Did you know that some of your most fundamental financial processes could also create unnecessary expenses in your business? There are costs associated with everything you do, but controlling them is essential. One of those expenses is how much it costs your teams to process every invoice you receive. Review the KPIs, and what you see might be surprising: slow processes, frequent errors, missed opportunities for discounts or even missed vendor payments. Without invoice automation, these costs can run out of control.

Improving procedures benefits your business in many ways, not just minimizing your cost per invoice. It is possible to capture discounts and develop keener insight into daily cash flow. Why is automation so necessary today, and more importantly, how does it work?

Here, we’ll explore the conditions driving the adoption of new automation platforms and consider the holistic overview of invoice automation workflows. From there, we’ll introduce Tungsten Automation and Marketplace solutions that are ready to help you achieve real-world improvements that drive efficiency and productivity while revealing a clear ROI. Here’s what to know.

The Growing Need for Automated Invoice Processing

At small scales, invoice processing may present fewer challenges to accounting teams. However, as you grow and operate at higher scales, increasing invoice volumes and complex requirements complicate matters. For large and international businesses, the challenges are even more remarkable. The most common problems you’ll encounter at this stage include:

• Time-consuming extraction processes that involve substantial manual typing and data manipulation by hand. Manual labor increases the risk of errors that can have damaging effects downstream.
• Losing track of invoices and related paperwork, extending processing time and increasing the chance of late or missed payments.
• Poor supplier relationships caused by chronically slow invoice payments.
• High costs associated with invoice processing due to the challenges involved.
• Frequent manual interventions across the process, leading to sluggish approvals.

You can directly address many of these concerns by introducing automation. Consider the entire process.

An Overview of the Automation Process

Invoice automation using platforms from Tungsten Automation creates opportunities to transform the entire process. It allows for straight-through processing (STP) of a significant portion of invoices, significantly improving efficiency and reducing manual effort. In other words, an invoice could enter your system and proceed automatically to the final approval and remittance of payment.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the different stages to know:

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The first part of the process is capturing invoices from their various points of origin. You may have invoices that originate from several sources: emails, web portals, the mailroom, or by fax, and the list goes on. The seemingly simple task of centralizing all your incoming invoices for the next steps can be challenging.

With automation, you can capture arriving invoices from any source, organize and sort them, and prepare them for the next stage.

Extraction

Once captured, you must extract the key data points from the invoice. Information such as the supplier name, invoice number, line items and dollar amounts must all undergo digitization. Manually extracting this data is time-consuming and a prime opportunity for mistyping and creating errors. Automation streamlines this process. Even when invoice forms vary between suppliers or orders, intelligent processes can identify the correct data, extract it into a usable format, and move it along.

Validation

Confirm the accuracy of invoice details and prepare them for the approvals process. Automate two- and three-way matching to simplify invoice validation. Route exceptions to human workers for additional inspection when anomalies occur. The validated invoice date is ready for the final stages.

Approval

Automate the approval and payment of invoices that align with specific rules you define during setup. When exceptions occur, a human worker is automatically notified to engage in an inspection of the data. Route high-value or high-risk invoices to the appropriate stakeholder for final approval, then automate the payment process.

The above is a broad overview that provides a basic sense of an automated invoice workflow. Your solution may vary based on business-specific needs, such as your industry or production environment. If you use SAP, for example, you’ll benefit particularly from using platforms such as Tungsten Process Director. This tool is purpose-built to manage invoice interactions and automation in a SAP environment.

What Does Invoice Automation Do for a Business?

Even glancing at the process outlined above, you can see the exciting opportunities to improve your operations. Consider the broad reach of a platform such as Tungsten AP Essentials.

Out of the gate, AP Essentials equips organizations with powerful OCR that delivers exceptional accuracy when extracting invoices captured from any source. Built to integrate directly with your existing financial systems, AP Essential provides a streamlined way to reduce manual tasks and accelerate your work.

Additional solutions include third-party options leveraging Tungsten technology. These solutions in the Tungsten Marketplace let you find targeted improvements to address your business-specific needs. Ultimately, the right combination of these platforms delivers pivotal benefits:

• Better invoice accuracy and fewer errors, eliminating typical processing slowdowns.
• Put skilled staff to work on tasks that add value to the organization instead of tedious manual data entry.
• Slash cost-per-invoice and boost other critical KPIs in the accounts payable department.
• Gain better data and derive essential insights into how to improve your processes further.
• Assure compliance and good internal governance by adhering to rules.

Start tapping into these outcomes with Tungsten platforms today.

Evaluate What’s Possible in Your Business

With effective invoice automation, you can leave manual processes behind and step into the future of work. Eliminate errors that may occur daily and simplify your procedures. Empower skilled employees to do more with their experience and talent rather than manually processing invoices, extracting data etc.

With Tungsten Automation solutions and support from our partners in the Marketplace, you can explore a more innovative, faster way to work. Support for a wide variety of enterprise software makes adoption easy. Learn more about the platforms we provide today to explore what they can deliver to your teams. Don’t forget to visit the Marketplace for various free and paid solutions ready for implementation.