How AP Payments Solutions Free AP Staff Time

How much time does it take your AP (accounts payable) team to effectively process a supplier payment? And what does it add up to in one week? Or a month? Do you want all those precious hours back? Of course, you do. Using Finexio for modernizing and streamlining accounts payable payments, many businesses have managed to slash the time it takes for processing supplier payments considerably.

Which is more crucial to running a successful business — cash flow or employees? Your answer will likely be “both” most of the time. It is difficult to run a successful company, big or small, without both a healthy cash flow and an excellent team.

However, at times, in the interest of better cash flow management, many companies force their employees — particularly accountants and finance teams — to invest more time and effort only to have good data. The problem is that in doing so, these businesses put undue strain on their resources.

It is no secret that manually managing your accounts payable is considerably draining, and it takes skills and valuable time away from the most productive tasks. You can devote this time to more important tasks in your company.

According to a report, 95 percent of SMEs still rely on some type of paper-based, manual process in their accounts payable department. Although many businesses know that AP automation solutions can help them save time and enhance their bottom line, adoption remains painfully slow.

In our modern and tech-driven environment, automated processes, such as accounts payable payments automation, have the potential to make many of our daily business processes more streamlined and efficient.

A manual approach to AP payments, on the other hand, creates several inefficiencies and disadvantages, like slower processing times, low visibility into your business processes, and higher labor costs, among others. Regardless of your industry, from manufacturing to retail, you are, like most businesses, probably looking to work smarter and not harder. Note that manual AP processes are not conducive to that.

We know that justifying new investments is one of the valid concerns for modern businesses. The good news is that using Finexio for streamlining AP payments will not just simplify your AP process, but also generate an excellent return on investment and improved control over the AP process immediately. Our solution works with any accounting system, enhances cash management, and slashes costs by optimizing the most efficient and effective payment method.

How AP Payments Services Save Time

Time is money — this is particularly true when you consider your AP department and automation. Comprehensive AP payments services will save your company both time and money. That is a given. Also, keep in mind that manual processes tend to increase the risk of errors.

Streamlined AP payments with Finexio save you valuable time as the AP solution can take care of most things for you. With a good AP solution, you don’t have to worry about reconciling all of the things that are on your books.

Streamlines Manual Tasks

Your business can use our AP-Payments-as-a-Service solution to eliminate the hours involved in handling payments, handing that burden to technology backed AP payments experts. With the effective implementation of accounts payable automation, organizations have reported an increase of as much as ten percent in the total number of invoices processed in a single year. Accounts payable departments in organizations that automate invoice capture and payments end up saving an average of 1 hour per day. The best part is that accounts payable automation can often pay for itself within 6 to 18 months, on average.

Manually paying all suppliers usually requires hours of filing, sorting, and processing. Your employees have to perform various mundane tasks, like checking all invoices, getting payment approval from senior management, writing checks, and then filing the paperwork. Leveraging a solution like Finexio’s, on the other hand, frees up your AP staff for more value-add tasks for the company. This also reduces cost-of-labor-per-invoice.

When you automate your AP process, you will also be able to track each supplier payment throughout the approval process. As a result, your employees will not have to spend their valuable time searching for payments, payments statuses, remittances, etc.

With modernized AP solutions, all the relevant information is just a few clicks away — with the transition of traditional check payments to electronic payments, all your vendors will be able to receive their payments faster and more securely.

AP Payments as a Service Means Fewer Mistakes

Human beings are susceptible to mistakes, and mistakes can take time to fix. It is worth noting that spending too much time on a specific task can disrupt your entire company, and no one wants that. Your employees will end up fixing the wrong tasks, mainly due to other people’s errors.

However, if you automate your AP process by leveraging technology and services such as those provided by Finexio, you can free your personnel to invest their time and effort into real work, leaving error and mistake handling to those systems and services, translating into more productivity at both the individual and organizational level.

In accounts payable, efficiency is key — remember that the less time your staff spends on repetitive tasks and fixing errors, the more time they will have to look for vendor discounts and other methods to save your company money, especially in the long run. This is the hallmark of a high-functioning AP department. In addition, your employees will be able to look for various improvements in the accounts payable process in order to help your business continue to grow and flourish.

Accounts payable software and services dramatically improve productivity — allowing you to process invoices faster, and reduce coding errors and manual data entry. Also, there are no misplaced or lost payment vouchers to worry about, meaning that your approval cycle time is minimized, and payables are easily routed automatically and instantaneously.

Save Time during Audits

Note that the same accounts payable automation reporting and tracking features that enhance cash flow management also ensure that automating your AP processes creates detailed audit trails, approval histories, and flexible security models. Also, AP software and services, such as Finexio, store all your relevant information in a space-saving and easily-searchable electronic format that you can access anytime. It is evident that the ease of information retrieval can simplify audits, speed them up, and slash associated costs.

As a result, with accounts payable automation, your audit will be less time-consuming and even cheaper. Remember that governments around the world and in the US are digitally transforming their tax-reporting as well as financial reporting processes. At the same time, federal and state regulations place more requirements when it comes to record retention and record storage. This is where AP automation really helps. Automation of AP processes results in overall smoother processes.

Your employees cannot skip or forget steps, and everyone in your company has the same workflow for paying and processing invoices. This is why with AP automation in your company, auditors can have quick access to all of your accounts payable data and will not have to dig through old paper files, search for lost documents, or look at approval initials or signatures on pieces of paper.

Therefore, not only will your audits be much smoother and time-saving, it will be simpler to maintain compliance with various federal and state regulations, like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).

Final Thoughts

The benefits of accounts payable services solutions are well-documented. With Finexio, you can trust and be confident that you are choosing not just a smart, reliable, and scalable technology and for your business, but also a respected and trusted business that values streamlining your processes to your specific preferences and needs to help you save time and money across the board.

For more information, you can contact us here.