What Should You Expect from AP Automation?

Capturing invoices. Auditing. Routing. Approving. Paying on time. With accounts payable, there are plenty of steps where things can go sideways. Where what should be a straightforward, efficient process bogs down into manual tasks, doublechecks, and corrections that consume time and money. 

Amid those breakdowns and tedious tasks, your company can lose the accurate and timely picture of spending required to seize opportunities, mitigate risks, and manage cashflow. Spending decisions become moments of uncertainty instead of moments of confidence.  

A key time to do better 

While having doubts about whether expenses are worthwhile is always a concern, the consequences of such doubts – and the inefficiency and possible waste fueling them – deepen amid inflation and fears of a global recession.  

As economic turmoil tightens budgets, fully automating accounts payable processes can provide businesses the efficiency and insights to weather disruptions. And to thrive when times improve. 

The Best Invoice Management Choice

It’s time to tackle this spend area. Our checklist will help you identify what the best solution should offer.

Get the checklist

What should an AP automation solution do for you? 

Knowing the gaps and weaknesses in your AP processes is one thing. Assessing the automation options and what they offer is another matter. Our new checklist, The Best Invoice Choice, can help guide the conversation. 

An all-too-familiar challenge for most companies is capturing all the invoices and expenses coming in. Sales seminar costs, utility bills, and other spending that evades traditional procurement process can complicate the process and consume resources to nail down. An end-to-end digital solution can close the gaps and curtail the weaknesses. 

Here are some questions to think about if considering adding AP automation or enhancing the automation you already use: 

• Can it automatically match purchase orders, invoices, and payments, uncovering problems before vendors are paid instead of after? 
• Will it automate processes to speed payments and earn early-pay discounts instead of late fees? 
• Does it incorporate AI and machine learning to improve accuracy and efficiency, so your team can do value-adding work instead of tedious tasks? 
• Does it provide an accurate, nearly-real-time view of cash flow and give you insights that guide better decision-making? 
• Is it scalable and supported by a company that continuously improves the solution to incorporate new technology and meet new business needs? 

How can Concur Invoice meet your needs? 

Substitute Concur Invoice for the “it” in the questions above, and the answer to each – and many others – is “yes.” Another resource from us, 6 Reasons Concur Invoice is Right for You, explains how our solution delivers that answer. 

Businesses using our AP automation solution can: 

• Capture expenses quickly and accurately with character recognition, AI, and other tools. 
• Have a seamless, end-to-end process extending from purchase requests to supplier payments for goods and services. 
• Find all their spend data in one place through integrations with ERP and other systems. And it’s visible and comprehensible via dashboards and reports. 
• Meet the challenges of change, disruption, and growth. Concur Invoice and our portfolio of business solutions undergo continuous improvement, and we continue to add partners and extend options – VAT reclaim, for example. We’ll scale as you do. 

That’s enough from us. Consider what some of our customers say: 

• “Prior to Concur, one invoice would take 17 days to approve, and it would cost the university roughly $130. That invoice now takes four days to approve, costing us around $4.” 
• “Concur allowed us to streamline the whole progress and process of an invoice through payment. Adding Concur Invoice has decreased the amount of time that I’ve spent chasing down paper invoices by 50%.” 

Explore AP automation, Concur Invoice further 

Get a copy of The Best Invoice Choice to learn more about what you should expect – and questions to ask about – from an AP automation solution. 

Then get our brochure, 6 Reasons Concur Invoice is Right for You, for closer look at how our SAP Concur solution meets those expectations and can limit that doubt that can creep into each spending decision.