If you’re contemplating automating your accounts payable process, there are a lot of different factors you’ll need to consider that will guide you to making the right decision with respect to the AP Workflow Automation solution you choose. We speak with organizations daily who are also looking at automating their AP processes – and by the end of the conversation, they all walk away fully equipped with a comprehensive understanding of the significant number of important advantages and benefits realized by moving from a costly, manual process.
Dollars & Sense!
The cost of entering data and processing invoices manually can be astonishingly large. The obvious areas are things like labour and storage for files and paper – but there are also many not-so-obvious costs. These include manual routing and classification, one invoice handled multiple times, postage, human error – including misfiling or misreading documents. An automated AP process that uses a cloud-based SaaS platform can save more than $20 per invoice, providing a swift return on an already wise investment.
How much is it currently costing you to manage your AP documents manually? How much could you claw back by implementing an automated AP solution? Connect with us and we will do a full diagnostic at no charge – to show you just how much you could be saving by automating your AP workflow process.
Time (An even more valuable commodity)
Saving time is a key factor with automation! An Aberdeen study revealed that automation can reduce invoice processing time from 20.8 to 3.8 days. That’s a processing reduction time of 82%!
AP Workflow Automation solutions virtually eliminate the requirement for human intervention, allowing your AP department to get more work done with considerably less resources! Custom-configured automation workflows ensure that invoices are directed to the correct personnel for approval – and automated notifications replace the need for manual ones. Taking advantage of ‘optical character recognition’ (OCR) to automate data entry will provide your AP team with additional time to handle other, more important tasks, time that used to be consumed with enormous amounts of manual data entry.
Reduce Errors
Simple human error is commonly the reason for time-consuming and costly mistakes as a result of handling data entry manually. Time, money, and headaches can be avoided as a result of significantly reducing these error rates – all by implementing an automated workflow solution.
Another benefit of implementing an AP Workflow Automation solution is that it can perform quality control checks in process. As an example, you can set the controls to flag a duplicate invoice number, verify amounts and totals, or flag a missing Purchase Order or other document, quickly identifying potential issues and reducing the number or errors that may otherwise not be caught.
Get Organized
Find the documents you need quickly whenever you need them – you can be certain that an invoice or document is the most up to date version. In addition to easier search and document retrieval, a pro of AP workflow automation software is that it allows you to find approvals and other related documents more easily.
You can finally eliminate lost, misfiled, or mislabeled invoices! Automating your AP processes means working paperlessly – in the cloud. All your documents and data are stored securely – and identified for quick processing.
By taking advantage of optical character recognition (OCR) technology, both printed words and handwriting can be captured and made searchable, digitizing files in an instant and vastly reducing human input error.
Making Compliance Regulation and Auditing Easier
Just the thought of an ‘audit’ can bring on the anticipation of a headache! Both internal and external audits can be quite time-consuming and tedious – particularly when you are the one charged with collecting all the necessary documents and backup to authenticate their approval. Various industries also have specific regulations that need to be followed and audited.
Automating your AP workflow can eliminate the headaches associated with audits and compliance regulation. AP Workflow Automation creates an audit trail for every document, detailing all approvals, all changes made, and all users who have viewed it. Dynamic searching makes it quick & easy to locate specifics documents. Access via the cloud means it doesn’t matter where you find yourself. As long as you are online, you can access any document and forward it to the person requiring it, whether it’s a creditor looking for payment confirmation – or an auditor trying to verify something.
Access Remotely
AP Workflow Automation solutions are typically cloud-based – giving you access to your documents from anywhere with an online connection. Approvers can now be out of the office and still review and approve invoices, and AP personal no longer need to cart document boxes from one office to another to get the proper approvals. With hardcopy processing, you are anchored to wherever those hardcopy documents are stored – but with AP Workflow Automation, remote access brings everything you need to your fingertips, no matter where you find yourself in the world!
A Better Environmental Footprint!
Studies show that the average office employee uses more than 10,000 sheets of paper annually. Automating your AP workflow process is not just good for the bottom line, it’s also great for the planet. By automating your AP process, you can significantly decrease the amount of storage needed for hardcopy archives – and you greatly reduce paper waste. These cost savings for both your business – and for the environment – can be significant.
ACI’s Automated AP Processing Solutions
It’s important to ensure the AP workflow automation solution you implement is one that includes everything that caters to your business’s specific KPIs. ACI’s AP Assistant is designed to be ‘horizontal’, meaning that it has been designed to be very flexible – to allow it to handle virtually every possibility an organization could encounter in an AP workflow process. This is how we are able to make the claim that we can save your organization a significant amount of time and money, all the while continually improving organizational workflow and decreasing the processing errors that a manual workflow process is typically subject to.
ACI’s cloud-based AP workflow automation solution – with it’s flexible and extensive capabilities – is the ideal solution for acquiring all the benefits possible with the automation of AP workflow. With a simple and quick implementation, there just are no cons with using ACI’s automated AP workflow solution. Everything is taken care of – even the ROI of switching to an AP automated workflow solution.
If you need more information, you can learn more about ACI’s AP Assistant™ Automation solution here. If you’re ready to make the jump, click the button below to schedule an ACI Demo and begin the process of automating your AP Department today.
