The Time Saving Benefits of Accounts Payable Automation
Workplace automation can improve business processes. In fact, a Goldman Sachs survey found that automation can deliver savings of 70-80% for small and medium-sized businesses. So, how does an automated AP solution save time in the invoice and payment cycle, and what does that really mean for your business?
Let’s take a quick look!
Three Time-Saving Benefits of Accounts Payable Automation
Your finance team understands time is money. The following areas can benefit from automating AP.
1. Reduce Time Needed to Access Data – AP professionals spend about 30% of their time collecting data and dealing with invoice and payment inquiries. Automating AP reduces the time needed to collect and access that data. Rather than relying on hard copy information, a cloud-based AP solution stores all of your invoice and payment information in a centralized and secure digital repository.
2. Eliminate the Need to Chase Invoices – In a manual paper-based system, invoices arrive in your AP department via snail mail, email or fax and are then passed hand-to-hand for review and approval. A recent article from PYMNTS.com found that 72.4% of AP professionals receive an invoice via mail, and 40% still receive them via fax. The manual system is time-consuming, but can quickly become chaotic leading to lost invoices, and your team spending even more time chasing them down. An automated solution streamlines the entire process and provides complete visibility!
3. Expedite Approvals and Payment – Collecting data isn’t the only challenge with a manual system. Paper-based AP systems also need to work through multiple layers of approvals to process a single invoice and authorize payment, let alone hundreds, or thousands per month! AP automation allows for customizable workflows, rules, and restrictions eliminating the hassle of reaching out for approval and manually routing hard copies for the next step in the process. Payments can be approved and executed with just a few mouse clicks.
Save Time and Money
Automation can significantly reduce hours and the costs associated with AP especially when you consider the hard costs of manually processing invoices, along with soft costs like the time paid to employees to undertake such tasks. Cutting processing time can save thousands in labor-related costs.
Want to learn more? Give us a call and let us show you how automating AP can save you time and money!
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