What Is The Biggest Cause Of Late Payments On Invoices?

With the help of my connections on LinkedIn, I gathered the data on the most common reasons for late payments. Thanks, by the way, if you were one of the many people that responded to my survey.

The most common reasons were ones you would probably guess. And cashflow was not one, which surprised me. The most common reasons were errors on invoices, lost invoices, and waiting for approvals.

Invoices getting lost we can understand, maybe they were email to the wrong person or they were caught in the spam filter. Or it was mailed in and the paper work in on someone's desk. We can understand and relate to a small percentage of invoices getting lost for one reason or another.

And errors or questions on invoices are common. Maybe there is a quantity in question or understanding who ordered something. We all expect a small percentage of errors and questions on a invoice.

But why is getting invoices approved such a big problem?

If you are like many companies, you are attempting to get approvals manually. Either by printing the invoices and routing them to the approvers. Or you are attaching the invoices to an email and sending them to the approvers. This is a lot of work. And should it be your job to babysit the approvers?

You should have an automated invoice approval solution!

An invoice approval solution will:

• reduce time to set out approval requests
• automatically route invoices to the proper approvers
• check for duplicate invoices
• check for potential fraud
• automatically remind approvers who have not approved their invoices
• ensure that all invoice approvals follow your policies and procedures
• give you an audit trail
• speed up the approval process to ensure invoices are paid in a timely manner

If you are interested in learning more about invoice approval automation you can find it here: Accounts Payable Automation Software (hemingwaysolutions.net)