Sure, you’re familiar with invoice automation — but that’s a system that works for some of the other guys right now. You hear that a lot. You’ve probably said it yourself. But when was the last time you did a little snooping around to see what’s changed in invoice automation? You might be pleasantly surprised — and you might want to give it a fresh look.

Your peers in Purchasing/Procurement have three main concerns about what happens with invoice automation. Fortunately, since others have been out there clearing the way, there are now three reasonable explanations for each of these complaints.

Too much money. One reservation is that the cost for Accounts Payable to implement and administer automated invoicing is too high. Take a step back for a moment and look at the stacks of paper and tons of files, that all must be handled manually; data entry; matching PO invoices — and exceptions, not to mention what you do with deductions and discrepancies. Whew — talk about labor intensive! Research done by AberdeenGroup estimates the average cost of manually processing invoices is $21. But companies that automated invoicing functions saw that price drop to an average of $10 per transaction — and only $2 in some cases.

Too much time. Installing a new system, learning how to use it, working out the bugs, training others … Wait — think about it for a minute. How much time does it take to manually enter data, manually validate PO invoices, send information around to different people in your office — and wait for the proper paperwork and necessary aprovals to to come. Once your automated invoicing is up and running, you’ll streamline most of these processes, and that frees up A/P people to tackle more significant challenges.

Too many errors. Thanks to the ability to scan documents and store the images as electronic files, you slice the margin for error. There are so many sources for introducing errors when handling invoicing manually: mis-keyed strokes, duplicate payments, mis-coded invoices. Automation will remove the threat of human error from many of these processes. 

Tags: Accounts Payable, automation, invoice, procurement, purchasing