5 Ways Electronic Invoicing Reduces the Complexity of Accounting Operations
Blog
You aren’t imagining things if it feels like processing invoices is more complex than ever.Most organizations say that their invoice processing is more complex compared to two years ago, according to a recent survey by the Institute of Financial Operations (IFO). Worse, 48% of organizations surveyed by IFO expect that their invoice processing will become more complex over the next two years.
A number of factors are to blame for increasingly complex invoice processing:
- Receiving invoices from multiple submission channels
- Complex invoices
- High paper invoice volumes
- Operating in a shared services environment
- Remote approvers
- Multiple ERP integrations
- Multi-language support
- Multi-currency support
Electronic invoicing reduces invoice processing complexity in five ways:
- Organizations can receive invoices in any format, from any location.
- Invoice data is validated at the supplier’s end (earlier in the process than paper-centric invoice processing approaches), increasing first-pass match rates and reducing exceptions.
- Supplier, header and line-item data (such as amounts) from purchase order-based and non-purchase order based invoices is automatically extracted.
- Invoices are automatically matched with purchase orders and/or goods or services receipts.
- Invoices that require approval (such as non- purchase order-based invoices) or exceptions handling are automatically routed based on pre-defined workflows.