Six Ways to Ensure Your Invoice Process Works for You

With new opportunities to review financial processes, shifting how you do things to look at what works – and what doesn’t – is the secret to riding out a storm. By creating processes that increase efficiency, save time, and give you more visibility into spend, your organization can remain flexible and adapt to change.

In a recent GBTA survey 96% of businesses describe the impact of COVID-19 as “significant” to their business. As budgets are being squeezed, wherever possible, cash flow needs to be preserved and businesses still need to be paid. Which makes this a good time to speed up and streamline invoice capture, approvals, and processes. Here are five things you can do to ensure your invoice processes continue to run smoothly during a time of disruption.

1. Do Things Digitally: A digital invoice process eradicates the pain of trying to track down the right person to deal with an invoice, when popping over to their desk is no longer physically possible. Automatic prompts are sent digitally to the right people to review and approve invoices, so you don’t have to worry about chasing them around.

2. Eradicate Duplication and Fraud: During times when controlling costs is critical, it’s important to stay ahead of any fraudulent invoices that might slip through the net. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem for an automated system which can scan for unusual or duplicate supplier or order details, noticing when an invoice isn’t matched to a Purchase Order. Ultimately, it improves accuracy and saves time by sifting out only those invoices that require manual review.  

3. Get On-The-Go Approval: A mobile app allows users to review invoice details and approve purchases from home, then send it on to the next person or alternatively assign it to an alternative approver in their absence. A process that can drag on for weeks, especially if people are working from home and are more difficult to contact, can be reduced to only a few hours.

4. Automate Policy Adherence: At a time when people are being asked to work under extraordinary conditions, it’s important to ensure that the out of ordinary spend isn’t automatically processed. Automation allows you to introduce extra controls and configurations to ensure this doesn’t happen and improve adherence to policies. You can also build triggers and alerts into your system to reduce the risk of overspending and allow employees to check the status of their invoices.

5. Keep It Personal: Even in these unsettling times, your suppliers still need to be paid. Or if they are not going to be paid on time or via the usual channels, you need to communicate that to them at the earliest opportunity.

6. Spot Trends to Adapt: Managing supplier invoices is not an island within an enterprise’s spend management. When this data is integrated with employee expense claims and travel spend, a business gains greater visibility into which departments need more budget, where there are surplus funds to redistribute, where better deals could be struck with often-used suppliers, and if there are any areas of overspending.

See the full picture with SAP Concur

Concur Invoice gives you the visibility your business needs to remain nimble, while speeding up payment times, so you can avoid late payment fees and manage spend proactively. Most importantly, it integrates with other SAP Concur solutions, such as Concur Travel and Concur Expense, into one single, connected process, creating even greater insight into company-wide spend.

And with SAP Concur solutions your business can reach even further, using our targeted partner apps that bring much needed automation and control to everything from VAT reclaim and mobile spending to industry specific tax and regulatory requirements.

Finally, a large, global network of support teams is on hand to ensure that your business comes through this time unscathed and stronger than ever.

To learn more about how to streamline your invoice and AP processes, checkout Concur Invoice.