The success of Finance depends on an accurate and efficient A/P department. That includes every step of invoice processing – receiving, validating, capturing and coding data, matching to purchase orders and receipts, routing through approval workflows, etc.
In today’s business environment, if it takes a company a week or two to get an invoice from data capture to approval, it means there are bottlenecks in the A/P process causing cash-draining late fees, increased labor costs, invoice exception costs and missed early payment discounts.
That’s why businesses are reducing both manual tasks and paper invoices by turning to A/P automation technology. It’s a priority for almost 70% of companies, according to Ardent Partners.
Meanwhile, Gartner believes that by 2025, 50% of all B2B invoices will be processed and paid without being touched by human hands.
Tech solutions for faster invoice processing
By leveraging the interactive, immersive dashboards and advanced, drill-down analytics tools of today’s fintech, finance pros can gain actionable insights into their invoice management process. For instance, wouldn’t it be great to know within a matter of seconds the average number of days it takes for an invoice to be entered or approved?
The ability to measure invoice processing time not only provides valuable transparency into the efficiency of your A/P department, it can help identify where improvements are needed. Pinpointing the bottlenecks in your invoice approval process can empower your team to take proactive steps to mitigate delays.
Analysis and a deeper understanding of your invoice processing time can lead to improved vendor relationships as well. Knowing precisely how long it takes an invoice to go through each stage of processing enables A/P to set realistic payment timeline expectations to avoid disputes or delayed payments. And that saves both you and your vendors time and resources.
Faster payments and clear communication improve vendor satisfaction, which can be leveraged for better pricing and payment terms.
Assign team members to more strategic tasks
Businesses with a clear understanding of their invoice processing timeline can improve their overall financial performance, while also unlocking insights that drive better resource allocation decision making.
You’ll often read on ResourcefulFinancePro that automation solutions free up A/P staffers to work on other projects. A/P software provider AvidXchange polled your peers about what their teams were spending more time on after adopting automation technology:
- Analyzing data to make more informed decisions (50%)
- Identifying opportunities to grow the business (37%)
- Catching and reducing errors (35%), and
- Identifying new opportunities to save money (30%).
