Time saved in accounting translates directly into financial savings. Automating invoice processing ensures a quick return on investment by reducing time-consuming manual tasks and eliminating costly errors. By digitising and automating workflows, accounts payable teams can experience significant improvements in efficiency, security, and compliance, see how your team can benefit below:
- Enhanced Efficiency and Speed: Automation reduces manual workload, leading to faster and more efficient processes
- Improved Data Security: Restrict access to information through individual authorisations and general access controls for a clearly defined group of people.
- Comprehensive Documentation: Maintain records of all accesses, detailing who interacted with each document, when, and how. These actions can be reversed if necessary.
- Regulatory Compliance: Ensure adherence to internal regulations and legal requirements, such as GDPR, through automatic and verifiable workflows.
- 24/7 Access and Remote Working: With digitised processes, the Accounts Payable department can operate from anywhere at any time.
Transitioning from Manual to Digital Invoice Processing
As we know, traditional invoice processing involves manual data entry, which is time-consuming and prone to errors. An automated can streamline this process through three simple steps:
- Digitising documents: Incoming invoices, whether by post, or email are scanned and saved as digital documents. Optical character recognition (OCR) extracts relevant data from these invoices.
- Automating Standard Processes: Once digitised, invoice data is transferred to procurement and accounting systems, where automated reconciliation matches orders with delivered goods and services.
- Streamlined Approval Workflows: Approval workflows notify appropriate parties automatically, ensuring timely processing even during absences due to holiday or sickness.
Built-in Error Controls and Fraud Prevention
Automated systems include built-in error checks and automatic reconciliations to ensure payments are accurate and prevent issues such as duplicate or incorrect payments. This improves cash flow and ensures suppliers are paid accurately and on time.
Preconfigured Workflows and Forms
Choosing the right Document Management System (DMS) is crucial. The ideal solution should offer preconfigured workflows and forms for common invoice processing tasks, simplifying implementation and ensuring compliance.
Deciding on Cloud or On-Premises?
Digital invoice processing should be available with identical functionality both on-premises and in the cloud. The cloud offers advantages such as enhanced security, scalability, and flexibility. If cloud operation is not yet desired, an on-premises solution should be available, allowing for a seamless transition in the future. Our AP automated system gives you the option to do either.
Compliance with rules and regulations
Automated invoice processing mechanisms ensure backup copies and real-time financial data access, helping organisations comply with legal requirements. HMRC regulations state that businesses must keep records for six years from the end of the last company financial year they relate to. Automated processes make audits and tax inspections far easier by ensuring that all records are securely stored and easily retrievable.
We know your information management must comply with the most rigorous regulations and we pride ourselves on continuous improvement to ensure our customers see us as a trusted partner. Our management systems are independently certified by BSI who in turn are UKAS accredited. Maintaining certification often involves a commitment to ongoing training and improvement, but our team is committed to upholding the highest standards to keep your data safe and secure. You can find out more about the accreditations and certifications here.
Optimise personnel costs
Automating AP also enables you to optimise personnel helping to manage skilled worker shortages and the growing volume of invoices. Previously, Sovereign Network Group used temporary workers to input invoice data into their finance system. Our AP processing system recognises and matches data such as PO numbers automatically, and assigns the invoice to the correct part of the finance team. We created faster, more efficient workflows so they can process 14,000 invoices per month. This change enabled them to also reduce the number of temporary workers. You can read more here.
6 Benefits of Optimising Accounts Payable
For organisations handling high volumes of invoices, a structured workflow is essential. Here are the benefits automating your AP invoice processing:
Use AI technology to reduce manual data entry and ensure compliance with standardised formats.
Automated matching improves accuracy, speeds up payments, and prevents duplicates.
Establish clear, repeatable procedures to reduce errors and improve efficiency.
Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as processing time, exception rates, and payment accuracy to refine workflows.
Ensure invoices are correctly formatted and processed without delays.
No need to worry about retention dates, these can be simply built into to your workflows.
Conclusion
Automating Accounts Payable workflows reduces workload, minimises errors, enhances security, and ensures compliance. Embracing automation ensures a smoother workflow, fewer accounting headaches, and a more competitive company.
For more information about our AP solution, click here
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