Enterprises that wish to automate some or all of the accounts payable process face something of an uphill battle when beginning from a manual, paper-based state. Many suppliers are reluctant to submit anything except a paper-based invoice, which can include PDFs emailed as attachments, or to put up the money in order to convert their systems to submit electronic invoices. This is why it’s sometimes beneficial for enterprises to take steps internally in order to cut paper out of the invoice-approval process as much as possible. That’s where scan-and-capture invoicing comes in.
Scan-and-capture solutions can offer significant benefits from a financial and operational perspective. Enterprises willing to implement such solutions stand to gain process efficiencies as well as the opportunity to maximize financial value from the accounts payable team. Scan-and-capture solutions are very much worth a look—particularly if your organization still has a manual workflow. Enterprises that are unsure of whether to examine scan and capture, or find it necessary to convince management, below are three reasons scan and capture tools are valuable to the enterprise.
Eliminate Data Entry
In AP departments where the invoice approval workflow is still mostly manual, staffers spend significant time keying invoice data into the accounting system and checking the invoice against other documents like the purchase order or the contract. Scan-and-capture solutions almost entirely eliminate this process. AP staffers are able to scan an invoice into their computer, run it through the capture algorithm of the solution, and data is instantly pulled from the invoice into the accounting system. In some cases, that invoice data is also already matched against supporting documents. This is a significant time savings over manual data entry.
Faster Invoice Approval
It takes an average of 12.4 days to process a single invoice, according to recent Ardent Partners research. Much of that time to approve the invoice is tied to the manual nature of many AP processes, including data entry and the act of invoice approval itself. Scan-and-capture solutions, by their nature, simplify invoice entry and matching, but what many solutions also do is automate approval workflows. This reduces the amount of time invoices spend in the approval process, which results in faster approvals and a higher likelihood that the enterprise will capture early payment discounts.
Cost Savings
Simply put, it costs less to process an invoice when that invoice takes less time to approve. Scan-and-capture solutions take significant cost out of the enterprise, both with eliminating the need for data entry/matching and automating approval workflows. In fact, 85% of respondents in Ardent Partners’ 2014 ePaysbles research use scan-and-capture solutions, which marks a clear positive for the technology. Considering that the fully-loaded invoice-processing cost of top organizations is an average of $2.42 per invoice, according to recent Ardent Partners research, it’s clear that automating invoice-processing is a key financial differentiator.
Final Thoughts
Scan-and-capture solutions have the potential to save enterprises money without causing significant ripples outside the organization. In some ways, this can be tremendously valuable to the enterprise wanting to take a step toward eInvoicing without going fully into a native eInvoicing system right away. Besides the obvious benefits of eliminating data capture, speeding up invoice approvals, and the cost savings from an improved process, scan-and-capture solutions can be implemented without—in many cases—an extensive supplier enablement process. All of these reasons are significant, and can make it well worth any enterprise’s time to seriously consider a scan-and-capture solution.
Check out these related articles for more information:
The Value of Scan and Capture: How Does It Work?
The Value of Scan and Capture: Problems and Solutions
5 Critical Ways Scan-and-Capture Takes Cost Out of the Enterprise
