Finance 2020: Demand more from your AP workflow

What we talk about when we talk about workflow

Workflow consistently ranks among the top accounts payable (AP) automation priorities. This year is no different: only electronic payments (narrowly) top invoice approval and exceptions workflow solutions among the technologies that AP departments plan to deploy, according to IOFM ’s 2016 Key Performance Indicators Study.

Article by: Mark Brousseau, guest blogger

The dreaded exceptions workflow

Invoice approval and exceptions workflows are notorious among AP professionals for being laborious and time-consuming. But exceptions workflows stands apart as the ‘most dreaded process.’

In a paper-based AP environment, exceptions resolution requires back-and-forth phone calls and emails between stakeholders, the faxing or emailing of supplemental documents, and lots of time. In fact, exceptions resolution is the AP task that businesses would most like to eliminate, IOFM’s 2013 AP Department Benchmarking and Analysis Study found.

Just what is at stake here?

For the C-suite, capturing early payment discounts is the key driver for automating invoice approval and exceptions workflows. According to PayStream Advisors, 70 percent of CFOs have prioritized increasing the percentage of early-payment discounts captured by their businesses.

In theory, it’s simple: pay invoices on time, cash in on discounts.

But more often than not, payment terms offer too tight a window for those discounts to be cashed in on, even in companies that already have some degree of financial process automation.

The solution: integrated and flexible workflow

AP needs workflow that reflects the reality of invoice processing today; namely, a single on-ramp for alldocument types whether they arrive via e-mail, fax, electronic data interchange (EDI), mobile, online portal, or otherwise.

But in order to reap the full benefits of multichannel capture, a business must also have a flexible workflow solution seamlessly integrated into its ERP system.

Like damming a river with a Popsicle stick

Many e-invoicing vendors claim to offer flexible workflows, but too often these solutions include inflexible, hard-coded workflow scenarios. AP departments are then forced to make do with sub-optimal processes, pay the vendor to further customize their software, or call on resource-strapped internal IT staff to hard-code additional workflow routines.

Today, this will no longer cut it.