Invoice Workflow Automation

Enforce your financial controls with AP invoice approvals routing automation.

Whether for indirect spend or distributed coding, DataServ’s unique Single Stream process effortlessly interfaces with ALL of your vendor’s current invoicing to capture the documents and the data required to sort out and automatically route those invoices to the appropriate person within your organization no matter what office or remote location they happen to be working in. Users simply receive a daily email telling them how many invoices they have available to review and then click the link to see the list. Then they can choose to Approve, Reject, Re-Route, or Code to keep those invoices moving through the system. Automated rules such as escalation and timers keep the process flowing without human intervention.

In today's dynamic and complex business climate, you might think workflow would be too hard to implement. We often hear “our business changes too often,” or “we have too many personnel that move around,” or “we are always acquiring or selling off companies.” Often we also hear of a second challenge that may be more of a constant reality for us all: ”my IT team is overloaded,” or “IT is focused on larger projects.” Dynamic environments also come with additional risk and compliance requirements. Intelligent workflow provides the tight, but flexible, controls and total visibility needed to cope with this new reality. The fact is, with all of the speed and flexibility that is required to succeed in business today, AP Automation workflow is no longer an optional thing. It is required. And that is why we created Software as a Service (SaaS) workflow for AP Automation.

This simple web and mobile based workflow leverages your ubiquitous email to easily reach any and all of your employees that can touch the AP process. However, unlike routing email attachments, this solution was architected from the ground up to use minimal bandwidth, so no matter how distributed your organization and users may be, DataServ workflow will work. Our licensing model is also optimized for Accounts Payable as we understand the nature of AP requires that you accommodate a wide variety of “occasional” users — we believe you should not pay for a named user in this situation. Intelligent design and Artificial Intelligence provide a user experience which is so simple that even those approvers who use it once a year can do so without being trained again!

Workflow is one of the most powerful software capabilities any organization can implement. Although not new technology, the advent of global virtual workforces, lean practices and higher turnover has created a greater need for the benefits provided by workflow. DataServ, via the SaaS model, has made this technology easily available for any size enterprise in any industry.

DataServ workflow contains all of the technology and best practices required to rapidly generate your ROI. Our Initialization experts provide the knowledge to tailor the workflow process to fit your unique needs and organization.

Features

• Automated Initial Routing to approvers based upon data captured at scan time reduces your AP staff time.
• Automated Approval Routing can be set based upon approval dollar limits and/or authority hierarchies. This automation is tailored to your approval matrix and chain of command and includes up to three levels.
• Surrogate Routing offers the ability to designate a stand-in to cover an approver's role when they are not available. Multi-layered routing with a time component provides alternate approver(s) in the case of unexpected process delays.
• Work queues can be distributed equally to each processor or sorted by vendor name, location or processor etc. into up to five queues. Workloads can easily be balanced by supervisors or managers.
• Daily email notices make it easy for approvers/coders to quickly approve and/or code invoices from a simple web-based system linked to that email.
• An integrated coding screen is tailored to your unique general ledger accounts and process.
• Automated Escalation reminds an approver on a schedule or routes unattended vendor invoices to additional and/or surrogate approvers/coders.
• Invoice On Hold allows approvers to place invoices on hold for a limited period of time while additional details are being acquired.

Benefits

• Gain compliance with your approval matrix — no human error in the routing and approval processes. Automatically escalate through multi-level approvals for high dollar invoices.
• Increase your ROI — hundreds or thousands of users across the world can approve online without ever touching a paper document.
• Enhance your processes — drive efficiencies/lean accounting practices down through your organization, while enforcing compliance, without a revolution by your constituents.
• Increase focus on the exceptions/risk instead of the mundane — focusing on the problem areas creates a continuous improvement/zero-defects culture rather than a “repetitive stress” environment.
• Lower costs through reduced headcount — automating approvals, coding, escalations, etc., will require fewer AP staff.