What is Accounts Payable automation?

The cost of doing business the manual way is outdated and pricey. Accounts payable automation can cut costs, improve invoice throughput, and transform your business, but what exactly is it?

Here is everything you need to know about accounts payable automation, the future of accounts payable.

Accounts Payable automation is...

Accounts payable automation (AP automation) uses digital technology to streamline and automate the capture, cleaning, Non-PO and PO process coding, storage and retrieval of invoice data.

AP automation minimizes human intervention and eliminates error-prone tasks from the accounts payable process in order to provide better visibility and control over important financial data. Invoice processing is one of the most important things the accounts payable department does on a day-to-day basis, and it keeps you in business, so why not improve it?

If you’re on an AP team, you know that there are way too many touchpoints within a manual accounts payable process that require someone on the AP staff to intervene. Because of this, each touchpoint can drag out the transaction cycle and process of paying an invoice for weeks when it actually shouldn’t take any longer than a day or two to complete.

AP automation makes accounts payable processes quicker, easier and more efficient with a digital workflow and more manageable steps so you can focus your time and human power on the most important value-added tasks.

Advantages of Accounts Payable automation

Accounts payable automation is a seemingly touchless process that adds value to your accounts payable team and your company. Let’s take a look at all the advantages of automating your AP processes.

• AP automation saves on labor and promotes paperless processing. AP automation decreases manual tasks and labor costs like manual keying as well as costs on paper, printing, postage and more by going digital. In fact, businesses can save more than 85%.
• AP automation increases productivity and visibility. Reducing manual touches allows employees to focus on value-added activities so they can be more productive, while suppliers gain more visibility by being able to track invoice and payment status themselves using AP automation software.
• AP automation allows for faster cycle times and invoice approvals. Automated AP saves time. Digital software detects and corrects errors before submission, while invoice data can be e-mailed to approvers for a quick turn around.
• AP automation has fewer payment errors. Invoice data is validated against ERP information early in the AP process, which quickly calls out duplicate payments, while invoice headers and line-item data are captured without manual keying, ensuring accuracy.
• AP automation allows for better cash management and more early payment discounts. Faster approvals allow payment information to be recorded in a timely fashion so payments can be sent automatically on the authorized date. Many suppliers offer early payment discounts and companies with significant automation are able to capture them more efficiently with better cash management.

AP automation can completely transform your business and improve your AP processes. By automating AP processes, your company will be able to track invoices electronically, streamline workflows, and allow you to locate invoice data anywhere, anytime.

With direct impact on cash flow management, security against fraud, and vendor relationships to uphold, it’s crucial that your AP team becomes more efficient with automated processes. Luckily, there are plenty of solutions to help with this.

How should you automate Accounts Payable?

Operate more efficiently and choose an AP Automated Software Solution that best fits your company’s needs.

Essentially, automating your AP processes is as easy as choosing the right software solution. AP automation software solutions are then integrated with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system(s) to synchronize data and streamline processes between the two systems without straining the ERP environment or business IT resources. Manual tasks are then removed while automate processes and workflows take their place.

AP automation includes specific software like invoice imaging, enterprise content management (ECM), and document management so you can digitize and organize your accounts payable processes and in the easiest and quickest ways possible.

By streamlining processes and implementing workflow capabilities with advanced automation software, your AP processes will be more streamlined, more efficient, more reliable, and more accurate so you can direct more resources toward your core business.

Selecting Accounts Payable Automation Software

If you’re looking for Accounts Payable automation, Ascend Software has a solution for you. Ascend was designed and developed specifically to help Accounts Payable teams increase their data accuracy, improve their invoice throughput, and improve their entire AP workflow. All to ensure you and your team can process more invoices with fewer smarter touches and yield a quick ROI with efficient workflows that impact your bottom line. Companies using Ascend have decreased invoice processing times by 40 percent when compared to manual processes.