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Top tips to improve your invoice process: part two

27th Feb 2017
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In the second of a two-part series Dafydd Llewellyn, Managing Director, UK SMB at Concur, provides his top tips for improving an invoice process and showing the true value of an effective AP team.

Last week’s post discussed the importance of audits and reducing human error. This time the spotlight is on the tools needed to achieve your vision.

Keep the process moving with mobile

Your workforce is increasingly mobile, so it makes sense to give them the tools they expect and use in their personal lives. They don’t want to wait until they get back to the office to sift through their in-tray and find the invoice that needs approving.

By enabling them to review and approve invoices on the go from their mobile device, not only will the overall payment cycle be reduced, but approvers will also find it a much friendlier and hassle-free experience. Some solutions allow you to combine applications, like expenses and travel, so you can action everything from one app.

Put a stop to unnecessary costs

As the role of AP teams evolve, it is becoming ever more important for you to cut costs and find smarter ways of working.

There are three areas where you can make significant savings. First, make sure your payments cycle is as slick as possible, with quick review and approvals processes to avoid unnecessary late payment costs.

Next, make sure the overall process is speedy enough that you don’t need to turn to faster systems like CHAPS, which can have a real impact on your bottom line at around £30 per transaction.

Finally, ensure people are spending their time efficiently. Wasted time is a hidden cost and productivity losses can quickly add up.

Let your suppliers self-serve

Our research reveals that more than two-thirds of AP professionals deal with supplier calls about payment at least once a week. That’s a lot of time fielding calls on the status of transactions that could be better spent analysing spend and negotiating discounts.

Rather than wasting time on the phone, you should set up a mechanism that helps your suppliers get the answers they need, instantly. This could be as simple as automated email notifications updating them at each step, or you could even set up a dedicated supplier portal to allow them to check the status of payments without hassling your team.

Provide the data and reports your business needs

The number one priority for many finance teams is visibility into cashflow. So use tools that capture your invoices accurately at their source and make them instantly available online. You’ll get a far clearer view of your invoice spend at any moment and will be better able to budget accurately and make informed decisions using your invoice data.

Going further, you could integrate with employee expenses and other spend to finally get the full picture of your company outgoings. This means a full invoice trail for auditing purposes and the ability to provide meaningful insights to the leadership team to help with spending decisions.

Build a vision of change

By this stage you’ve identified the biggest process inefficiencies that steal time and focus away from your team. Now you’ll need to decide how best to redirect the AP team’s attention and make the most of all the extra time.

Create a vision of your ideal, high-functioning AP team and use it to underpin your proposal. There are any number of things you could do to add real value to the business, from correcting overspend and protecting cashflow to analysing the data to help make crucial spending decisions.

AP teams are much more than a back-office function – they can be business critical. But to contribute to their full potential they need to automate, transforming time-consuming, error-prone tasks into a well-oiled process that benefits finance, employees and the business at large.

Best of all, they can free up their time to focus on providing value by reducing operational costs, improving supplier satisfaction and helping make better spending decisions.

 

For more information, check out Concur’s whitepaper, ‘A 10-Step Guide to an Efficient Supplier Invoice Process

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