All companies must process invoices. It’s just a part of doing business. To understand exactly how much invoice processing costs your business, you must look at the entire invoice processing cycle.

For some companies, processing accounts payable is a time-consuming, detail-intensive function. For others, it’s a quick and easy task.

The cost to process an invoice is the most basic metric, but in many cases, one of the more difficult to assess. The challenge is to obtain an apples-to-apples comparison of the process steps included in the cost calculation. Some studies include costs associated with routing, mailroom activities, copying and follow-up. This is where benchmarking studies can be particularly useful given their ability to employ a consistent definition in their cost analyses. Even with that consistency, cost studies show a wide range of operating results. One benchmarking study calculated the cost to process a vendor payment ranging from $5 to $26 an invoice, while another study cited the cost ranging from $4 to $14 an invoice. Interestingly, there is little correlation between the cost to process an A/P invoice and the size of the company.

The Problem

1. Too many manual processes

On average, businesses receive 63 percent of their invoices as paper. The rest are either through email, fax, or other electronic formats. In nearly all cases, when invoices are received via email or electronic they are copied and distributed.

Manually distributing and processing paper invoices results in lost or misplaced invoices, long approval and exception-resolution cycles, late fees, missed discounts and duplicate payments.

Filed Under: digital transformation, accounts payable automation

Transform accounts payable processes with speed, visibility and control

With AP departments today facing increasing volumes of invoices, greater process complexity and ongoing pressures to accomplish more with less, automating AP operations increases efficiency, streamlines invoice processing and delivers a fast return on investment.

Filed Under: digital transformation, accounts payable automation

Engineering a Successful Document Workflow

With the help of DocuWare, consulting engineering firm, American Engineering Testing Inc., automated its invoice approval processes, eliminating lost invoices and realizing cost savings from the ability to easily track documents through the approval process. With quick secure access to information, employee productivity has improved and document retention regulations have been met, limiting legal liability and positioning the company for future growth.

Filed Under: accounts payable automation, case study, document management

Water services network of dealers automates invoice approval and payment process

The Challenge

An organization with multiple dealerships and a central home office was struggling with their distributed AP process. Invoices received at each location were manually routed for several levels of approval, requiring manually tracking the invoices within the dealerships and delays in paying invoices on time to take advantage of offered discounts.  GL coding was performed on spreadsheets in a very manual method, with the invoices being sent via mail to the home office for final processing and payment.  Hardcopy invoices were later filed by AP staff at the home office, taking up valuable office space and time, while making subsequent requests time consuming and difficult.

Filed Under: accounts payable automation, case study, document management