Why CFOs should invest in invoice processing

Businesses have significant opportunities to save money and time in their finance department. The manual management of tasks within both the Accounts Payable (AP) and Accounts Receivable (AR) functions plague the department with inefficiency and elevated costs.

In this blog, we summarise the key reasons why CFOs should invest in automation technology for invoice processing. Including:

Organisations increasingly see the value of dedicated automation solutions to manage invoice processing.

Research by Ardent* has shown that for the fourth year in a row, the majority of invoices are now received as eInvoices vs paper-based formats (52% in 2023). Processing of eInvoices is far more efficient as these documents do not require rekeying into a compatible format for internal business systems/applications. Therefore, much of the manual processing required for ‘paper’ invoice documents, such as PDFs and scanned image files, is removed.

This is true for both AP and AR functions. Accounts Payable overhead costs can be reduced by implementing a paper-to-digital solution that converts all inbound invoice documents and routes them to the accounting system for approval. Transalis has found that AP automation can achieve an average ROI between 60 and 80%. Faster document consolidation and payment approval means businesses can also benefit from early payment discounts.

For Accounts Receivable, efficiencies can be found in the automated raising and sending of invoices in the correct formats. Automated AR solutions ensure connectivity between trading businesses, and eliminate unnecessary admin for the AR team. Automated compliance with tax regulations is also important for businesses operating in territories where eInvoice mandates apply.

Flexibility and transparency should be high on the agenda for any CFO looking into invoice processing solutions.

At Transalis, we have extensive experience in providing functional and scalable solutions for our clients. From our work on these projects, we put together a check-list for every CFO considering invoice processing solutions for their business:

Unlike other providers, we offer full flexibility on functionality with our eInvoice solutions, including type of connectivity (e.g. Peppol, paper-to-digital etc), choice of integrations, tax compliance (e.g. RTR), archiving, and additional support. And always with complete transparency on cost.

For example, AP Automation provides flexibility as it can convert inbound invoice documents of any format and from any sender. This means the business does not need to set up individual connections for each trading partner. Ultimately, these trading partners can change over time and even the format of the invoice documents can change, but these factors will not affect functionality. It also provides transparency, as this solution is also based on a volume model, CFOs can easily forecast costs using the calculator tool, which also highlights the forecast ROI.

Ensuring complete visibility is crucial to the maintenance of the finance department.

Tracking the status of invoices at any given time allows the team to react in the event of exceptions or other issues with rejections/validation/document matching. Dedicated invoice solutions offer this functionality with analysis, reporting and a record of all documents with a digital time and date signature. Archiving is also a key feature of any invoice processing system, particularly for compliance with tax reporting mandates, which usually have set time-frame requirements.

This increased visibility enables greater control over business operations and provides the reassurance needed to accurately report the business finances to the senior leadership team.