There are many ways to improve your accounts payable and invoice approval, which are often overlooked. Invoice approval is still a manual process for many organizations, and this can lead to various issues including delays in processing, excessive manual labour, and even invoice fraud even invoice fraud.
Here are few areas where an AP software solution can help with invoice approval.
Validate the invoice: There are AP solutions that can validate the invoice even before it gets distributed internally. They can check for purchase orders, prices of products, taxes, and other items that are found on the invoice. If information is incorrect it can be sent back to the supplier to be corrected automatically. Very good AP solutions can flag invoices from new emails or even IP addresses as a way to root out invoice fraud.
Distribute digitally: Once the invoice has been validated it can be distributed to the right approvers. This may mean sending the approval digitally to a branch office. We have seen organizations printing invoices, finding supporting documents, and then sending them in an internal mail package for approval to a branch. This is highly efficient and open for missing and delayed approvals. Accounts payable solutions can route the invoices and supporting documents base on branch, project, sign level, and it should be able to handle multiple invoice approvals if needed.
Reporting: With manual invoice approval processes the invoices can get lost in the system. This will often mean that the organization will not have visibility to the invoice details because they are not in the system. This can lead to cashflow and issues dealing with vendors and late payments. Using a modern AP solution, you can get visibility on the size of the invoices and where it is in the system. You can also then follow-up with the team members that are behind with their invoice approvals.
Finance: After all the invoice approvals have been made finance then has the ability for one further look before the information is pushed into the system. Look for the AP solutions that speak with your ERP or finance systems and have extra time saving features like applying GL codes.
The invoice approval functionality of OnePosting is industry leading. To find out if it is a fit for your organization please connect with us for a meeting.
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