4 Accounts Payable Challenges that can be Overcome with a True Automation Solution

4 Accounts Payable Challenges that can be Overcome with a True Automation Solution

By: William Phelps | Senior Technical Architect

If a tree falls in the woods, does the paper from that tree end up as a paper invoice in your company’s mailroom?  Or worse, does this paper find its way from the mailroom to someone’s desk in accounts payable, only to wait… and wait… and wait for an action?

Does that falling tree make a sound? Most likely yes.  It’s the sound of your early payment discounts floating away or the screams of yet another late payment charge. Accoutns payable challenges are a real problem. Learn more about challenges in the accounts payable process below.

Unfortunately, many companies experience the same accounts payable challenges:

  • While your particular business processes have evolved and progressed, your accounts payable methodology may still rely heavily on paper.
  • Paper dependency exists even though companies have an ERP system (or multiple ERP systems, such as E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards) that are supposed to handle the accounts payable process in an efficient manner.
  • Employees may only be proficient in one system and not others.
  • Other employees need to process or approve invoices, but they don’t have ERP authorization.

Maintaining the accounts payable methodology the same way “it’s always been done” is a risk.

Inspyrus Invoice Automation offers an improved user experience and rich toolset to streamline invoice data entry, focusing on the automation of invoice data input.  This high level of automation will lower the number of data elements keyed, which in the end reduces the number of possible clerical errors.

Investments previously made in other areas of your business can be leveraged.

  • Integration points, based on standard defined points within your ERP, quickly retrieve the purchase order and vendor information. From there, it will match the data to the invoice often before a user has any visible interaction with the invoice.
  • Any current validation routines present in your ERP are honored, as data is validated before its delivery to the ERP for ingestion.
    • For example, a PeopleSoft voucher is not created until the data can be validated against your specific PeopleSoft implementation. The validation process occurs in real time, using web services to quickly determine data accuracy.  This is a huge leap forward in processing efficiency.
  • Any existing approval hierarchies from the ERP can be reused for workflow approvals which can often be simply approved via email.
  • Your existing corporate security model and infrastructure can be used to enforce authentication and authorization of invoice information.
  • Invoice related documentation can be attached to the invoice, and subsequently viewed in the ERP.

Inspyrus understands that no ERP is ever deployed simply “out of the box.”  It is likely that your ERP is no different than others except for specific changes tailored towards your business.  The Inspyrus API takes these scenarios into account and offers a way to dovetail the software to your exact ERP.

While the debate rages about whether a tree falling in the woods makes a sound or not, there’s no question about your accounts payable workflow needing an update.  Contact us today for some sound advice on turning your accounts payable system into an unrealized payday. You can also check out our previous Webinar about Inspyrus here.

Contact William or TekStream today to learn more about challenges in the accounts payable process.