There are many problems with paper based AP, arguably the most significant is that it prevents lack of real time visibility over cash management, and tied skilled financial workers up with repetitive manual tasks when they could be contributing to more strategic business gains leveraging their financial insight. On a more tactical level amongst the benefits are:
- High invoice payment costs
- Errors introduced by manual keying
- Poor visibility over working capital liabilities
- Inability to correctly optimise use of working capital
- Slow invoice payment preparation times
- Missed early payment opportunities, or late payment fines
- Whilst automated AP does not achieve 100% automated invoice capture and processing; the ROI and enhanced capabilities it delivers will have a significant impact on the performance of AP within medium to large businesses.