The Top 5 Traditional Accounts Payable (AP) Pains When You Use Your ERP Alone

Most finance professionals know that manual accounts payable (AP) processes are plagued with problems. However, many of the business people that we speak with have a hard time articulating what it is about their AP process that’s so challenging, and what are the worst of the problems they face. They are used to their process using Microsoft Dynamics GP, AX, NAV or SL alone.

To help prospective customers identify pain points related to their AP when companies are using Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions alone, here’s a list of the five most common pain points that plague businesses using traditional AP processes:

1. MIA invoices. Did the vendor send its invoice by mail, email, or fax? Who was it addressed to? Did they not receive it, or is it sitting on their desk waiting for approval? Manual AP processes often result in lots of finger pointing between the AP manager, purchaser, and vendor.

1. Lots of manual work. From scanning paper invoices, manually keying in information, and printing and signing paper checks, traditional AP processes are both labor and time intensive. As businesses grow, there’s less time to spend on tedious, error-prone processes.

1. Our business is growing, but we don’t have the resources to hire another employee. We hear this one a lot. Growth is a really good thing, but a common side effect for rapidly expanding companies can be a lack of resources to support their growth. Lots of AP professionals don’t have the bandwidth to spend time manually processing invoices and making payments.

1. Stacks of paper invoices scattered throughout departments. Businesses without electronic document storage rely on filing cabinets and banker boxes filled with paper invoices. It’s 2016; your finance departments shouldn’t be digging through paperwork to track down invoices. Visit our blog post on streamlining document management here for more information on document management solutions available to your business.

1. Was this invoice processed already? From our conversations with customers and prospects, we know AP managers are asked this far too often. To make matters worse, AP managers that use manual processes likely have little visibility into the status of invoices and unable to answer the question.

What pain points associated with AP are we missing? Join the conversation by commenting below or tweeting at @MineralTree using the hashtag #AccountsPayablePains, and let us know the problems you have with your business’s AP process.

Check out our latest whitepaper “Automating Invoice-to-Pay: The Business Case” for how to streamline the invoice-to-pay process for businesses of all sizes.