7 Reasons Your Business Needs AP Automation

Running a business can sometimes feel like there’s no time to pause, take a breath, and look for opportunities to improve. A quick and easy solution that can provide more room to breathe: automation.

A recent study shows that it takes $15-30 for the end-to-end processing of an invoice. The best way to cut down on this extra cost? Automate your accounts payable (AP). Aside from the cost of processing these invoices, there are numerous reasons why you should take advantage of AP automation.

Spend less time reviewing invoices

With automated AP, you don’t have to worry about entering or cross-checking information from invoices to ERP systems. Take control of your invoice management with automated pre-processing, data extraction, validation, and post-processing.

Quickly pull a report to see upcoming payments, exceptions that need review, and more. Access your invoices from one platform instead of digging through your email, your filing cabinet, or—in the pile of papers on the corner of your desk.

Worry less about security 

Accounts payable technology includes encryption to protect customer and vendor information. Online data breaches make big splashy headlines but you’re much more secure with automated AP than you are when you track invoices in a spreadsheet. 

Gain deeper analytics

Putting everything into your automated AP ensures that finance and accounting teams are only looking at what matters, and so is the rest of your team. A robust AP platform will give you an option to look at the data in easy-to-understand reports, or even dig deeper into specific vendors and how they are charging you.

Hit strategic business goals

As soon as you begin automating mundane data entry tasks, you will free up time for more strategic activities. This forward-thinking mindset will allow AP and the wider finance will become a strategic asset for the business.

Eliminate errors

There are no small errors when it comes to accounting and accounts payable. AP automation helps organizations save time by reducing the need to perform tedious manual data entry tasks. With automation, you can eliminate inevitable mistakes that occur during manual processing. Without the real-time updates provided by AP automation, you can lose money due to small errors such as forgetting to send or pay an invoice on time. Soon these minor mistakes become major losses when vendor relationships are strained or lost. 

Improve your vendor relationships

Vendors are crucial to a company’s success. Yet, research shows that 47 percent of companies pay one in 10 invoices late, and 16 percent admit one-fifth of their payments are never on time. One in 12 does not monitor their payment processes at all. 

The accounts payable process plays an integral role in the management of vendor relations that are critical for your business’s survival. With a fast, automated accounts payable process, vendors will be paid accurately and on time, securing healthy vendor relationships and a future supply chain. By leveraging the data in the AP automation solutions, businesses can identify tactics to further support cost savings and efficiency in the AP and procurement processes. 

Offer your team an asset they can use 

Automating your AP process takes away the extra effort you have to put into data entry, double-checking critical fields like amount, due date, and merchant information. When these are automated you spend less time focused on the mundane. 

While all of these benefits might seem obvious to more established finance teams, for those at the initial stages of their AP journey, it can be overwhelming. We can help you understand what automated AP should be doing for you and your business. Ready to learn more? 

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