THAT'S HOW I IMPLEMENTED INVOICE AUTOMATION FOR 3 BUSINESSES HAVING AN ANNUAL REVENUE OF $542 MILLION

Online invoicing simplifies and speeds up the process of introducing new invoice templates, saving customers from dealing with stacks of paper invoices. At Invoicemate (https://www.invoicemate.net/), we automated Invoice processing, or AP automation, mechanized the invoice process without human intervention, and used accounts payable data to generate payment requests. Automated invoicing enables the rapid creation, transmission, and secure storage of invoices digitally, potentially streamlining billing processes and saving time and money while improving cash flow, making it a valuable tool for businesses to adopt.

Who can use Automated Invoicing?

Businesses, regardless of their scale, can reap the advantages of automated invoice processing, as this technology manages the entire invoicing cycle, from generating vendor invoices to reconciling payments, thus cutting down on both time and costs. Unlike, traditional invoice processing software, which often necessitates the physical delivery of invoices before data entry, whether electronically or manually, into accounting systems or ledgers.

Use Cases Where Companies Benefited Tremendously from Invoice Automation Through Invoicemate

1. Wholesale Grocery Chain

The company had recently re-aligned its goal to exponential growth without relying on additional staff bandwidth. Many small to medium-sized merchants were to be onboarded.

The existent Invoice Management system was old-school, manual, paper-based, dominated by human intervention, slow, and highly inefficient. Each document needed 14 touchpoints from reception through filing, with 10 to 11 people physically routing it to different departments. Consequently, a single document was handled in 8 days.

Considering the fact that the business received around 15k to 20k invoices daily, a huge chunk of time was spent to merely routing them through different departments. There was a rampant possibility of human error as each individual was handling almost 2.1 million invoices per year.

The result of Invoice Automation

Through Invoice Automation, the document handling time was reduced from 5 to 1 day, the resource requirement was reduced from 10 to 2 people and the mistake average was reduced from 27% to a staggering 2%.

2. Baking and Confectionery Business

The company worked in a wide product range: biscuits, donuts, bread, pies, milk, crackers, snacks, etc.

A serious concern for the business was the maintenance of the entry hierarchy data in the system. A separate worksheet needed to be maintained that had diverse approval hierarchies arranged by vendor types. Moreover, if an invoice surpassed an approver's threshold, the working resource would have to pause his / her work to determine who he should send it to next.

Additionally, the prior AP system couldn’t link with the Business’ ERP system causing issues with the bill syncing. This leads to more manual labor for precision in documenting data.

The Result of Invoice Automation

The Invoicemate’s Invoice Automation helped the business in the following ways:

• All the suppliers got a dedicated mail account which obliterated the need to manually process paper invoices.
• Time spent in capturing, processing, and verifying invoices was saved by just comparing them with POs. When the invoices were ready, they were instantly transmitted to the proper approvers.
• Invoice Automation also allowed the business to provide comments on rejection, minimize errors by 97%, and increase payment accuracy.

3. Healthcare Management

More than 2500 bills per month took 3 people 7 to 8 hours per day to manage the invoices manually at a healthcare facility. The real-time invoice status was also missing which increased the risk of errors and omission of invoices. Additionally, settlements were a tedious task as they involved 5 check runs each week which required printing and matching checks before submitting them to the finance manager for evaluation and approval.

The Results of Invoice Automation

The benefits were swiftly visible as the suppliers now sent all the digital invoices through email and those invoices flowed directly into the Automation Software through various channels and synced with the company’s ERP system.

Through rule definition at the resource level (manager, supplier) the right person perceived the right invoice for approvals.

Concluding Remarks

The primary aim of automating accounts payable is to enhance cash flow management by automatically matching sales invoices with customers and vendors, thereby reducing processing costs, enhancing accuracy, minimizing errors, and establishing a comprehensive audit trail for all transactions.

Beyond enhancing accounting precision, accounts payable automation accelerates bill payment processes, thus fortifying overall efficiency and timeliness. The more manual effort expended on invoice and payment processing, the less time available for other tasks. Moreover, frequent interaction with numbers increases the likelihood of human errors. If discrepancies arise in supplier invoices or payment processing, automated systems facilitate easier detection and correction.

Note

This is part of my product adventures related to Invoice management and Automation at Invoicemate. In the next articles, I will shed some light on how to do Invoice Automation, Integrating Crypto, and a lot of other stuff.

Please feel free to share your feedback and suggestions in the comments. ??