Digitising, automating and securely archiving incoming invoices
The average cost to manually process an invoice is $22.75. The average time it takes to process an invoice is 16.3 days. This ends up costing your business in the form of labour, late fees, and printed paper cost.
A study by American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) that the most efficient companies spend about $0.71 to process an invoice. The leas efficient spend $11.50.
A study by the Helsinki-Aalto University School of Business found that using electronic invoices can reduce the circulation time of invoices between receipt and payment by an average of two days.
A study by Ardent Partners shows that the cost of invoice processing can be slashed by over 80%, and that the time it takes to process an invoice can also fall by some 80%.
Digitising invoices allow accounting teams to take advantage of a machine learning system to check invoices and use automated workflows to approve invoices. This speed up the process considerably. As a result, invoices are paid faster, and early payment discounts or other rebates can be gained. Late fees can also be avoided when invoice verification takes place in digital fashion. With digitisation, documents are processed faster and with far less cost.
In addition, there are numerous other benefits of digitising invoices:
Invoices can come from anywhere: emailed PDFs, XML-only transmissions, faxed documents, even mailed paper. No matter what the source or format, the document management system intakes the invoices and starts the process of “reading” them.
DocuWare‘s Intelligent Indexing recognises each entry and line item, and transfers it as metadata to the new ‘table’ type field. Each line item can be assigned to different cost centres while gathering all the necessary approvals.
Once the document management system intelligently indexes the incoming invoice and understands its content and purpose, it can use key index data like vendor, purchase order, address fields, totals and more to automatically decide how invoices should be processed.
With digital workflow automation in place to ensure invoices go to the right people as efficiently as possible, the next step is invoice approval, including escalation. Feature-complete document management systems will use workflow logic to expedite the fastest possible approvals with minimal exceptions.
The final step is securely archiving invoices in a legally compliant manner. The invoice is archived in the document management software with retention policies applied. These retention policies are extensions of workflow and dictate when documents can be safely destroyed.
A study by International Data Corporation (IDC) describes how employees spend vast amounts of time processing, storing, archiving and searching for paper documents. IDC estimates that a company with 1,000 employees has nearly 213 individuals whose time is spent managing too many paper documents.
The risks and downsides of paper documents are well known and documented. Eliminating paper yields clear benefits.
Imagine no more filing cabinets, fewer printing devices, and shelves of storage reclaimed from paper and toner supplies. Less shipping, less photocopying, less filing and searching. The first advantage is a cleaner, brighter, more spacious office.
Automated workflow makes the right content accessible at the touch of a button whenever and wherever you need it. It takes only seconds to route and share documents across multiple departments and systems.
Custom access controls and digital data security make it easier and less expensive to maintain compliance and reduces the likelihood that missing documents will result in fines or lost revenue.
Information is only seconds away with a quick search — no more putting people on hold to dig through folders. Deliver the speed and quality of support your customers and vendors deserve.
Using digital workflows instead of paper results in greater transparency, allowing management to monitor business processes in real time for smarter decision making.
If you have a “green” initiative in place, one of the easiest ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to print, ship and store less paper. Introducing digitisation to any part of your business can reduce reliance on tedious, manual tasks and help your organisation go paperless.
Audits are much easier with digital invoice processing. Documents in the document management system are available at all times, are archived in a legally secure manner, and can be retrieved at any time in a highly organised manner to support even the deepest audits. This can help avoid fines for missing documents.
Available as a preconfigured cloud solution. Fast to launch, fast to value.
Our solution for invoice processing is available as a cloud-based, preconfigured solution that provides everything you need: workflows, document templates, user profiles, security configurations and more.
To learn more about how an invoice processing solution can help your business, get in touch to organise a personalised demo and a free 30-day trial.
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