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All You Need to Know About Accounts Payable Automation

All You Need to Know About Accounts Payable Automation

What do you mean by Accounts Payable Automation ?

The term ‘Accounts Payable Automation’ (AP Automation) refers to a particular technology which is used to organize and automate the accounts payable processes, thereby eliminating the manual tasks, and offering improved control and visibility over financial data. Further, it empowers the enterprises to handle the invoices with hardly any human intervention, by way of offering a digital workflow which enables to manage the processes which were earlier handled by the AP team members.

Generally, the AP automation begins by capturing the invoice details in a digital layout by means of a particular method known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Subsequently, the former handles the invoice coding and routing by way of the digital workflow, which works as per a particular logic which has been configured in the AP automation software of the organization. Further, it will be integrated with the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system of the company, thereby facilitating seamless data transfer between the two systems without causing much strain to the IT resources or the ERP environment.

What are the Things to be kept in Mind While Selecting an Accounts Payable Software?

Those companies which are looking forward to automate their accounts payable section need to conduct a thorough research on various automation solutions, and choose the one which best suits their requirements. It is important to check whether the selected software is capable of supporting each invoice processing scenario in order to ensure the complete automation of this section, and verify whether it is time-saving and cost-efficient. Further, it is critical to check whether the new solution integrates well with the ERP system of the organization, so as to accomplish the synchronization of data and elimination of manual tasks.

The Many Benefits of AP Automation Software

If you are still confused about whether to bring in technology to organize your accounts payable workflow, here are some reasons which would make you go for it.

1. It is time-saving

AP automation facilitates the faster processing of invoices, wherein the invoice headers as well as the line items are scanned using a character recognition software. Further, the two-way as well as three-way matching is achieved with hardly no human intervention and the payables are directed to the respective business processes.

2. It streamlines the accounts payable processes accurately

It helps to evade human errors, and makes auditing, budgeting, and reporting accurate and more efficient. Further, it helps to avoid overpayment as well as duplicate payment. 

3. It enables greater control, easy access, and real-time monitoring

An accounts payable automation software helps you to save considerable time and effort that could be routed into several other aspects of your business. Further, it facilitates complete access to the payment cycle. As it is possible to monitor the status of your workflow, it becomes easy to identify the causes for delays. In fact, AP automaton makes it easy to share data throughout the organization, and also, the disapproved invoices are redirected to the concerned individuals. In addition, it enables analysis and real-time reporting, and the documents are safely stored in archives which are complaint with the regulatory requirements.

4. It offers transparency and better insights

It offers improved visibility into the entire accounts payable process, which provides the business leaders and other employees a better insight on the same. Further, it helps to focus on key problem areas as well. Moreover, AP automation solutions could be used to monitor the productivity as well as performance of the AP team members. It also offers greater transparency in all the accounts payable operations.

5. It provides custom-designed solutions

A versatile AP automation software helps the users to custom-design their accounts payable workflow as per their requirements, wherein they can create set-up alerts, approval timers, etc.

6. It facilitates integration with different finance systems and databases

A powerful AP automation solution integrates seamlessly with a majority of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, databases, and financial systems that there is no need to enter data into different systems by switching on and off between a number of applications.
In short, there are many benefits which come along with a robust AP automation solution. It is at your discretion to choose the right kind of AP automation software to bring about overall efficiency in the accounts payable department of your organization.