Chapter Three: Ways AP Automation Boosts Your Business

You’ll go a long way towards mastering the fundamentals of AP automation if you understand how the technology can boost business performance. To help, we’ve listed below several important ways, along with insights on why these ways are so crucial. Let’s dive in.

Ways AP Automation Boosts Your Business

• save time
• reduce costs
• gain more visibility and control
• receive automatic notifications to approve invoices
• reduce fraud risks
• speed up and simplify auditing
• gain more time for finance team to focus on value-added projects and
• reduce mistakes.

Save time

You’ll reduce the time you spend entering invoice data, matching paper purchase orders to paper invoices and sales receipts, and chasing down people for approvals.

Gain more visibility into invoices and payments

You’ll get better visibility into payments and invoices. You’ll be able to see, for instance, exactly when an invoice got submitted and paid or easily check on its status from wherever you are using your smartphone or PC. You’ll also have real time-access to historical invoice and payment data so you can track the status and use the information for insights into customer trends.

Receive automatic notifications to approve invoices

If a CEO, for example, hasn’t approved an invoice but needs to, AP automation will send an electronic notification to the executive with a reminder to click “approve.” This is more efficient than a paper process in which a person would have to remind the CEO by phone call or email.

Reduce fraud risks

When you use paper checks and invoices, it’s easier for fraudsters to steal your corporate information. Removing paper from the process makes it more difficult for fraudsters to access and use your data. Your corporate data will be more secure and it’s less likely to fall into the wrong hands because it’s stored in the cloud.