Stay On Top Of The Stack With Invoice Automation

If you want to get on top of your accounts payable and receivable, discover how invoice automation can truly transform your operation. As you know, manual invoice processing is incredibly time-consuming and inefficient, especially if your growing business is managing high volumes of accounts. Switching to outsourced invoice automation could save you considerable amounts of time and money, help you manage cash flow and most importantly, provide an auditable trail for the status of each invoice from the moment it’s received.

The benefits are immediately noticeable as you free up staff time, increase productivity, immediately process payments and enable better downstream accountability. You’ll also enjoy greater overall control of your processes with added valuable insights of daily automated reporting. Automated invoice processing won’t just be of benefit to you, but be mutually beneficial for your suppliers with payments made on time, every time.

Time saved is money earned

A study in the UK by Aberdeen Group found that automation can take invoice processing time down from an average of 20.8 to 3.8 days. That’s a difference of 17 days. Time-saving is just one of many advantages that faster invoice processing can deliver to your company. More importantly, invoice automation can help you keep track of what needs to be paid in order of priority. You could save money and avoid late fees by making sure your payments are made by their due date. When it comes to accounts receivable, you can flag which invoices are outstanding or overdue and set payment reminders for reliable revenue. If you’re worried about downtime from the implementation of a new processing system, automation software can be integrated seamlessly and quickly so you can start using it to your advantage straight away.

A Transparent Solution

Outsourcing your inbound invoice processing to a professional business process provider doesn’t mean opting for external accounting. A professional automation solution is designed to integrate with your current systems, improving both your capacity and efficiency. A tailored automation solution can give you central control from a cloud-based system for remote, real-time access whenever you need it. When it comes to the monitoring of hundreds or hundreds of thousands of invoices that are spread out over different departments, accountability is divided. By using one service provider with a vested interest in the success of your business, you benefit from a single source of trust and transparency.

Streamline Accounts Payable & Receivable

No matter how an invoice arrives through Accounts Payable, whether it is through email, an online portal or via post, invoice automation software can immediately capture and upload the document. This enables the creation of a workflow where all invoices are validated through set business rules, improving downstream accountability. Automation software can match invoices to a purchase order number and send them along to the appropriate approvers. It can also automatically reject and flag fraudulent or duplicate invoices. The recipients can authorise or halt payment, or flag the invoice for investigation. Everything in the process is recorded so if questions are raised about the status of an invoice, you can review all touchpoints since receipt and immediately escalate for action.

Accounts Receivable Our solution at Micro Image is to receive physical cheques via mail, capture and index all the details and then upload the digital files and data for clients to reference against their debtors when reconciling the bank payment, plus bank the cheques each day to the relevant bank.

Superpowered Software

The capabilities of automation software have to be experienced to be believed. Micro Image proprietary invoice automation software is developed in-house, designed to integrate with your AP software. Intelligent automation software sorts, stores and integrates data with your current ERPS. Invoice automation includes the processing of paper and electronic invoices, tailored to your business rules, validation requirements and approval processes. This provides you with a solution that eliminates manual data entry, dramatically reduces cost-per-invoice processing and removes duplicate or double handling of invoices.

As your system can be cloud-based, hosted and housed with remote access available from multiple devices, your team members can view invoice status and generate reports anytime, anywhere. Built-in optical character recognition (OCR) and intelligent character recognition (ICR) automatically captures critical document metadata. This can recognise company ABN’s, invoice dates, invoice amounts, line item details, purchase orders, bank account details, receipt numbers and job numbers.

Want to know more?

Micro Image has successfully implemented automated processing solutions for clients including major corporations such as Asahi, Cadbury, Schweppes, Mondelez, Carlton United Breweries, Toll Group, Repco and more. Please contact us to find out how we can help you.