The four game-changing benefits of AP Automation
Blog
A single play can go a long way to dictating the outcome of a professional football game. The same can be said in accounts payable.
Fully automating accounts payable mitigates the problems caused by manual paper-based processes, improves the overall performance, drives operational and financial improvements across a real estate firm, and contributes to corporate profitability.
By leveraging fully automated accounts payable solutions, real estate firms can reap four important benefits:
- Greater staff efficiency. Fully automated accounts payable solutions digitize invoice approval and exceptions workflows and other time and labor-intensive tasks in the invoice process. The technology enables accounts payable departments to receive invoices in any format, extract header and line-item information from invoices, match invoices with purchase orders and/or proof-of-delivery documents, electronically route invoices for approval and exceptions handling, post information on approved invoices to enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, and digitally store and retrieve invoice data. This frees up accounts payable staff to focus on more important tasks such as data analysis and vendor master data management.
- Fewer errors. Every time human intervention is required to key data or route or file invoices, it represents an additional opportunity for errors. By automating virtually all of the steps associated with processing supplier invoices, real estate firms can improve accuracy, which results in fewer supplier inquiries and reduces the chances of duplicate payments or overpayments.
- Improved profitability. A recent Institute of Finance and Management (IOFM) survey of accounts payable professionals found that only 27 percent of businesses capture early-payment discounts consistently. Capturing more early-payment discounts can make a big difference in reducing the cost of goods, which contributes to profitability. Fully automated accounts payable solutions enable real estate firms to capture more early-payment discounts through faster invoice approval cycle times. Studies show that automation reduces invoice cycle times from 23 days to five days.
- Enhanced visibility. Fully automated accounts payable solutions provide real-time reporting and insights into operational and financial metrics, enabling accounts payable departments and finance executives to identify trends and make more informed decisions. Authorized users can easily access information such as invoice status, exceptions, accruals, available early-payment discounts, percentage of early-payment discounts captured and more from any PC, laptop or mobile device.