoice, and provides a dependable account of the work that’s been done.

Next Steps

If you'd like to take a deeper look at what DocuPhase's AP Automation Solution offers, see what specific problems we can solve, and identify how automation can provide your team efficiency and improvements to your current processes -- schedule a call with our team today!