The Magic of AP Automation

Somewhere in an office not so far from here, there is a company that gets all their work done without touching a piece of paper. Invoices are routed through a structured electronic workflow where they could easily be reviewed and approved—even remotely from a mobile device. Managers are notified if any documents are held up too long so the bottlenecks can be immediately addressed. When it comes to sending invoices out to their customers, they simply need to print a batch and all of the documents are sent via email or to the printer.

AP automation and integration to ERP has been moving to the top of the wish list for many because of the resulting cost savings and increased productivity. Walking a physical document around the office for approval and coding improves its chances of getting lost, buried and not processed on time. Maintaining file cabinets and off-site storage of documents is expensive and inefficient—plus, it makes auditing much more challenging. The benefits of moving toward electronic document storage and workflow are numerous and amount to huge savings.

So where do you get started? There are many “paperless” solutions available that may or may not be the best fit for your company. Some of the main questions you will want to ask right off the bat are:

• Is it integrated? For full AP automation, integration to your ERP is crucial to capture documents and leverage data. It’s important that you take a look at what the integration actually looks like and investigate the document management vendor’s relationship with your ERP vendor.

• Is it scalable? You don’t want to end up outgrowing your solution in a few years, so it is helpful to find out what the entry-level solution looks like and how it can scale up from there. Make sure it meets your immediate needs as well as future needs that may surface.

AP automation isn’t magic, but it is a great way to decrease processing times and save costs. To learn more about integrating AP scanning workflow into your ERP system, please feel free to contact me at (805) 963-7811 or skorosy@bpw.com.