Chapter Seven: Making a Compelling Case to Automate AP

Deciding whether to invest in automated AP for paperless processing comes down to one key question: Will the investment generate a positive return on the investment – known as “ROI”?

In making this determination, it’s smart to consider three factors: saving time, improving service to internal departments and reducing fraud risk.

Saving time

One of the biggest benefits of AP automation is its ability to save your team time.

In fact, Goldman Sachs estimated AP automation can drive up to 80% time-savings for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).

But how does an automated solution cut so much time out of the invoice and payment cycle, and what does that actually means for the business? Here are three key areas:

• Reduces time accessing data
• Removes the burden of receiving and capturing invoice data from your team
• Can speed up payments and approvals

Improving service to your managers and approvers 

Some clients get most of their ROI by improving the AP approval process for their internal customers. Simply put, automating AP reduces the amount of time leaders spend to approving invoices. Instead they can dedicate more time to selling and delivering revenue-generating services to customers.

Reducing fraud risk

When your company becomes victimized by payment or invoice fraud, you typically lose money, customers, or your good reputation – or all three at once.

AP automation decreases fraud risk by reducing paper checks and increasing both visibility and internal controls.

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