How Can Businesses Automate Accounts Payable?

Automation has grown increasingly popular as companies seek to reduce costs and streamline processes. Accounts Payable is one area where automation might be beneficial.

Every company requires an efficient approach to manage its cash flow. Manually managing your company’s finances might lead to errors and mistakes. A lack of accounting control can also have a negative impact on your liquidity.

AP automation can help businesses save time and money by automating the invoicing process and reducing the amount of manual effort required. In this article, we will guide you on how to automate accounts payable and the advantages associated with it.

Introduction — Accounts Payable Automation

Accounts Payable Automation is the technology-powered process of transforming manual operations associated with handling a business’s accounts payable into automated workflows. This includes everything from receiving an invoice to paying the final bill.

AP automation solutions use cutting-edge technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Deep Learning (DL) to minimize human intervention, eliminate mistakes, and speed up transaction processing.

Automate Accounts Payable Workflow For Your Business

Here are a few ways through which you can make the most out of accounts payable automation for your business.

Employ e-invoicing

The initial step in the accounts payable workflow is to receive and record supplier invoices. A minor error at this stage of the procedure can lead to major problems later on.

To lessen the manual effort involved, you may employ e-invoicing instead of collecting and submitting paper invoices. Employees just need to download a receipt scanning app to their mobile phones. The accounts payable automation software utilizes optical character recognition (OCR) technology to transform paper documents into digital format.

This decreases the possibility of invoice misplacement and provides account payable experts with easy access to expenditure data.

Simplify the approval workflows

Invoices can get stuck in the approval process, causing bottlenecks. Moreover, without any transparency, you might not get any idea why and where the invoice is stuck.

However, with accounts payable automation, you and your team can view the progress of each invoice on an online dashboard. People involved in the expense approval procedure are always notified of the required action, which reduces processing time. After receiving an expense report, an approver can either approve, edit, reject, or return the expense.

Eliminate manual data entry

The accounting team manually enters data, but this procedure involves risk factors as humans are prone to errors. However, accounts payable automation software’s OCR technology enables efficient document digitization. This eliminates manual data entry, and the cloud-based system stores it for easy retrieval.

When you reduce manual work, you also cut down on processing times and expenses. Moreover, you also reduce the possibility of errors, which could lead to incorrect audits or analyses.

Streamline invoice matching

Invoice matching is the time-consuming process of locating the appropriate invoice corresponding to the correct payment and receipt. The company ID and all other details must be authenticated before closing the invoice.

Hence, set up an automated system that assigns a unique ID to the party requiring payment. The matching invoice can then be connected with both the ID and the paid amount.

Simplify bill payment

It is important to keep track of when bills are due and when they are paid, but it is a time-consuming job. Automating bill payment guarantees that invoices are delivered on time and efficiently in appropriate amounts.

Conclusion

Automating accounts payable is a strategic move that can lead to significant improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and overall financial management. Whether you are a small business looking to streamline operations or a large enterprise aiming to enhance compliance and accuracy, AP automation can be a game-changer.

If you are searching for a trusted partner to automate accounts payable processes, Zenphi can be your preferred choice! With Zenphi’s reliable accounts payable automation software, you can improve your cash flow management and reduce your operating expenses and times significantly. Contact today and experience how Zenphi can elevate your business operations!