Does It Make Sense To Automate Accounts Payable?

By now you've heard of automating your accounts payable workflow. But is it time for your organization to explore how automation can improve your processes?

Take a look at these 5 scenarios and if you are nodding your head as you go through, it’s time to start researching your options.

1. You process 100+ invoice/payments per month.

   Companies that have a high payment volume are typically using an enormous amount of resources performing manual tasks such as printing checks and collecting approvals. Automating this process will allow companies that fit this profile to access faster forms of payment and cut processing times down significantly.

2. You are considering hiring to keep up with volume.

   Increasing headcount is often seen as a result of company growth but it also takes away from your bottom line revenue. Before you send out that req or request headcount, consider how automation can improve the productivity of the team you have in place today.

3. Your accounting team struggles to find time to handle more business critical matters.

   Finding the time to address critical business matters or contribute to strategic initiatives is a challenge when you are spending so much time on manual tasks. Reclaim that time with automation. Payments are sent when they are scheduled, approval workflows run themselves, and invoices are captured accurately all without any manual work.

4. You have distributed entities or locations, making approvals and coding problematic to complete and track.

   When you are a multi-entity business unit, you have invoices coming at you from multiple locations, payments that need to be made to vendors operating in numerous locations and it all needs to roll-up to the headquarters general ledger. How are you keeping track of everything? AP automation solutions that serve multi-entity businesses enable you to create a central location to submit invoices, automate payments and track expenses for each location, all without manual intervention.

5. You are concerned with protection against internal, external, and online fraud.

   Accounts payable is a goldmine for fraudsters. Checkbooks are often left unprotected in a file drawer and checks are able to be drawn without any approvals. Automation ensures that approval workflows are followed, there is an audit trail of the invoice to payment and payments are not made by an individual in-house.

Take a look at this whitepaper to learn more about
why you should consider automating accounts payable.