Many an accounts payable (AP) manager has laid awake at night and dreamed of how productive their staff could be if they didn’t have to search, sort, file and manually enter data from a mountain of paper documents day after day. Paper is the bane of every AP manager’s existence. AP automation is the solution – it can remove all paper from the AP your process and allow your AP staffers to focus on work that has a greater impact on your organization than merely searching, sorting and filing paper all day.
Below are 5 higher-value tasks that an AP automation solution allows your AP processors to focus on:
Increasing communication with partners and vendors
Being able to consistently communicate and strengthen relationships with your most important partners and vendors isn’t just a luxury, it’s a necessity. Unfortunately, too many companies can’t allocate the resources required to handle this all-important function. With the additional resources that AP automation makes available, you can ensure that your key business relationships are consistently nurtured.
Cleaning vendor master list
When scanning your master vendor list, you will undoubtedly find vendors that have duplicate entries or outdated information. Being able to devote a current resource to ensuring that all information on this list is accurate and up to date is a nice benefit of AP automation.
Negotiating more early payment discounts with vendors
Whether they know it or not, companies are leaving thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars of savings a year on the table by not taking advantage of early payment discounts. The enhanced visibility that AP automation provides into invoices helps take advantage of these discounts, and you can negotiate even more of these discounts by freeing current AP resources from wading through reams of paper all day.
Helping error-prone vendors
All AP departments deal with vendors who send out invoices loaded with errors. Being able to allocate current resources that can help solve these problems on a case-by-case basis can have a huge impact on workflow efficiency.
Review current financial controls for fraud prevention
In its 2022 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners stated that about 12% of overall fraud cases in a year occur within an organization’s accounting department. Freeing up AP personnel to review your company’s current financial controls is a huge step toward fraud prevention and can literally help save your company thousands of dollars each year.
If you have any additional questions about how AP automation can free your AP processors to tackle higher-value tasks, contact us.
