Achieving a Paper Less Office: Streamline Accounts Payable Workflow and Use Paperless Expense Processing
If you’ve read my prior blog posts you probably have a good understanding about what the Paper Less Office™ is all about. In this post, I would like to share additional ideas on how to get more paper less, and focus on the areas of accounts payable and expense processing.
While customers and revenue are the lifeblood of every business, I am sure you would agree that you would not be able to support many customers or generate much revenue without the products and services provided by your vendors. Inefficient processing of your accounts payable can be a real drain on your business and impair essential vendor relations. Luckily there are many great tools to make accounts payable paper less and much more efficient.
Still Issuing Paper Checks?
Please say it isn’t so. Paper checks waste your money, average cost is $2 per check, and this is a low estimate. Your ERP or Accounting Software must have available functions for processing Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)/ Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions – whether built into the program or available as an add on product. Look into EFT for your accounting software today. It is available for all Sage products.
Streamline Accounts Payable Workflow
What happens now? Your mail arrives with a stack of bills, someone opens and reviews them, they get routed around the office for approval, copies are made, documentation is attached, and they may get passed around again. Finally they get to the accounting department, who manually enter the information into your accounting system, later checks are issued, the bills may get passed around again, and then someone spends more time filing. Sometime later, for tax, accounting or other audits, someone has to go find them and then re-file them. What a waste of time. What a waste of space.
Imagine this: the bills come in; they are scanned and digitized, then thrown away. Key information is captured and electronic workflow commences for approvals and processing. Back up information is also scanned and attached. The digital data is imported electronically into your accounting system. Later, if you need the document, you just look it up in the computer. The file room becomes a nice staff lounge and everyone is happy. Sounds a lot better right? To make your life easier, look into AP Automation / Paperless Invoice Processing. Net at Work’s ConnectPoint™ is a great solution for this.
Paperless Expense Management
Is there anything that your employees like less then filling out paper expense forms and attaching paper receipts? Don’t they have better things to do? What a waste of time processing and filing this paperwork. You really must check your sanity if you are still using this process. There are so many good inexpensive web-based paperless expense management systems available. We like the solution Concur. Look into Paperless Expense Management.
Get Ahead of the Game with Electronic Purchasing
Want to streamline your processes even more? Look into automated purchasing systems. Why wait for bills to come in to get approval. Isn’t that a little too late? You can gain control and streamline purchasing, allowing you to maintain budgets and avoid overruns with easy to use Purchasing Automation systems. We like eRequester because it works very well, supports mobile and integrates with your Sage accounting/ERP system. Here is a great video that shows eRequester in action. eRequester makes it fast and easy to request and get approval for purchases on your computer system, which is the key to success. And another great benefit? No more paper purchase requisition or approval forms. What could be better? Look into Purchasing Automation Software.
