Nobody knows better than a CFO or company controller that time is money. And, whether you’ve given it much thought or not, every time someone in your organisation unnecessarily touches an accounts payable invoice, the seconds add up to minutes and the minutes tally into dollars — wasted dollars that could be spent on better things than shuffling paper.
Save Time And Money With An Invoice Automation Solution
Let’s think about all the people who physically come in contact with a paper invoice at a typical mid-size enterprise before it reaches accounts payable:
1. The Mail Clerk
The invoice arrives at the mail room for sorting by a hardworking clerk who distributes it to the office staff.
2. The Executive Office
If the invoice is bound for an executive, the exec’s administrative assistant will open the envelope and place the payable in the boss’s inbox.
3. Verification Ensues
From there, the payable then gets punted over to someone who has to verify the charges. The payable is either headed to the staffer responsible for placing the order or to the finance department. Or both. Hopefully, these folks are nearby.
4. Satellite What?
Call in the courier or other carrier needed to get the document to and from a satellite or regional office if the verification needs to come from someone not in the office where the invoice originally arrived at.
Are multiple approvals are needed for the invoice? This single piece of paper may have to do a lot of traveling to get to the point where it can actually get paid — too bad you can’t collect mileage points for it.
Eventually, the invoice (aka. road warrior) lands back at accounts payable where it will be coded, paid, filed, and possibly retrieved if someone has a question about it down the road. That’s seven, eight, nine people, each dispensing a “touch cost” — and, that’s assuming there are no exceptions or irregularities necessitating side trips. And, yes, once you tally up all of those “touch costs” that’s seven, eight, nine or more times your company paid to handle the invoice.
It’s no wonder the average cost to process a manual invoice is in the neighbourhood of $25+. So, be sure to ask yourself: “How many invoices does my finance and accounting team process each month?” The numbers may surprise you.
Automate to Eliminate
A cloud-based, invoice automation solution virtually eliminates all that expensive, touchy-feely stuff going on with your vendor invoices. Invoices are collected, processed, approved, paid, and reported with a click of the mouse. With invoice approval software and the business process automation it enables, only the people who need to handle the document receive it, and anyone and every one of them needing access to it can bring it up on their desktop monitor in seconds — no matter where they are.
The Result: Fewer touch points reducing invoice processing costs by more than half. That means more dollars where they matter most — on the bottom line.
Learn how your business can automate to reduce AP processing costs. Request a Beanworks demo today!
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