Not Ready For AP Automation? Here Are 6 Tips To Help Make Your Paper Day - Better!

So for whatever reason you’re not ready for an invoice automation system just yet. Maybe your company is “old fashioned”, or likes “paper” or just not ready for a “change”.  Whatever the reason is here are 6 tips that should help make your paper based accounts payable process go a little bit smoother.

1. Receive all vendor invoices directly into the AP department. – by having all invoices received in a central location you will have better control and not get any surprises especially at month-end.
2. Request invoices to be sent by email. – setup a central AP email address and request vendors send invoices by email. This will certainly make things easier.
3. Maintain good relations with your vendors. – maintaining good relations with your vendors is good for cash flow and good for business.
4. Require use of Purchase Orders – purchase orders provide an additional level of control on spending by defining quantities and agreed to purchase prices.
5. Process invoices individually for payment and not as a batch. - This will make things easier to find and troubleshoot invoices when issues occur.
6. Always pay from original invoices, don’t pay from copies. – Duplicate payments can cause a host of challenges, like getting your money back from a vendor. Prevent duplicate payments and always pay from an original invoice. If you must by a copy, be sure there isn’t another invoice copy in process or already paid.