As all businesses deal with products or services, money, distributors, or customers, some workflow processes should be maintained to handle all these profitably. Some accounts or documents should be there for the cash-handling process. Trade credit is an essential tool in businesses. When a product is sold to a customer on a credit basis, it should be tracked for proper cash management. Account payable maintains the details such as date of purchase, the total amount of purchase, advance paid, number of credit days, the due date to pay the amount, and the amount received date and mode of payment. Since this is a complicated process to maintain without any mistakes, most businesses are looking for automation in accounts payable.
In this blog, we will unveil account payable automation and its advantages.
What is accounts payable automation?
Accounts payable automation is a systematic process, in which technologies are used to automate the manual process. This automation software streamlines the payment process by using advanced data-capturing technology. By this streamlined payment process, this technology enhances the vendor relationship, and cost savings by reducing human intervention and increasing financial transparency. As this automated invoice processing is a no-code platform, it ensures that anyone can handle this process automation.
This accounts payable automation has several features that can enhance customer satisfaction.
- Automated data entry can reduce human errors and time consumption.
- Automation of repetitive tasks may free up resources to focus on other valuable activities
- Analysis and generate reports at every stage of the workflow
- Highlights the delay in any stage of workflow
- Restricted access can be provided to ensure data security
- End-to-end encryption on invoices
- Data transparency within the team
- Better communication with other departments
Advantages of accounts payable automation
This accounts payable automation can be used as a CRM integration tool that enhances the payment processes by workflow automation. This offers numerous benefits from invoice management to processing the payment. A few key advantages of accounts payable automation are reduced turnaround time, data accuracy, cost savings, reduced delay in payment processing, transparency, data security, and scalability.
1. Reduced turnaround time
Generally, invoice management requires a lot of time for invoice generation, getting approvals, and then going for payment processing. But with the automation, it takes only a few minutes to complete these processes. The automation software automatically compares the invoice generated with the purchase order within a few minutes. With the streamlined process, the invoice gets approved once the comparison and verification are done. Thus, the turnaround time gets reduced, and the efficiency gets increased.
2. Data Accuracy
As the invoice generation is automated, the data entry work is done by the automation process. So, here human errors that occur when entering manually get reduced. These errors that are made in the invoice process create a huge backlog where sometimes the entire business gets paused temporarily. To verify where it went wrong, some extra resources need to be allocated. This automation process reduces such human errors and maintains data accuracy in the entire process.
3. Cost savings
By using this no-code platform, organizations can enhance their cost reduction in several ways. Automating the workflow can reduce the number of resources in the basic repetitive tasks. These resources can be utilized to create new customer engagement which may lead to more revenue for the organization. Likewise, some fraudulent payments can be identified immediately and reported immediately, reducing losses.
4. Reduced delay in payment processing
While most human activities need time to complete, automation software can complete all those activities more quickly. In manual activities, delays can occur because of mistakes, information missing, and lack of communication. These delays can lead to delayed payment processing, misunderstanding with vendors, and at some times, may result in financial penalties too. So, automating these accounts payable may reduce the human intervention and the delay in payment processing which may lead to good vendor relationships and resources that can focus on more critical tasks.
5. Transparency
This automated accounts payable enables the user to store all the data such as purchase orders, invoices, and goods received notes in the same place. So, everyone with the right access can view the data whenever needed. Also, this software allows communication between all team members and the other departments. This feature enhances the visibility of the data and makes the workflow easier.
Additionally, this automation has another feature which is analyzing and reporting. This gives real-time insights into the status of each transaction. If there is any delay in the processing, it can be identified immediately, and proper action can be taken at once. This reduces the risk of missing any follow-ups at the last minute.
6. Data security
Data security is one of the most important factors in cash handling. This software allows only the authorized resources to enter the site and view the data. So unwanted data access is denied here. Also, it provides end-to-end encryption for the invoices, to reduce the fraudulent risks.
Role-based access rights can be given to the employees so that in the initial stage itself limited access will be given to the necessary resources. For instance, the entire CRM team will have access to view all the customer data, but only one CRM person will have access to edit the customer data. This ensures data security within the team.
7. Scalability
By automating the accounts payable, various tasks get reduced for the resources where they can concentrate on new lead generation or new customer engagement for further payment processing. This automated accounts payable can create numerous workflows with thousands of customers.
Conclusion
Accounts payable automation offers numerous benefits like enhanced efficiency, reduced processing cost, data accuracy, and easy accessibility. At the same time, it offers proper security for data with limited access, providing role-based access. Additionally, it can reduce risks caused by human error and enhance data accuracy. Considering all these benefits no businesses can avoid the accounts payable automation.
