Are manual processes hampering your AP?

In another article this month, we have already touched on reasons to include BPA (Business Process Automation) within your business, however, with hybrid working arrangements looking to be the new normal it seems worth focussing on one key aspect of document automation – AP (Accounts Processing).

In business, cash flow is king, not just for your company but your suppliers and customers too. In an ideal AP utopia, every business to business transaction would be an automated AP process that integrated with your suppliers to create an almost ‘hands off’ flow of transactions. (Yes, that is your Finance Director nodding furiously in agreement along with all the accounts admins!).

AP is one of those business functions that just fits with automation and can benefit massively from the automatic rule / flow rules that can be applied to reduce processing errors, reduce personnel time expenditure and maintain positive supplier relationships:

1. Never lose an invoice again – Invoices are all scanned into the host platform and can be retrieved easily by PO number, invoice number, supplier reference or any other ‘captured’ data value.
2. Invoice information identified and matched to POs
   • Recognition of key data (invoice / PO number, supplier name etc)
   • Capture of line item values and key totals (VAT, net, gross, shipping etc)
   • Items that fail to match sent for manual validation
3. Integration with existing accounting systems based on matching
4. Processing rules assign any actions based on the invoice information
   1. Rules based on amount – auto-approval / review by admin or dept. heads
   2. Rules based on supplier account
   3. Rules based on receipt date
   4. Rules based on time since last action
   5. Combination of any of the above!
5. Approvals and escalations
   1. Monitor outstanding work tasks and re-assign
   2. Automate task reminders
   3. Enable ‘mobile’ approvals / rejections / review
   4. Automate escalations to managers / directors when processing fails
6. Oversight and reporting on all active transactions as well as historical

This is by no means an exhaustive list and we have touched on AP previously, so if you believe you could benefit from taking another look at automation within your accounts payable process, please do get in touch with us at PacSol and we will be happy to help.

Toby Gilbertson, Customer Services Manager. June 2021.

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