3 Ways Email Alerts & Reminders Make Life Easier in Accounts Payable Departments

A typical day in accounts payable is anything BUT typical. A day in accounts payable should really be called, Mission Impossible! Why you ask? The accounts payable department and responsibilities of the AP staff go well beyond paying bills.

A few of these tasks include opening mail, sorting invoices, matching, getting approvals, coding, entering invoices, check runs, answering calls, filing paper, dealing with closes and audits.  With everything that's going on in an accounts payable department its no wonder that keeping track of invoices can be a challenge and chasing down invoice for approval can even be more of a headache.

Here are 3 ways email reminders can help make life better and keep your payable process on track.

1. Email alerts let approvers know when NEW invoices arrive that require review and approval. The approver simply opens the email and clicks a link within the email. The link then brings them to the invoice or invoices that requires their attention.

2. Email alerts can also notify and escalate invoices that have gone untouched for a predetermined amount of time to manager for approval. Example, an invoice arrived from a supplier that offers a 5% discount if the invoice is paid with 10 days. Unfortunately, the approver had been out on vacation and didn't see the first email alert. So, an email notification and automatic escalation sent the invoice promptly to a next level manager that was able to approve the invoice and take advantage of the 5% supplier discount.

3. Email alerts eliminate the need for accounts payable staff to waste valuable time chasing down invoices only to hear that the approver never received a copy or that they sent it to accounts payable and AP lost the invoice. With email alerts and escalations gone are the days of the "blame game" where accounts payable is caught in the middle.

By utilizing email alerts as part of a comprehensive accounts payable process improvements initiative departments can expect to realize a significant level of improvement, reduction in manual steps and peace of mind.

Vision360 Enterprise helps companies of any size to improve their accounts payable process. Whether you have one accounts payable clerk to a full shared service center, entry level or global enterprise, Vision360 will help you reduce and eliminate the manual processes associated with receiving, routing, coding, approving and entering invoices.

Vision360 Enterprise will save you time, labor and increase efficiencies across your organization.