The use of software to manage invoices for accounts payable, match invoices to associated documents, and update information in your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is known as automated invoice processing.

This process can be automated to help you speed up invoice approvals, lower processing costs, and decrease errors. An automated system will allow your staff to use their valuable time to work on higher-value projects due to the time benefits.

1. Time Savings
2. Cost Savings
3. Cash Flow and Performance
4. Efficiency Improvements
5. Seamless Compliance

Automate your invoice process and reduce your handling costs by as much as 80%

Start Saving Today

Here are five reasons to make automated invoice processing a top priority for 2022 if you’re exploring it:

1. Time Savings

Many steps in a normal invoicing process are repeated, including the following:

• Capture, apply general ledger (GL) code, and match supporting documents such as a purchase order and/or delivery receipt
• Send invoices to authorised approvers to approve or reject
• Authorise and submit invoices for payment in a financial system
• Process invoices for payment via cheque or bank transfer
• Archive invoices and payment information for audit purposes

Additionally, if there are any discrepancies in the documentation, there may be some back-and-forth between the customer and the supplier prior to clearance.

Depending on whether there are any problems or delays along the way, this very manual accounts payable procedure can take anywhere from 30 to 90 days per invoice.

Using an automated system, on the other hand, allows you to approve invoices in minutes, reducing the requirement for human involvement and greatly shortening the payment cycle. According to reports, almost 90% of businesses in Western Europe and the United States record regular late payments.

Simply upload or transfer the invoice into an automated system, which uses advanced validation and auto-matching to minimise the need for extensive human intervention, to optimise your invoice processing. You’ll have more visibility and faster processing speeds as a result of this.

2. Cost Savings

“Time is money,” we’ve all heard it said.

Invoice handling is no different.

You can save money on labour, printing, and postage, as well as interest rates and late penalties, by using an automated invoice system. There is an immediate return on investment because invoice processing expenses can be reduced by up to 80%.

This means that businesses can save a lot of time, money, and effort by simply not having to deal with, process, and reconcile invoices from their suppliers.

3. Cash Flow and Performance 

You’ll have more cash on hand if you implement an automated invoice processing system. By reducing costs and expediting payments to suppliers, you’ll have more money to invest in new business endeavours, employee training, expansion, or improving your company’s product offerings.

Furthermore, it means that your employees may now concentrate on higher-value duties rather than tedious paper-based tasks.

4. Efficiency Improvements

Human error is inherent; according to a Billentis e-invoicing analysis, between 20% and 30% of all bills “must be treated as exceptions in some way.” According to the survey, erroneous invoices account for roughly 15% of late payments in Western Europe.

At all phases of the process, automated invoice processing will aid in improving invoice accuracy, process control, accounts reporting, accountability, and transparency. Furthermore, increased archiving allows you to preserve, examine, and compare previous invoices in a single area.

You can find and analyse any component of your accounts payable process at the press of a button from any place because all of your invoice data and details are stored in one area on the cloud. This is critical for any business with employees that work remotely or in a hybrid approach.

Your accounting team may focus on other tasks by using an invoice processing solution, resulting in increased productivity. Your business will be able to expand with the help of an automated system. Your staff can handle a growing number of invoices while maintaining high levels of accuracy.

5. Seamless Compliance

The invoice is an important record for showing tax conformity, and most tax audits happen years after the individual business transactions took place.

When using paper documentation, invoices are much more likely to be forgotten and lost. Companies frequently post copies of papers online after processing them to avoid this. While this eliminates the need for physical paper storage, it adds to the work and can result in additional delays and mistakes.

Automated invoice processing reduces expenses while ensuring tax compliance and legal security. For the time period specified, all relevant documentation is securely saved together.

Go with SmartOffice Accounts Payable

SmartOffice Accounts Payable [AP] is an automated invoice processing solution. AP is a sophisticated, powerful cloud-based electronic Accounts Payable solution that can save you up to 80% on invoice processing costs. The workflow becomes completely touchless, allowing for remote collaboration, approvals, and complete transparency.

You won’t have any more lost invoices, accounting problems, accounts put on hold, missing VAT reclaims, or avoidable overpayments with an automated system; instead, you’ll have a systematic, streamlined method for handling all incoming invoices.

SmartOffice’s smart invoice processing technology allows them to simply grab the invoice from your supplier’s email and process it immediately into your accounting package. Printing invoices, sorting them via the mail, forwarding them for approval, and matching them to the relevant purchase orders [PO] are no longer necessary. Accounts Payable Solutions are part of SmartOffice’s Integrated Digital Office Technology.

How SmartOffice invoice processing works:

Step 1: Suppliers email their invoices to a specially created SmartOffice email account.

Step 2: Data is then extracted from your suppliers’ email invoice to that email inbox, before being coded, processed, distributed, approved, and stored.

Step 3: SmartOffice Accounts Payable Solutions updates your accounts, reconciles them with your statements and automatically searches for any missing invoices, while never losing any of your documents.

Features of SmartOffice AP solution:

• Price Watch: Can be set to monitor price movements and fluctuations between invoices.
• Purchase Order Matching: Can link your PO system with SmartOffice AP to display the PO, match to the right invoice and automatically process the document.
• GRN Matching: Just as with the PO matching, SmartOffice AP can display and/or automatically process invoices that match GRNs.
• Statement Reconciliation: Reconciles the statement against processed invoices with just one click. Any missing invoices will be immediately requested.
• Delivery Confirmation: A delivery confirmation can be set on any invoice with discrepancies automatically sent to your supplier for resolution.
• Dashboard Screen: Our user-friendly dashboard shows you at what stage of the approvals process.
• Document Tracking: Invoices within SmartOffice AP that require approval are tracked, illustrating whose approval is required and how long approval is outstanding.
• Full Knowledge Approval: When manually approving an invoice, the user has access to all the information required to make the correct decision.
• Nominal Ledger Coding: Automatic NL coding can be based on any/some of the following: supplier, line item, PO detail, manual overriding, and branch or project coding.
• Issue Checking: SmartOffice AP facilitates ongoing checks for many possible issues and retains the invoice for your review/editing as required.
• Search and Storage: SmartOffice AP stores all processed invoices for 7 years and provides an extensive search facility for users.

Get In Touch & Book Your Free Demo

For more information on our invoice processing software, get in touch now:

Get More Info


Start Saving Today

We do More Than Just Invoice Processing…

As part of the Cantec Group, Docutec are the leading printer suppliers Ireland has that sell products such as business printers, Canon multifunction printers, office photocopier printers, large format printers, office printers, document scanners and high volume printers. Some of our other services include printer lease, secure print, managed print services and document management systems.

Leading Printer Suppliers Ireland

We Have Plenty Of More Blogs

Have you wondered how to choose a print for a small business? Then read the perfect article written by our team. Or are you in the business world for a couple of years or decades and looking to learn about the advantages of cloud storage? Then great, because Docutec can help.

The advantages of office automation are an area we are questioned about every week as it is the heart of our business. Once the benefits are explained, loads of businesses sign up, helping them save time, money, and resources. For more interesting blogs about managed print services, office automation tools and printers, click on the blog section to see what we have in store.