She was having a bad day in accounts payable... until this happened!

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"In the accounts payable department the phones are ringing!  Vendors are calling looking for payment statuses! Auditors are looking for copies of invoices! Invoices need approvals! PO invoices need to be matched! Invoices need to be entered for payment! Checks need to be cut and the CFO wants to know,  "Why is all of this taking so long!?"

Okay, okay, take a deep breath! breathe! breathe! But you get the picture! Right?

With all of this you have to wonder why so many companies are so far behind the times when it comes to process improvements and accounts payable automation? 

Let's face it when your car is not running good, won't start is starting to have problems and show its age we begin looking at the cost to keep the vehicle in good shape and when the costs start to exceed the value what do we do? We trade it in or sell or worse, junk it! 

According to internal studies performed by many companies (as well as trade associations) the cost to process a single vendor invoice has ranged from $9 - $15 dollars as compared to AP Automation which has seen cost reductions between 60 to 80 percent or even higher! 

Well, if your accounts payable process is not able to keep up with the invoice volumes or manual processing costs are higher than they should be it might be time to take a look at ways to improve, right?
Improving your accounts payable process can take on many shapes. At many companies the thought of AP Automation was just too much to bare, there were too many unknowns and many companies are often times paralyzed by FEAR! 

Is your company paralyzed by Fear of AP Automation?

So what are some of the ways that AP Automation saved the day in Accounts Payable:

1. Paper invoices were completely eliminated from the payables process
2. Now AP has centralized processing, security and control
3. Supplier invoices received electronically no longer needed to be printed
4. Invoice data has been extracted and validated to ensure accuracy
5. Complete visibility to the entire AP process from on screen dashboards
6. Faster invoice approvals from any device
7. PO based invoices are matched automatically
8. AP Staff now only have to deal with the exception invoices
9. Manual data entry has been completely eliminated 
10. Paper checks are now a thing of the past
    
    

In Summary
By centralizing AP, revising processes, introducing automation and reducing the cycle time from weeks to a few days, AP departments can give the CFO the increased productivity and information vital to meet his or her goals. Discount capture, spend analysis, and cost reduction are benefits that directly impact the margin needed by companies in this day and age, at the same time giving the C-suite the visibility and audit capabilities they need to confidently sign off on the effectiveness of financial controls and management certification of results.