AP Automation Aftermath: The Benefits
Post AP Automation Project Benefits (The Pain Is Worth It)
Ah, the pain of going paperless. The grumpy AP Clerk that stomps her foot and says “I want my paper”. The sweat rolling down the AP Manager’s temple as they hit the green light on the scanning project to go to production. The smiles at the end of the first week, and the “That wasn’t so hard after all.”
There are always bumps in the pavement on the road to any digital AP Process. It takes a while to get the kinks out of the process, and create a “humming” invoice scanning process. It’s funny, but we mostly focus on the process improvement, speed and efficiencies gained on what we call the “front end”, or the ingestion and extraction of information from paper invoices. But there is a whole separate set of benefits that comes from creating a digital repository for later access. Below are some key benefits, post process:
- Rapid Search and Retrieval – Now that invoices are in digital form, and are full-text searchable, you now have the power of instant access at your fingertips. Need to see all invoices processed on the last two days of the month…BOOM. Want to see all invoices where widget XYZ was ordered in March…BA-BING.
- Audit Heaven – Need to provide auditors with a specific set of selected records? Just search for the documents you need, and export to a drive or network location. No more printing or copying required (insert cost and time savings here).
- The Purge – No more file cabinet and record purge parties. With advanced invoice repositories, you can now, with the click of a button, archive off older records according to your records retention policies.
- Security for Records – now your accounting records are secure, and can be restricted to only those that need access. Folders will no longer wander away, and disappear forever (or sit on someone’s desk for a week).
- Shared Access – With security in place, and an online repository created, other departments can be given access to records, which is a huge help for over tasked accounting clerks. This is an even bigger benefit in companies with a centralized HQ and branch offices that require record access.
This is a just a short list of “Aftermath” benefits from the initial pain of an AP Automation. Did I miss any? Take a look at my first post here for the front-end “Benefits of AP Automation”.
Tags: AP Automation, benefits, invoice processing, scanning