Fortunately, keeping an eye on the well-being of employees and departments within your company as a whole is becoming a larger priority for business executives. The recent pressures of doing business during the coronavirus pandemic, dealing with a global supply chain crisis, and dealing with the impact of territorial conflicts and environmental disasters, to name a few, have placed unprecedented stress on individuals attempting to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
So, let's take a look at accounts payable, invoicing management and processing, which are some of the most important corporate operations for keeping a healthy cash flow.
The Importance of Recognizing Invoicing Fatigue Warning Signs
The importance of invoice management, which includes processing, delivery and payment collection to cash flow and liquidity cannot be understated. Anything that goes wrong with this process, or even just slows down the AP process, should be highlighted as a threat to the company's overall performance.
It's critical to think about the health of AP teams. Burnout can lead to health problems, and important competent workers may leave your accounting department, affecting your ability to get bills out and payments in on time (and adding to the workload stress of those who remain).
Recruiting new AP personnel takes time, money, and worry that no one likes to deal with — especially when recruitment conditions are as difficult as they are right now. Which is why you will see more and more businesses moving towards AP automation.
The following five indicators indicate that changes should be done before a detrimental impact on cash flow and business performance occurs.
Invoice creation is done manually
Invoice generation has traditionally been a time-consuming manual procedure, with paper invoices taking a long time to print and mail. Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and we see an increasing number of companies adopting invoice automation, electronic invoicing, or at the very least issuing bills via email.
Data from the ERP system should drive a contemporary invoicing process, and invoice production should be automated whenever possible. Oversight, exception handling, and decision-making should all be done by humans. Examine how much time is spent on any manual tasks involved in producing and sending invoices. Examine AP automation methods to improve efficiency and reliability, particularly when dealing with a remote workforce.
Manual uploads to invoicing (AP) portals
The necessity to manually upload, or re-key, invoices into clients' invoicing systems is perhaps the most typical issue inside an AP department. The push by accounts payable (AP) departments to adopt electronic invoicing, citing the potential for significant cost savings and process efficiency advantages, has moved the burden of obtaining invoice data into the correct format to suppliers.
Human mistake, inquiries, disputes, and payment delays can all come from having to enter into a customer's AP site and upload invoice data in the format they demand. It's time to look into solutions to automate invoice uploads to AP portals if you're finding that more and more customers require invoices to be manually uploaded. Save your AP team's skills and time for more important work by relieving them of this tedious task of invoice management.
Complex rules govern who gets what, when, and why.
Invoice management can be a complicated process, with invoices needing to be routed to different persons or groups depending on what was purchased, how much it cost, and where it came from. Small business owners may be able to rely on AP team members' expertise of who needs to be sent what, when, and how.
ERP systems must integrate with electronic invoicing, presentation, and payment (EIPP) systems that can automatically handle the rules-based delivery complexity. Otherwise, it'll only be a matter of time before the wrong invoice is sent to the wrong person, in the wrong format, at the wrong time, putting you at risk.
If your AP department relies on person know-how or complex systems to search up rules for what goes where, when, how, and why, it's time to look into solutions for automating the routing process. More information is available in our white paper on invoicing outside of an ERP system. To simplify these complexities AP automation solution provider such as Skyscend take come in as big support with their efficient AI and cloud native system.
Spending time pursuing down payments
Regrettably, not every invoice is paid on time. In fact, as per research in 2021, late invoices accounted for 50% of the total amount of all B2B bills in many countries.
Many AP teams' day-to-day operations include chasing funds, but how much of this may be automated or even prevented by sending timely reminders prior to payment deadlines? Consider ways to streamline and automate this process, or perhaps outsource it as part of a managed service agreement, if your staff is spending an increasing (or uncomfortable) amount of time chasing payments.
AP automation solution provider like that of Skyscend are extremely prompt in this regard as they have both email and WhatsApp notifications integrated in the system which makes the task of following up and getting timely payment seamless.
Stressful cash flow forecasting and reporting
The capacity to effectively anticipate cash flow from month to month can be harmed as a result of the variability in invoice payment timings. To make expenditure decisions without jeopardizing liquidity, financial leaders require accurate cash flow forecasts.
Cash flow and payment metrics should be simple to monitor and provide a high level of confidence when making financial decisions. EIPP platforms and AP automation solutions can help to speed up reporting and provide more visibility and certainty to help with cash position analysis.
If you have noticed any or all of these signs in the functioning of your AP team it is time an upgradation is in line. The world is moving faster and thus your team slowing down would only mean your business missing out the opportunity in the market. AP automation is the solution to cure and even prevent the companies from going into invoice fatigue.
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