Are You the Company’s Invoice Guru? Here's How to Improve Your Processes

The reality for many small and midsize businesses is that their AP best-practices reside on the shoulders of the (often) lone employee who is the AP department. If that resourceful individual is you, it may be difficult to find the time to do anything but inputting and processing invoices. And it’s probably rare for you to make it all the way through a vacation without getting a call from someone at the office who’s frantically trying to locate an invoice.

Immunize your company against AP disruption

Going to an automated invoice processing system like Concur Invoice can free you to work on other important business initiatives, and help your organization continue to function when you’re on vacation or out for an extended period of time. Manual AP processes are time-consuming and expensive enough when they’re functioning. The costs of having to de-code or reinvent a jerry-rigged AP system can pile up quickly — in fire-stomping labor costs, late-payment charges and missed discounts, duplicate payments, dinged credit ratings and supplier ill-will.

In a study of companies that have gone from manual invoice processing to automating with Concur Invoice, IDC found that, on average:

• The total processing time per invoice dropped by 53% and staff time required to process one invoice decreased by 64%.
• Productivity improvements for AP staff equaled a savings of $7,537 for every 1,000 invoices processed. 
• Vendors received payments 51% faster and the number of delayed payments fell by 67%.
• IT staff time required to manage invoice management solutions fell by 29%. 
• The overall annual business benefits from productivity improvements, avoiding late-payment penalties and getting early-payment discounts equate to $14,953 for every 1,000 invoices processed. 

Read the full IDC whitepaper to learn more about the business value of Concur Invoice 

Another benefit of automating AP with Concur Invoice is that it can improve employee satisfaction with the teams responsible for managing vendor invoices. The IDC report quoted a client saying: “It has definitely saved employees time because otherwise they would be sitting in a taxi doing nothing. They used to have to submit invoices when they were back in the office and are now more productive with their time. They are able to have more visibility, and visibility is the first step in managing costs. Also, staff morale has gone up. We can retain people because we have better systems and processes.”

With Concur Invoice, you and your AP staff can:

• Use invoice capture to quickly get invoices into your system so you no longer need to manually enter invoice data
• Sync all POs, invoices and payments with your accounting system on the back end
• Approve invoices and expense reports from your mobile devices
• Vendors can access a supplier portal and see their payment status and remittance information, preventing the “where’s my money?!” phone call

The time to automate is before you wish you had

See how Concur Invoice can lower your costs, accelerate invoice cycle-times, improve visibility into spend, and boost morale in your AP department. And if you are that indispensable invoice guru, you’ll still be revered—for all the things you’ll be able to do when you’re no longer behind a stack of paper.

Download the full report to learn what you can save by automating.