Over the last decade, forward-thinking companies have adopted AP automation to automate the paper and manual elements of processing invoices and making payments. These software solutions integrate with their accounting software and enable the accounts payable department to streamline workflows and reduce processing costs.
Are you interested in learning more about how AP automation and payment automation can benefit your company? Do you have questions about electronic invoicing and payments or what the differences between automation and document management are? You’ll learn all that and more by downloading a new, free eBook, AP Automation for Morons. It serves as a crash course on accounts payable, accounts receivable, electronic invoicing and payments, and how AP and payment automation can revolutionize the way your company manages their payables. Even if you aren’t an accounting expert, you’ll at least sound like one after reading the handy guide.
A few statistics to get you primed for all the in-depth information in the e-book follow.
48%
Fraud – Research has shown that paper documents and checks are leading sources for fraud because data is not protected. In fact, 48 percent of payment fraud can be tracked back to paper checks. According to a recent survey by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), nearly 70 percent of corporate respondents have been victims of check fraud.
2-3 Hours
Audits – Often an auditor will spend 2-3 days with an organization, searching through drawers spilling over with paper invoices. In an automated system, however, it may only take 2-3 hours for an auditor to complete their task. By providing an auditor read-only access to your online portal, they can quickly search at random for any invoices they’d like to review and see the audit trail immediately.
44%
Processing Costs – PayStream Advisors’ research indicates that the average cost to process a transaction is 44 percent higher when performed manually rather than through an automated system.
21 Billion
Paper Checks – According to the Wall Street Journal, there are over 300,000 small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the United States that have yet to automate their payment processes. U.S. companies lag behind their counterparts in Europe, Japan and Brazil when it comes to ePayments. In the article, U.S. Companies Cling to Writing Paper Checks, it states, “American businesses and consumers wrote 21 billion checks in 2012, according to the Federal Reserve.” That’s more than four times as many checks as were written that year in the European Union’s 28 member countries!