How much time during the day do you spend doing the same repetitive, mundane accounts payable tasks?
We’d guess the answer would be the majority of your day.
Our third-annual State of Automation report said accounts payable was ranked as having the most manual work for the third year in a row.
If only there were a way to automate these tasks, giving you back hours in your day that could be redirected to growing your company.
Well, there is!
Gone are the days of working through countless piles of paper invoices or mailing checks.
Accounts payable automation technology enables the accounts payable team to remove manual steps from AP processes. Through accounts payable automation, your company will not only improve its relationships with suppliers or other business partners but also reduce its day sales outstanding.
Let’s dive in.
What Is Accounts Payable Automation?
Accounts payable automation software utilizes advanced technology, such as optical character recognition (OCR) and computer vision, to gather information digitally from invoices. OCR is the process that converts text or images into a machine-readable text format. Computer vision processes and recognizes images and videos similarly to the human brain—but does so more accurately and faster.
Many accounts payable automation products use machine learning to recognize patterns and improve accuracy over time. Implementing custom business regulations will also help eliminate manual accounts payable processes and ensure you have control over your system.
Benefits of Accounts Payable Automation
AP automation is revolutionizing the way businesses process and pay their invoices. The benefits of accounts payable automation are numerous. Key benefits include time and cost savings, improved efficiency, increased accuracy, and built-in compliance.
Time savings is one of the most significant benefits of accounts payable automation. By eliminating the manual tasks associated with invoice processing through automation, there are fewer human touchpoints. This results in minimal time the accounts payable staff has to spend on invoice processing. This allows them to increase their productivity and improve overall efficiency while reducing the labor costs the company usually endures for the extra time spent processing manually.
Automated processes eliminate the risk of human error, increasing the accuracy of payments. Human errors that resulted in duplicate or fraudulent payments are no longer a threat to a company that automatically validates invoice data, ensuring errors found in payments are flagged early in the process.
With accounts payable automation, not only will human errors be flagged promptly, but compliance rules will be fully built into the system allowing for transparency so risks and instances of fraud could be tracked, minimized, or even prevented.
What to Look for in an Accounts Payable Automation Solution
Now that you’re (hopefully) sold on implementing accounts payable automation, you need to be confident that the software you choose will accurately and efficiently automate your accounts payable processes.
There are many mature solutions in the market to handle traditional AP tasks, such as the approvals workflow and the payment process. Many modern ERP and accounting applications natively provide this functionality or partner with best-of-breed marketplace providers to deliver approvals and payment workflows.
More recently, a new class of AP solutions has emerged to handle the “last mile” of email engagement with vendors and suppliers. These conversational systems use Natural Language Technology (NLT) to collect information from external suppliers and update records within the accounting system. Modern intelligent apps for finance and accounting will read and “understand” the intent of an email request and will provide the requested information — all without human intervention.
The benefit of conversational bots is to handle a wide range of requests, thus freeing finance professionals to focus on higher-level projects. From the supplier’s perspective, requests are handled quickly and thoroughly, 24 hours a day, dramatically improving vendor satisfaction.
Get Started with Auditoria SmartVendor and AP Helpdesk
Ready to get started with accounts payable automation?
With Accounts Payable being ranked as having the most manual work for the third year running in the annual State of Automation in the Finance Office report, Auditoria has built a set of tools to revolutionize AP workflows.
Built on Auditoria’s SmartFlow Platform, Auditoria SmartVendor leverages Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cognitive Robotic Process Automation (CRPA), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Natural Language Processing and Understanding (NLP/U) to overhaul your procurement function while smoothly executing AP and Vendor Management business workflows. Additionally, Auditoria even checks for data completeness and will re-query contacts for additional information.
Auditoria’s AP Helpdesk increases the finance office's speed, accuracy, and efficiency using AI-enabled SmartBots to automate redundant and manual monitoring of the shared AP email box. Data gathered from interactions is captured with reporting that provides analysis and insights to derive greater cash position transparency and visibility.
Download the State of Automation report to learn more about accounts payable automation and automation across the Finance Office.