A sheet of paper weighs close to nothing. A mere 0.01 pounds, to be precise. Doesn't seem like a lot or even something to be concerned about, right? Yet these lightweights easily add up, both in terms of weight and workloads that become full of manual tasks.
Imagine your company handles 1,000 invoices per week, each of them having two pages that need to be processed. After just one year, you're looking at 1,040 lbs. of paper to enter in your accounts payable system then store in large filing cabinets that occupy most of the office! Let alone if you keep records for five years, you're now looking at up to 5,200 lbs.! There is, of course, a better way to process an invoice and improve your company's process. The ability to get rid of manual invoice processing can become a reality by converting your accounting process to a cloud-based, paperless accounts payable (AP) workflow.
Not only does the use of a paperless accounts payable platform do away with shuffling and archiving paper, it also streamlines the entire business process from receiving invoices to initiating payments in a few easy steps. In the long run, this digital doozy saves a company time and money while reducing the risk of errors from false entries or duplicate payments to locking in early payment discounts offered by a vendor.
A Paperless Accounts Payable System Means Less Friction and More Productivity
Literally shedding the paperweight frees up the AP department's employee workload so they can use the unblocked time to refocus their attention on value-added tasks at which humans are exceptionally good at like dealing with and reviewing exceptions and nurturing relationships with suppliers and partners that help your business thrive and build financial intelligence. It's truly the stimulating, interesting parts of working in accounting that beats the repetitiveness of manually entering amounts, account numbers and other tedious details, including stamping invoices as "paid" for your dedicated employees who want more of a challenge. Not only will going digital make each employee's job more enjoyable, it provides them with more opportunities to contribute additional value to your business and good ideas to solve the company's biggest need.
How do you get into the world of AP automation?
You start by switching to e-invoicing. The transition will streamline your invoice management process and ensure your documentation is compliant when traveling between the business and your vendor. Your business can easily achieve a smooth transition to e-invoicing with Yooz's state-of-the-art cloud-based AP automation system that handles any document emailed in and automatically imports them. Its optical character recognition (OCR) reads each document and can pull the data from any type of file. Thanks to machine learning, the system understands each document and learns from it, meaning it becomes smarter the more you "Yooz" it. In a short period of time, the system recognizes each vendor's unique, individual invoice format so you don't have to check the accuracy of every import when you need a vendor's invoice properly formatted quickly. You can rely on Yooz's AP automation solution to assign the proper GL codes and match invoices to purchase orders plus route them to the right person for instant approval to reduce delays with the payment process, and secure potential early payment discounts.
Creating a 100% Paperless Experience
In the midst of COVID-19, we're seeing an increasing number of suppliers that have already gone paperless or are in the process of doing so to resolve the sudden stay at home order's negative impacts to company operations. Keeping that in mind, it's becoming almost nonnegotiable to not utilize AP automation in your company's workflow. That is why we make it our mission to provide you with the tools needed to make the switch from a manual, paper-based process to our sleek, leading-edge AP software.
Yooz shines when it comes to accepting e-invoices. Once a vendor uploads a file, the software goes to work without human intervention. It knows the right fields to look for, can match incoming invoices to existing purchase orders and catches duplicates or suspicious submissions. Even better, it automatically matches invoices to GL codes and funnels them into the right workflows for approval and, if necessary, review of exceptions.
Even if suppliers aren't feeling moved by the pandemic to start using an online portal for submitting their invoices and send or fax documents, there's another way to go digital without dismissing your supplier's preference for a traditional, paper-based processing. The first step is by attaching a "Yooz stamp" to documents before scanning them that will allow bulk scanning to save time. The stamp tells our platform at what point to automatically separate individual documents in a scan, no matter how many you or your company feed into the system.
Since COVID-19 froze many common office practices, two in three workers in the U.S. have discovered new ways to work from home - or some safe location other than their usual desk. That includes a new push to remove paper from the accounts payable process by replacing it with automation. With that in mind, Yooz has a versatile mobile app that allows for on-the-go document uploads from any smartphone or tablet by simply taking a photo.
Once the photo has been digested in a matter of minutes, that invoice will pop up on the screen of an approver because what’s stored in the cloud can be reviewed, approved and paid from anywhere, anytime. This is true no matter if a team member or manager has a tablet or smartphone, is at home, on the road or happens to be in a location far from HQ. A company’s entire AP workflow becomes transparent and accessible according to the rules and privileges an organization defines. All it takes to ensure business continuity, no matter what happens out there, is Yooz’s reliable mobile app to keep the back office in touch and functioning without any interruption to its workflow. You can't go more paperless than that!
If you're hesitant, we want to assure you that our mobile app was designed to be as user-friendly and efficient as possible because we realize out of the 5.7 billion adults on Earth, 5 billion of them have a mobile phone, 4 billion own a smartphone. That basically puts a supercomputer that functions as a virtual back office in the pocket of most people on this planet! With these numbers we knew that an accounting app with the same capabilities as using a desktop portal was not an option, but a necessity for every accounts payable department worldwide.
Making Your AP System Paperless Pays Off
Remember the days of overflowing filing cabinets mentioned earlier? Sorting through all the loose documents and figuring out where to store paperwork is like looking for a needle in a haystack! When you store information in the cloud, you relieve your department of the filing cabinet nightmare. Let's tally the advantages of switching to an AP automation system using a cloud-based solution that your company will receive:
- You'll see a huge improvement in the finance area of your business because automation saves oodles of money that would normally be spent on shipping, processing and storing documents.
- Again, think of all the rows of filing cabinets holding thousands of pounds of paper that can be removed to free up office space!
- Going paperless with Yooz makes closing out the books at the end of each month a snap when you're not trying to chase down loose documents and invoices and having to manually calculate each cost.
- Paperless AP facilitates audits because Yooz doesn't just read every document as it comes in but also indexes it word for word. That way, the members of your AP team can perform keyword searches across any invoice ever processed into our software making it as easy as running a google search.
- Having a paperless accounts payable system quickly pays for itself due to its ability to cut down cycle time and processing costs by about 80 percent!
- Every department of your organization will benefit from a paperless method because they suddenly have access to financial intelligence to better manage supplier relationships and cash flow.
So please show some respect for the lowly white sheets of paper landing on your AP team's desks, day in and day out. They may weigh you down today, but they can also lead the way to fundamental change. Having a paperless AP system is not just about saving time and storage space. It's a steppingstone to mastering your organization's digital transformation and staying competitive within the finance industry and beyond.
