With a projected market value of US$ 6.7 Billion by 2032, AP automation solutions are increasingly vital for organizations seeking to streamline their accounts payable processes, saving time, cutting costs, and minimizing errors.
Here is what we will cover in this post:
- What’s AP automation
- What are the benefits of AP automation
- Features and tasks that can be automated
- How does AP automation work
- Embedded AP automation vs Stand-alone
- AP automation for Oracle JD Edwards
- SCANMAN AP Automation
What is account payable automation?
A solution to revolutionize your AP department operations.
Accounts payable (AP) automation revolutionizes the operational landscape of AP departments by eliminating the reliance on manual processes and paper-based workflows. An AP automation software lets companies streamline their invoice processing, thereby optimizing financial operations and fostering enhanced collaboration among teams. We saw that successful clients who opted for AP automation witness an impressive 80% increase in efficiency.
Despite the prevalence of traditional AP practices that have historically served businesses well, a deeper examination of modern AP operations reveals the necessity for automation to match the rapid pace of business growth. Implementing AP automation isn’t merely about replacing outdated methods; it’s about realizing substantial cost savings, minimizing manual data entry errors, and amplifying overall efficiency. By reallocating resources previously dedicated to labor-intensive tasks, companies can redirect their focus towards efforts that yield higher returns, facilitating accelerated scalability and a competitive edge.
Implementing AP automation isn’t merely about replacing outdated methods; it’s about realizing substantial cost savings, minimizing manual data entry errors, and amplifying overall efficiency.
What are the benefits of accounts payable automation?
Experience 80% increase in efficiency
Accounts payable (AP) automation offers plenty of advantages, ranging from heightened efficiency, time savings, and cost reduction to improved vendor relationships and enhanced visibility and control. Take a deep dive into the primary benefits your organization will gain upon implementing an AP automation solution:
Streamlined Workflow
AP automation alleviates manual workloads by automating invoice processing, liberating AP department personnel from repetitive tasks and empowering them to concentrate on high-value activities.
Fortified Compliance and Audit Trails
By enforcing standardized processes, maintaining meticulous audit trails, and seamlessly integrating with accounting systems, AP automation ensures enhanced compliance with regulatory mandates and internal policies, ensuring control and audit capabilities.
Enhanced Visibility and Control
Accounts payable automation grants real-time visibility into invoice and payment statuses, empowering finance departments to monitor transaction progress, pinpoint bottlenecks, and easily address any arising issues during invoice processing.
Improved Accuracy
Traditional manual data entry poses a risk of errors, potentially causing delays and discrepancies in financial records. Through automated data capture and validation, AP automation mitigates error risks, ensuring precision in both invoice processing and payments.
Dispute Management
AP automation facilitates timely payments to suppliers, promotes effective communication, and enables prompt issue resolution, cultivating trust and improving supplier satisfaction.
Exception Handling
AP automation detects various issues within invoices, such as missing information, duplicate entries, pricing discrepancies, or deviations from established business rules. Once an error is pinpointed, a notification is sent to the designated approver, initiating the resolution process.
Overall Improved Efficiency
By streamlining the entire AP process, AP automation boosts efficiency, slashing the time and effort needed to manage transactions. This leads to faster processing time and reduced manual workload.
What are AP automation features? What tasks can you automate?
Effortless Efficiency: automate error-prone operations
AP automation software serves as a powerhouse for streamlining numerous tasks within the AP department, offering crucial features aimed at lightening the load of AP personnel and automating tasks. Let’s explore the key tasks that can be automated by AP automation software.
Data Recognition
AP automation seamlessly scans invoices received in multiple formats (PDFs, images, XML, emails and more). Typically, the document undergoes scanning by an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine or AI-powered software, which identifies diverse invoice details.
Invoice Matching
AP automation software streamlines the processing of PO-based invoices, automatically matching them against their corresponding purchase orders (two-way matching) or against both the purchase order and order receipt (three-way matching). This functionality is pivotal in AP operations as it determines whether a supplier invoice should be approved for payment. By automating this process, staff members are relieved of the need for manual review, only requiring intervention for unmatched details.
Approval Workflows
AP automation empowers a company to accelerate processing lead times through the utilization of predefined approval workflows. These workflows can be tailored to align with the organization’s approval hierarchy, business rules, and compliance requirements. Additionally, automation enables the sending of notifications or alerts to approvers, informing them of pending invoices awaiting approvals.
Integration with Accounting Systems
Following the approval of invoices, the AP automation software seamlessly syncs with the ERP system to commence payment processing. The approved invoice is recorded in the system, and payments are scheduled in accordance with the organization payment terms. For companies utilizing JD Edwards as their ERP system, SCANMAN stands out as the native AP automation solution for JDE EnterpriseOne. This integration enables you to remain within the Oracle stack, implementing automation without incurring excessive costs or necessitating extensive staff training.
How does AP automation work?
Automatic invoice processing
Organizations leveraging AP automation can streamline the entire invoice processing workflow, significantly reducing manual tasks to exception handling only. Upon receipt of an invoice in PDF, Email, or XML format, it undergoes OCR (Optical Character Recognition) processing, which extracts data from the invoice. The extracted information is then automatically validated and compared against the ERP master data. Next, the invoice undergoes matching with purchase orders and goods receipts, or it is automatically routed to the appropriate team or individual for review and approval. After the completion of the invoice processing, payments are scheduled according with an organization payment terms, all invoices undergo auditing and are securely stored, ensuring their availability for future financial audits.
Embedded solution vs Stand-alone
Subtitle
There are two primary types of AP Automation solutions: embedded and stand-alone. An embedded solution seamlessly integrates with the organization’s ERP system, eliminating data synchronization challenges and ensuring decisions are based on a unified source of truth. Installed directly within the ERP environment, this automation matches data in real time against master data, enhancing accuracy and efficiency. In contrast, stand-alone solutions may face integration issues with the ERP, potentially resulting in errors caused by delayed data synchronization. This scenario often necessitates the management of ERP complexities outside of the ERP environment, adding an extra layer of complexity to the automation process and increased risk of errors.
AP Automation for Oracle JD Edwards
Make the most out of your ERP
Accounts payable automation for Oracle JD Edwards (JDE) involves leveraging software solutions to streamline and optimize the AP functions within the JDE environment. This approach offers numerous benefits. Firstly, AP automation seamlessly extracts invoice data and automatically populates fields within the JDE system, eliminating manual data entry. Secondly, automated workflows can be set up according to predefined rules and hierarchies within JDE, ensuring smooth processing and efficient approval cycles. Additionally, automation ensures compliance with regulatory requirements by enforcing standardized processes and maintaining a detailed audit trail of all transactions within JDE. Therefore, implementing AP automation for Oracle JD Edwards results in increased efficiency for the organization as a whole and specifically within the ERP environment.
SCANMAN AP Automation for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
The native accounts payable automation
If your company relies on Oracle JD Edwards, SCANMAN is the AP automation solution you’ve been seeking. As a native solution, SCANMAN seamlessly automates all AP processes within the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne environment. Fully embedded within JD Edwards, it eliminates data synchronization issues, enabling you to remain within the Oracle stack while ensuring continual updates with the latest JDE functionalities. SCANMAN AP Automation for JD Edwards offers a comprehensive digital solution for processing vendor invoices, efficiently collecting invoice data, and automating approval workflows. Check out all the AP Automation functionalities and explore its wide range of functionalities and learn how to effortlessly streamline your accounts payable operations for maximum efficiency.
AP Automation Key takeaways
AP automation represents a valuable solution for companies of all sizes and industries, essential for keeping pace with the rapid growth of modern organizations. By minimizing manual processes and paper-based workflows, AP automation significantly boosts efficiency, enabling companies to reallocate resources towards activities with greater potential for returns.
Automating accounts payable processes has benefits not only for the AP department but for the entire organization, facilitating faster scaling and maintaining a better competitive edge.
