If your accounts payable team are spending a great deal of time manually processing invoices, it’s time to consider an invoice automation tool, like OnePosting.
Here is a guide to help you determine which invoice automation tools work best for your business, and your team.
If your team is spending too much time manually entering, organizing and searching for data, then your team is not operating efficiently. For many AP teams, a large part of their workday is spent looking for information, taking their focus off more productive tasks. Additionally, AP teams spend a great deal of time sending approval reminders, inputting data, and other tedious tasks. That is where invoice automation comes in.
Accounts payable teams experience specific challenges such as inefficient processes, risk of errors, and inaccurate forecasting which all can be addressed with the introduction of invoice automation.
Here are the different invoice automation tools that you can experience when working with OnePosting.
Data Entry Tools: Data entry can be tedious and repetitive, and can cause costly mistakes. With manual data entry, you run the risk of multiple errors. Our invoice technology is not OCR, it is better than OCR!
Our unique technology extracts data from invoices with 100% accuracy, and such accuracy is not possible using traditional scanning or OCR solutions. OnePosting reads the meta-data that sits underneath PDF documents issued by practically all accounting and billing systems. This means that unlike OCR, we don’t have to “guess” what the content might be, or to use other sources of data such as purchase orders to try to correct obvious errors in data extraction.
Document Management Systems: Manually filing and physically storing documents can take up a lot of space, and cost you. Manual filing is also time consuming. When you need to update a file, you must find that file and also potentially update it elsewhere than where it is stored, and you cannot access files remotely. When you introduce a document management system, not only are you reducing the amount of paper that your team uses, you are also creating a system that allows for faster approvals, and follow-ups, while allowing your AP team to work remotely.
Authentication: With invoice automation, you can gain peace of mind knowing that security verification processes ensure that all invoices received are genuine, therefore reducing the risk of fraud. With OnePosting, If the source is not recognized, you will be notified so that you can decide if it’s a new supplier that needs to be added to the system, or if it is a suspicious invoice that needs to be investigated.
Confirmation: An optional service from OnePosting is to validate that each invoice received has the correct pricing on it, and that the quantities invoiced have been received. In a fully automated mode, OnePosting undertakes a three-way match, i.e. the invoice matches a purchase order for pricing and maximum quantities delivered, and Goods Received Notes to verify that quantities have been received. If everything matches, the invoices can be passed to the finance system for payment.
If the invoice fails a three-way match, a workflow is provided for manual review of the discrepancies, where they can be accepted and the invoice approved, or rejected, and the invoice returned to the supplier.
The workflow service can also be used if you want to manually review and approve invoices. This includes an “approval matrix” which can operate using an approval ladder, (multiple people may have to approve an invoice depending on its value), or where a single person may approve once the invoice value is within their signing limit.
Release: Approved invoices can be routed to the finance system for payment, and accruals reports are available for invoices that are not yet approved.
However, there are many other uses for invoice data such as:
- Routing data to Business Intelligent (BI) systems, where trends and patterns can be analyzed such as changes in prices over time, differences in pricing between regions etc.
- Due to the accuracy of the data extracted from invoices, the data is used by some clients to pre-populate their Goods-In applications to minimize data entry
- It can be used to update procurement solutions, separate from the updates to financial systems
With OnePosting invoice automation, you can choose the level of automation that works for your team and your business. You can have the reassurance that you need knowing that your invoice automation tools are working for you, accurately and easily, releasing your teams of tedious manual efforts. For more information on our invoice automation tools, connect with us.
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- Improve Accounts Receivable Practices: Invoice Management - February 13, 2023
- Problems with Accounts Payable Data Entry - January 17, 2023