Accounts Payable
Seeking to deliver value and drive transformation of accounts payable (A/P) from a tactical, back-office function to one that delivers strategic and bottom-line value, enterprises are leveraging automation to drive out paper and error-prone processes. Consider these questions
- Handle incoming invoices once and then file them for offsite storage or recycling?
- Know that all invoices received each day are entered into the system in a timely manner?
- Reduce the manual process of keying invoice data into your system while increasing the accuracy of that data?
- Know the total value of invoices received anywhere in you organization by the end of business day?
- Automatically match invoices with their corresponding Purchase Orders within moments of the invoices entering the system?
- Know where an invoice is in the approval process and to be able to provide management or the supplier accurate information immediately when they inquire?
- Know that all business rules associated that the approval process are being adhered to and be notified when they are not?
- Know that all accounting codes and electronic signatures have been applied before the invoice is presented for payment?
- Approve all invoices in a timely manner and avoid late payment fees?
- Have the invoice data, the audit data and the invoice image ready for your Document Management system at the conclusion of the approval process?
If the answer to most or all of these questions is YES, then you should consider automation of the Invoice Approval Process.
The automation process consists of the following steps
Invoice Capture
Invoices come through many sources, hard-copy paper, fax and email. All of them are captured and processed
Invoice Pre-Processing
- Page Orientation
- De-skewing
- De-speckling
Invoice Classification
- Intelligent Invoice Recognition
- Is this an invoice?
- Is it single or multiple pages?
- Match to Invoice Template
- Do we know this company?
Recognition - Data Extraction
Automatic extraction of data like Invoice Number, Invoice Date, etc.
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
- Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)
- Bar Code Recognition
- Apply rules
- Date normalization
- Arithmetic functions
- Dictionary look up
- Database look up
Verification/Correction
- Verify if the captured data is correct
- Field Verification/Validation
- Document Verification
Invoice Approval
Benefits
- Streamline and Automate Invoice processing and approval process
- Mitigate Risk
- Ensure Security
- Enforce company policies
- Provide a complete process audit trail
- Meet all regulatory requirements