Historically, Accounts Payable has been viewed as a pure cost of doing business, making the expense of buying, installing and maintaining software and hardware to automate Accounts Payable processing difficult to justify. But as companies look high and low for ways to conserve capital, they are finding potential they can't ignore in Accounts Payable when they address the challenges of manual processing:
Receiving and collating invoices from different suppliers in different formats - mail, fax, email, EDI - and costs associated with manual document routing, shipping, couriers, storage, etc.
Data capture and errors associated with manual data entry in accounting systems, and labor-intensive processes required to input data linked to different costs centers
Approval lead times extended by manual routing and sign-off procedures involving individuals in different departments or locations
Payment delays and inability to capitalize on financial benefits associated with payment schedules, such as taking discounts for early payments and avoiding late fees for late payments
Reporting and audits of invoice processing and payments to match document flow with the accounting system
Risk of document loss or damage, as invoices are received at multiple input points and may be routed or classified incorrectly, which increases archive and compliance costs
Businesses can no longer overlook the high costs and inefficiency of having staff spending so much time scrambling to enter invoices, get the necessary signatures for approval of payment, file invoices and retrieve them. While companies may have tolerated this situation in the past, most cannot afford to miss out on savings and run risks to their credit rating and regulatory compliance standing. They need to capture invoices quickly and accurately, be able to prioritize top vendors, know where invoices are in the approval process and have immediate access to the documents as needed. Accounts Payable departments relying on manual processes are finding that adding staff does not solve the inherent problem. They remain limited in their ability not only to minimize per-invoice costs but also to improve productivity.
As a resource to assist CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, managers and administrators in evaluating SaaS for Accounts Payable, this paper presents a solution that leverages comprehensive document process automation to deliver the advantages of paperless invoice processing as an on-demand service. It highlights the opportunity to shift ROI from the project level to the document level (capital versus operational expense) and realize automation benefits immediately.
