Accounts Payable Automation Solutions

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

There’s a way better way to do invoice-to-pay

The efficiency of your AP team’s invoice processing method can have an enormous impact on operations across your organization, ultimately affecting your bottom line. Invoices are just plain painful, and companies usually tackle the AP Invoice Processing problem with more staff. If ignored, delays and inaccuracies in your AP process will create inefficiencies that ripple through your business, generating unnecessary cost, frustrating other departments, and straining vendor relationships. There’s potential for wasting time and creating errors throughout the AP process, including:

• Late or lost invoices
• Incorrect or inaccurately entered data
• Invoices without required purchase order numbers
• Difficulties retrieving invoice data or yearend 1099 reporting

One or more of these factors can take several days for multiple employees to resolve, and could hinder other employees, departments, or even end customers. No company wants to be known for late payments, and no company needs the notoriety of negatively impacting its vendors. The importance of AP process efficiency cannot be understated: it’s a business-critical matter that you should monitor and address on a routine basis.

To determine what improvements need to be made to your AP processes, first and foremost, look at your invoice data capture method. Examine steps that require paper or manual data processing, as they’re error-prone and take the most time and resources to complete. Chances are there’s at least some manual work involved as 58% of invoices are still being entered manually into AP systems in a typical enterprise.

There are numerous qualitative factors that you should be aware of as you evaluate your AP processes. While you can’t measure them directly, all have a quantitative influence on your department’s performance and your business results. Understanding these elements and their effects will reinforce your proposals for improvements to your bottom line.
For example, map out your invoice processing operations to gauge their complexity. You can start by listing the fundamental steps of any AP process, then break each individual step down into its components, such as the step’s resource, manual process or software used to facilitate or complete the step, and the time it takes to complete each step.
The fundamental steps of the AP process are:

• Invoice receipt and sorting
• Input
• Data extraction
• PO matching
• Verification of vendor details
• Invoice approval
• Invoice payment
• Auditing and 1099 reporting

As you’re going through your AP team’s workflow, you’ll need to find the answer to several questions, such as:

• Do you receive both electronic and paper invoices?
• What forms of electronic invoice are you receiving (e.g. doc, pdf, XLS)?
• How do the invoices get filed or inputted?
• Are you using more than one invoice delivery method (e.g. mail, email, FAX)?
• Does the same flow apply to all invoice formats, or do you have different flows according to format?
• Do you need to match POs to all invoices, or are you also processing invoices that don’t require POs?
• Are your POs standardized across your business, or do different departments have their own PO systems?
• Are all invoices centralized or stored in various locations throughout your organization’s network?

This is just a handful of the queries that will arise as you study your AP team’s invoice processing.

Once you’ve reviewed your AP processes and identified its inefficiencies, you’ll be able to clearly see opportunities for improvement. You may discover that your invoice data capture method is causing inefficiencies. One of the most critical steps in invoice processing is data extraction. A touchless solution that teaches itself how to capture information from multiple document formats accurately can boost AP efficiency considerably. There are capture product that scan and extract invoice information into searchable invoice PDFs like iCapture from inFORM Decisions routing captured invoices to 60+ systems. You can also streamline your AP operations by automatically printing checks or emailing digital documents to recipients on the IBM i using iDocs. You can also utilize your valuable electronic data and iForms to facilitate year ending reporting and 1099 forms electronically. Kickoff AP invoice workflow using our iWorkflow solution to map the steps from the point at which goods are received to the point at which invoices are paid.

Unleash your team’s efficiency with iDocs suite of accounts payable solutions and say goodbye to filing cabinets and lost invoices. Accounts payable process automation frees your team from the manual AP tasks that are slowing down your business, all while giving you greater control over your spend management with the click of a button. An automated Accounts Payable solution can help an organization reduce costs, keep more of their hard-earned profits and keep employees happy and productive.

Ready to take the leap? inFORM Decisions has a series of advanced AP and Invoice Solutions that are affordable for any size business, and any size AP department. Contact us today for your ticket to a streamlined paperless invoice process.

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Streamline Your AP Process

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

Improve your AP Process

Nearly every business deals with Accounts Payable

Oftentimes, the processes in the AP department are heavily paper-intensive and time-consuming. In fact, for most businesses with manual processes, it takes roughly 16 days just to process one invoice. This ends up costing the organization in the form of labor, late fees, and printing and paper costs. An automated Accounts Payable solution can help an organization reduce those costs, keep more of their hard-earned profits and keep employees happy and productive.

Pain points our solution addresses

If anyone in your organization is saying any of the following, then you can benefit from our document capture solution:
• Manual AP processes are slowing down turnaround times and my AP department is
falling behind.
• Our invoices are rarely paid on time and we are almost never able to take advantage of prompt pay discounts.
• We need to be able to increase our processing but we can’t afford to hire more staff.
• Our manual processes are costing us too much in labor and human error.
• Our AP staff is frustrated with the process and they feel like they can’t ever catch up.

Quick stats about manual AP processing

• Average cost to manually process an invoice: $22.75
• Average time it takes to manually process an invoice: 16.3 days
• Percentage of companies with manual processes that can take advantage of prompt pay discounts: 16%
• Cost in labor to find a misfiled document: $120
• Cost to reproduce a lost document: $220

Quick stats about automated AP processing

• Average cost to process an invoice with automated process: $3.40
• Average time it takes to process an invoice with AP automation: 6.1 days
• Percentage of companies with automated processes that can take advantage of prompt pay discounts: 47%
• Automated AP processing greatly reduces or eliminates the issue of lost documents and errors

What can an organization gain from improving its accounts payable department?

• Increase the overall productivity of Accounts Payable staff by eliminating or greatly reducing manual data entry
• Reduce the amount of hours staff spends processing invoices
• Eliminate or greatly reduce the issue of lost invoices
• Trade in late payment penalties for early payment discounts
Example: If your company processes $10 Million worth of invoices and gets 2% net 10 from 80% of your vendors, and you are able to take advantage of the discount on all of them, you’d save $160,000 on your invoices.*
• Reduce the cost of processing an invoice and save significant money in the long-run
Example: The average cost to process an invoice manually is $22.75. If you manually process 1,000 invoices per month, or 12,000 per year, assuming your processing is the same as the average, invoice processing costs your business $273,000 annually. If you switch to automated invoice processing, the average cost to process the invoice is about $3.40, so the cost of processing the same amount of invoices for one year is $40,800. That’s an annual savings of $232,200.*
• Improve the audit process

Who should be thinking about document capture as a solution?

• YOU
• Also…CEO, CFO, CTO
• Accounts payable department manager
• Key accounts payable employees and supervisors

Important features of the capture solution

• OCR to convert scanned documents into meaningful text
• Classification to automatically separate invoices based on vendor >> Accelerated Classification Engine to automatically classify documents and extract data during the workflow without the need for configuration in advance
• Auto Zone Creation to allow the capture solution to auto-place smart zones
• Table Extraction to quickly extract line-item data
• Migration to iView on the IBM I and 60 other ECM systems and the ability to send data to just about any ERP

* These numbers are examples based on averages. Actual cost savings will vary.

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Are you still processing invoices manually?

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

It’s 2020. Are you still processing invoices manually?

Invoices are just plain painful, and companies usually tackle the AP Invoice Processing problem with additional staff. If you are suffering from any of the three accounting headaches below, you have the opportunity to recoup thousands of hours of productivity in your accounting department.

1. Data Entry

Whether from printed invoices you receive in the mail or email attachments, AP clerks are often mired in the manual, repetitive entry of PO numbers, vendor info, invoice amounts, and line item detail. Did you know that all of the above can be automatically extracted from invoices, reducing data entry to near zero?
We say “near zero” because there are times when the data extraction software component of AP automation has trouble identifying a character. In these cases, the system will alert you, so it can be manually reviewed and entered. This is referred to as “exception processing,” which allows for quality control and greatly reduces the risk of error due to illegible print.
AP automation can also verify PO numbers, vendor info, invoice amounts, and line item detail automatically by running database look-ups in your accounting software or ERP system. If everything matches, the invoice can be processed without human intervention, referred to as “touch less processing.” If something doesn’t match, it gets kicked over to someone for review to correct any errors and/or contact the vendor if there’s a problem with the invoice.
AP automation can also automate the indexing process. Simply set up the naming convention, including what needs to be automatically populated from the document into the naming convention, and AP automation will automatically name each file so it can be stored electronically and instantly found later.

2. Manual Approvals

How do you get invoice approval today? From a plethora of emails? Perhaps from having to walk a document around the building for signatures? Do you have to mail it to managers in the field?
With AP automation, approvals are automatically routed and obtained electronically. If signatures are required, you still don’t need paper – you can obtain e-signatures in our system. Our software allows you to securely access invoices from multiple locations, further reducing the time needed to access and approve invoices. AP automation also records each action as part of an audit trail.

3. Printing & Filing

Do your employees print out invoices and back then up? Are older, physical documents taking up valuable space in file cabinets or somewhere offsite? AP automation completely eliminates the need for all of the above.
Once captured and processed, they are stored electronically in document management software, which serves as an electronic filing cabinet. Employees can then search and retrieve them based on indexed values or invoice content if you do full-text extraction.

Ready to take the leap?

InFORM Decisions has a series of advanced AP and Invoice Solutions that are affordable for any size business, and any size AP department. If you are looking to OCR and digitize your invoices, and create an invoice scanning/AP automation solution, you have landed at the right place. Our document capture software provides a layered approach to the invoice problem, helping you improve efficiency, making your invoices searchable through OCR and make your staff more productive. Competitively priced, truly scalable and uniquely versatile, we offer the ideal document capture solution. A single capture platform designed to meet all the needs of an organization, including document scanning and import, forms processing, data capture, OCR/ICR data extraction and the ability to migrate the information into a document repository.

Our comprehensive suite of AP automation tools can eliminate manual data entry, manual approvals and printing and filing with advanced document capture capability of PSIcapture, as well as the workflow automation and document management capability of iWorkflow or K2 business applications.

The best part: send us a sampling of your invoices, and we’ll show you how it works from soup to nuts. You’ll be amazed by how quickly our AP automation technology will process your invoices. Contact us today for your ticket to a streamlined paperless invoice process.

Call (800) 858-5544 / (949) 709-5838 or visit us at www.informdecisions.com for more information about our AP Automation solutions.

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Digital Transformation | Success or Failure?

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is essential to remaining competitive in today’s marketplace.

From improving internal processes to providing more efficient customer experiences, digital change is crucial to remaining relevant. However, resistance to change in the digital era can be detrimental to both morale and your business.
What does company culture have to do with adopting digital change? Company culture is closely tied to an organization’s beliefs and values. Frequently, these values have been established for many years and have played a role in the business’s success. Thus, these beliefs are deeply woven into the fabric of the organization. The culture has been long established, which can create an environment resistant to change. Company veterans might think: Our way has worked for us thus far—why change it?

So what can you do to encourage cultural change in your company and foster digital transformation?

Here are a few ideas:

1. Start at the top. The culture of the leadership in your company determines your company’s culture as a whole. Leaders must take ownership of digital transformation within their companies, demonstrating its importance to the rest of the organization. Their attitude will undoubtedly trickle down into the rest of the organization.
2. Utilize your employees’ desire for positive changes that allow them to perform their job better and reach goals faster. Identify the key players in your company who can use their influence to help you facilitate user adoption of new technologies and strategies.
3. Start small. It’s a massive cultural change when a company decides to implement changes. Don’t go in with the expectation of utilizing the solution in every department from the start. Narrow in on one or two departments where there is an immediate need for a capture solution and start there. Once the solution is well understood in that department and the staff is excited about the results, consider branching out to other departments. This creates favorable conditions for the staff to get accustomed to the entire process, and can be a good example for subsequent projects.
4. Continue the culture of continuous change. Technology is rapidly improving and will constantly change the way we perform our jobs. It’s important for businesses to take advantage of this forward momentum, instead of fearing it and resisting it at every turn. If you can transform your company culture into one that readily adapts to change, you will be one very significant step ahead of the competition.
5. Finding a solid partner is key for your project to succeed and support cultural change. The provider selected must be able to satisfy your business issues as well as meeting your requirements, such as the technology required, the payment terms and discounts, etc. Insure that you ask tough questions before purchasing that clarify the providers’ capacities as well as their commercial terms.

Company culture will not change instantly.

But over time, small, intentional changes can help your company culture evolve and progress toward digital maturity.

Need help?

Call (800) 858-5544 / (949) 709-5838 or visit us at informdecisions.com for more information about our acclaimed iDocs suite and iCapture products. We can assist you with finding the right products and providing the information necessary to address the cultural challenges, achieve digital maturity and a successful digital transformation.

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PSIcapture

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Uncategorized

What is it & why to use it?

PSIcapture: What is it & why to use it?…

Every business wants to be more efficient; we offer a software solution that significantly reduces the workload of most office workers that need to process documents and data. It works with practically any information system, such as document management, records management or line of business system.

The solution works in nearly any sized company and practically every vertical market or specialty. Leveraging the technology we offer, along with the technology commercially available in the cloud, it is truly scalable and has a very prompt payback.

The automated extraction of data from documents, and the movement of that data into any system, such as your ERP, CRM or Document Management system will save your staff members several hours each week, per person. The PSIcapture solution becomes a force multiplier and will allow them to focus on the more critical parts of their jobs, essentially giving them their jobs back. The end results also include you, or your company, deferring the next new hire to a later date and to do more with your current staff if you want.

We make your data do the heavy lifting

How? We make your data do the heavy lifting…

Today’s businesses are faced with the problem of making their information secure from intrusion while simultaneously making it easily accessible for employees. In an age where crucial company data is communicated in any number of formats—emails, faxes, mail, files, photos, attachments—harnessing all of a company’s data to truly make the most of it is a challenge. Companies are often swimming in valuable, actionable information that they want to use but are unable to profit from it due to outmoded processes. It’s an embarrassment of untapped riches, waiting to be claimed.

PSIcapture’s advanced document capture and data extraction technologies were developed with the real needs of businesses in mind. PSIcapture allow businesses to avail themselves of their information—from physical documents, digital files or emails, and even incoming faxes—by automatically extracting the important information, converting the documents to searchable PDF’s, and quickly routing it all to where it is needed.

How can PSIcapture help me?

How can PSIcapture help me? Document data saves time – and therefore, money…

The automated extraction of data from documents, and the movement of that data into any system, such as your ERP, CRM or Document Management system will save your individual staff members several hours each week. The PSIcapture solution becomes a force multiplier and will allow them to focus on the more critical parts of their jobs, essentially giving them their jobs back. The end results also include you, or your company, deferring the next new hire to a later date and to do more with your current staff if you want.

PSIcapture Proven Benefits

PSIcapture Proven Benefits…

»»Save Money.
The cost in labor for employees to spend time processing, searching for and/or reproducing lost files as well as the cost of printing and purchasing paper add up very quickly. The PSIcapture solution often pays for itself within just a few short months.

»»Rapid Accessibility.
Having quick but secure access to company documents is crucial to efficiently running a business. PSIcapture provides an effective, thorough and user-friendly way to capture your organization’s documents and seamlessly route them to a content management system.

»»Efficient Employees.
Improve your employees’ ability to access the information they need to perform their jobs. Eliminate busywork like manually keying information and rummaging cabinets for physical documents and you unlock their productivity potential.

»»Better Customer Service.
It’s more important than ever to ensure your customers have a positive experience with your business. Streamline your document processes, ensure your employees have rapid information access, and they will provide your customers with the best experience possible.

»»Security & Compliance.
Information is much safer and more secure when stored digitally than in physical file cabinets. Digital documents aren’t susceptible to natural disasters like fires or floods, and it’s much easier to ensure that only the right people have access to these documents. The PSIcapture document capture software has been used by numerous organizations that require secure processing and compliance with regulations such as HIPAA and FINRA.

Key Industry Verticals

Key Industry Verticals…

»» Education
»» Financial Services
»» Government/Nonprofit
»» Healthcare
»» Legal
»» Manufacturing
»» Business Process Outsourcing

Capture Solutions

Capture Solutions…

»» Accounts Payable & Receivable
»» Case Management
»» Claims Processing
»» Client & Customer Service
»» Human Resources
»» Mailroom Automation
»» Records Processing
»» Sales Department

Hands-free Advanced Data Capture

It all begins with hands-free Advanced Data Capture…

, our flagship product, is a robust document capture and data extraction application. With the ability to auto-process from 100 document images a day, to over 1 million per day, PSIcapture was developed as a scalable, lightning fast, rock steady tool to meet all the data collection needs of an organization, including email capture, simple document scanning and importing, forms processing, and more complex metadata capture and extraction. After extracting important indexing information, PSIcapture can then publish the images and/or data into any number of diverse business processing and storage solutions – including folders, databases, CRM’s, document management and content management systems.

PSIcapture is also built to be future-proof, therefore protecting your investment. Over time, organizations will use a variety of scanning devices and document management applications. PSIcapture has the flexibility to easily integrate with any scanning device, and with the press of a button, seamlessly route information to more than 60 DMS and ECM systems. No matter the size, scope or distribution of an organization, PSIcapture can make document processes easy, efficient, and best of all, fully automated.

PSIcapture Selected Features

PSIcapture Selected Features…

»»OCR/OMR/PDF
Use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to “read” an entire document and convert it into a searchable PDF. Use Zone OCR, or Optical Mark Recognition (OMR), to find and record specific information on any image for indexing purposes.

»»Multi-Core OCR

Pump up the volume with up to 16-Core OCR capability. For high volume users, under extreme deadlines, PSIcapture can increase processing speeds up to 12X the normal speed when OCR is utilized in a workflow. In other words, crazy fast!

»»Classification

Never again separate your documents before scanning, if you want. Most of the time, PSIcapture can be trained to automatically identify and separate documents, negating the need for pre-scan separation—a HUGE time waster!
(This is the most requested capability for Advanced Capture products, and we give it away for free, if you pay for everything else.)

»»eMail Capture

Companies can effortlessly have emails and their attachments automatically ingested, processed, and migrated to any number of final destinations. Simple to set up for administrators and no end user training required.

»»Table Extraction

Automatically identify rows and columns in documents; you know, the “stuff” about the “things” you ordered. We can extract each row as an individual record and post it to a database or accounting system for easier, faster processing. Time Saver!

»»Migration

Our fancy word for connectors to where the documents and data go to rest and get ready for business. “Out of the box”, PSIcapture can migrate to over 60 file formats, DMS, ECM, BPO, and CRM’s. If where you want everything to go is not on the list, ask, because we have been known to write new migrations, or create load files for easier importing.

PSIcapture Licensing

PSIcapture Licensing…

PSIcapture Scan Station:
PSIcapture licenses are concurrent and based on annual volume. The Enterprise annual volume concurrent licenses are shown below:
»»30,000 images per year
»»75,000 images per year
»»200,000 images per year
»»500,000 images per year
»»1,000,000 images per year
»»3,000,000 images per year
»»5,000,000 images per year
»»Zero count licenses remain (must be added to a restricted volume license)
»»Test license @ 12,000 or @ 120,000 images per year (limited one per company)
»»Custom volume sets can be licensed to fit requirements outside of our volumes listed here, contact Sales for more details.

Each of these is a single concurrent license, and the yearly volumes can be combined in any way. If you want to scan 260,000 images per year, you can buy one 200,000 license and two 30,000 licenses, which will give you three concurrent licenses and a shared image pool of 260,000 images per year. If you require additional users but not additional annual volumes, you can add a zero-count license to a restricted volume license.

If you are planning on using the auto-import option within PSIcapture, we strongly suggest you add one license to the required number of concurrent users. If you need 3 users, plus auto-import, we recommend you purchase 4 users, as the auto-import process will consume a license.

We also have an option to add to the above additional image counts, called non-recurring volume counts. Volume counts are a reserve bank of images you can purchase to do a large volume project, or to ensure that you can continue to scan if you exceed your yearly allocation. They are also nice for project based businesses, because you can buy an entry level yearly volume license and purchase volume based on what you need to process. Volume count licenses are ordered for the specific bundle that is chosen.

PSIcapture Term/On-premise Subscription:
PSIcapture licenses are acquired on a term subscription basis, meaning that the license will expire after an agreed-upon time. Our current term/on-premise subscriptions are available at 12, 36 or 60-month intervals. Our support and maintenance is included during the licensed term. Upon expiration of the license, your organization will be able to renew with a new interval or license configuration, as desired. Upgrades for additional users or volume amounts can be added any time during your term. We offer custom terms to fit requirements outside of the terms listed here. Contact Sales for more details.

PSIcapture Scan Only Workstation:
The Scan Only license is designed for high volume environments, such as mailroom, facility management or Service Bureau operations. The license is typically used where a dedicated license would be operating high-speed scanners or auto-import of images while creating new batches. This license does not include OCR or ICR engines (nor can it be added) so separation rules cannot include the OCR, ICR or ADE options.

Scan Only licenses are shown below:
»»200,000 images per year
»»500,000 images per year
»»3,000,000 images per year
»»5,000,000 images per year

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